When I was growing up we went every summer with my mother and grandmother to visit relatives on Nettie’s Mountain. Great Aunt Ollie was a great teller of stories and she told us this story about our grandmother and grandfather many times. It made me see our grandparents in a completely different light.

My grandmother’s name was Ota Cordellie Suggs. She was born and raised on Nettie’s Mountain near Newport Tennessee. She had an older brother Jack, one sister Ollie who was younger than she and four young brothers.

The story goes that one day Ota was standing in front of the window staring out. When her mother asked her what was going on out there., Ota looked at her with a twinkle in her eye and replied, I’m looking at the man I am going to marry. Her mother went to the door and there was Henry Bumgarner walking down the road.

Soon Henry came to the Suggs house to court Ota. They went to fiddling contests, tacky parties, candy pulling and all the entertainment the mountain provided. All the family and neighbors knew they would marry. But something unexpected happened.

Ota’s mother was taken ill. Ota tended her mother and took care of her siblings. She had no time for tacky parties or fiddling contests. Ota’s mother did not get well, instead she became gravely ill and on her death bed she asked Ota to delay her marriage to Henry, stay at home and help her father raise the children until Ollie was older. Ota made that pledge to her mother and said she never regretted it.

Ota told Henry about the death bed pledge she had given her mother .Henry said he understood and he would wait but as time went on Henry grew weary of waiting. Although she was heartbroken Ota bid Henry goodbye. She would not break her promise to her mother.

Ota heard about all Henry’s activities and his many girl friends. News travels fast in the mountains. Ota did all the hard work of caring for a family. Without her, her father would have no other choice than to parcel the children out among relatives. A man alone could not raise young children in the mountains. Too many dangers lurked in the home and woods. A child could crawl in the fire, fall in the spring, wander out in the woods where there were wild animals, or any number of reasons why a mother had to be in the home for the survival of the children.

Ota heard about the girl Jadie Green who Henry was courting and if it hurt her she never said a word. She went about her work patiently day by day, even when she heard about the ring Henry bought for Jadie Green she kept her feelings to herself.

Henry and Jadie planned to be married but for some reason Henry kept putting the wedding off. Jadie would set a date and when that date was near Henry would find some excuse for another delay. This went on and on.

After several years Ollie grew to be a teenager, the boys were older and Ota decided Ollie was mature enough to take on the care of the family. Ota had kept her death bed promise to her mother and she had done it with a good will. Not one had heard Ota complain about the duties laid on her by her mother. The family was thriving. Her father was making a good living hunting and trapping in the mountains. Ota could finely be free.

Ota knew the time was right so she sent word to Henry that she was ready to marry him. Henry asked Jadie for the ring but she refused. Jadie said, “Ota Suggs got the man but Jadie Green kept the ring.” Henry and Ota were married soon after and Aunt Ollie said a fiddler wrote a song about the whole affair. He played his fiddle and sang the song all over the mountain. She said the people still sang that song today. Aunt Ollie had forgotten most of the song but she remembered one line , “Pretty little Ota got the man but Jadie Green kept the ring.”