Against All Odds: The Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs of Mary Duncan Crandall

When Mary Jane Duncan was born in 1888 in the frontiers of North Carolina to pioneer parents, the social and political experiment that was the United States was barely 100 years old, and its continued existence had recently been severely challenged by a terrible Civil War that threatened to destroy its very foundations. In those days a frontier girl had little chance of an education because all the families in the area lived on farms and the labor of the children was the difference between survival and starvation. Besides, the prevailing attitude was that only the sons would benefit from education, anyway. What were the prospects for a little red-haired girl, the last of twelve to be born into this family, when, on average, the poor quality of medical care in the region resulted in only two out of three infants surviving to adulthood? Indeed, only seven of her siblings would live into adulthood. She would be denied an education that fell short of completing high school. She would be picking cotton on her family farm and for other landowners before she attained the age of twelve. All the children worked on the family farm, and when time was available would work on farms of other landowners for incredibly small wages. But such was the life of pioneers in the frontier of North Carolina in those days. Mary would face almost insurmountable difficulties in the years ahead. She would be turned out of her family home at age 18, and would have to learn to grow up unnaturally quickly. She faced the worst kinds of persecutions and rejection by hundreds of people in her life. Yet she was confident she was doing exactly what God told her to do. This is her story; all the highs and lows, the desperation, the loneliness, the elation and the blessings one little red-headed girl from North Carolina experienced in her adventure into faith, obeying the call God placed on her life. What could she hope to accomplish through her simple obedience? Read my Grandmother Mary’s story and find out for yourself… --- Marlene