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Levina Sanborn was born in New Hampshire on December 29, 1841. Her parents, John & Mehitable Sanborn, brought her back in a covered wagon drawn by oxen to Spring Grove when she was six months old and they settled on the land her father claimed. Her cradle was made by her father from an old tea carton and when it was turned upside down you could still see the tea label.
Levina was one of five children and nicknamed Vine. Her sisters were Clorinda, born in 1845 and Minerva, born in 1851. The two girls died within four days of each other in February 1863 from diphtheria, a once common, but now rare, bacterial infection. Clorinda was 18 and Minerva had just turned 12. They were buried in the family cemetery a short distance from the house.
Levina started wearing pantalettes when she was probably in her teens. Some men did not like it when women wore pants and her brother, John Winthrop, strongly disapproved. He told his mother that it was just a fad and that Vine should be spanked for wearing them! As a young woman, she taught at English Prairie School, which was less than a mile from her home. (Three generations taught there - her daughter Rose, son Frank, and granddaughter Mary Harms.)
In 1866, when Levina was 25 years old, he married Sam Orvis. They had seven children: Willard 1868-1937, Clarence 1869-1933, Rose Levina 1871-1922, Byron Levi 1872-1953, Elmer Victor 1874-1937, Frank Benjamin 1876-1909, and Everett Roy 1879-1958. They first farmed off Winn Road, but eventually settled on the original Sanborn homestead at the southeast corner of Wilmot Road and James Road. Levina kept everything that was in her childhood home and the house was full. Her grandchildren remembered the spinning wheel, her old cradle, wool combs, wool cards and candle dips, old books, letters and magazines, a grandfather clock, rope beds from the 1830s, highboy dressers and her father’s red jacket from the war of 1812.
Levina loved to tell stories about her family and other tales of interest. She also did a lot of knitting, making mittens for her grandchildren every winter. She also loved to read and wrote poems, “by the yard.” Levina missed her parents and sisters greatly and must have felt the presence of her sisters in the huge old homestead when she penned these lines excerpted from her poem, Ghosts from the Past:
“My sisters too I seem to hear
Their footsteps echo softly now,
Their laugh sounds faintly to my ear
As oft I heard it long ago.
Here from the window looking north
I see the tombstones whitely gleam
Where peacefully my loved ones rest
In that ‘long sleep without a dream’”
Levina visited the family cemetery daily to water the flowers, trim the grass, and pull the weeds. After she died, a cement wall was built around the cemetery to protect it, according to her wishes. In 1918 Levina died at age 76 in the old house happy to finally join her loved ones in that long sleep without a dream. Sam joined her in 1921.
Story by Laura Frumet
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