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Excerpt from Shuffletown USA
Vernon and Smiley
Back around 1880, Andrew Rozzelle tells his deaf son, Vernon, that he has met a hog farmer in Waxhaw who has a deaf daughter named Smiley. Vernon gets in his wagon and rides off to meet her. A week later, he comes home with Smiley as his wife. They have five children—two are mute and three are not. William Alexander Rozzelle, Sr. was the eldest son and he was not a mute. He became Pop-Pop’s father and Will Rozzelle, my husband’s grandfather.
William was sixteen when his sister, Sarah was born. The second son, Dan, who was also not mute, had died about three years earlier. The other two children, Mary and Jeff, were mutes. I guess William was always silent in the house and always used sign language to talk to the family. And I guess Sarah was a very good baby because Sarah was almost two when someone heard her calling one of the cousins by name at the big house. Until that time, everyone thought Sarah was a mute also.
- Barbara Gillis Rozzelle
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