Anna Wing was born December 8, 1899, in southwestern Ohio farm country to Henry “Val” Wing (1864) and Evanna Schauer Wing (1867). She was one of nine children, the second youngest. Two of the children died as infants. The family was poor, earning a living as sharecroppers. The Wings had roots in southwest Ohio dating to the early 1800s.
William Banis was born July 4, 1885, near Shenandoah, Pennsylvania about 50 miles southwest of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Anna Wing and William Banis were married June 8, 1918, in southwestern Ohio; she was 19; he, 32.
By the mid-1920s, Anna and William Banis lived in a house near Anna’s parents. William worked as a laborer. Eva, the first of 11 children, was born in 1919, followed by Bill (1921), Abe (1922), May (1923), Ruth (1924), Dick (1927), and Fanny (1931). The Banis kids often would walk to their grandparents’ house. There were gatherings of family and neighbors, and on warm summer evenings, that meant music. Some of the Wing men played guitar, some violin, some banjo. Life was hard but simple.
Shortly before the birth of Fanny (1931), the house the family was renting caught fire and quickly burned to the ground, launching them into the Depression era with little or nothing.
In the early 1930s, the family moved east, stopping at St Clair, Pennsylvania, near William Banis’s birthplace to visit the family of William’s recently deceased brother, Victor. The family then moved near Altoona, where William had “connections” that they hoped could help him find work.
The family was very poor. They lived in a rented three-room “shanty” on the outskirts of Alexandria, a small town in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. There was a kitchen; Anna and William slept in one room; all the kids slept in the other. The kids’ room was big enough for two single beds on opposite sides of the room: one bed for the girls, and one bed for the boys. They had no electricity. Oil lamps provided light. A wood burning stove furnished heat and a place to cook. There was no plumbing and no running water. Water was carried from a nearby spring. Clothes were washed by hand.
As Ruth Banis Nance recalls, “During the summer we played in the woods and fields. We swam in the streams and in a pond on a nearby farm. We played cowboys and Indians. We shared one bicycle, and it had no brakes. We played baseball, and on some Sundays Daddy would play with us. On most Sundays we attended an Episcopal church, St John’s, in Huntingdon. The minister would pick up our family and drive the several miles to Huntingdon. May and I attended church classes and were consecrated; Mom made May and me white organdy dresses. They were so delicate and beautiful. The fall meant a daily walk of about a mile to school and making apple butter with the neighbors where the kids got to stir the pot. At Christmas time, Mom made candy. In the winters the neighbors’ pond would freeze, and we took turns skating using our one pair of skates.
One winter we found an old metal sign and used it as a toboggan. In the spring we harvested dandelions and took hikes into the woods, sometimes with Daddy leading the way to pick huckleberries, raspberries and elderberries. There were lots of berries and lots of snakes. Mom used the dandelions as (vegetable) greens and made jam from the elderberries, while Daddy made dandelion and elderberry wine. There was always a garden and beds of flowers. In spring we also hunted mushrooms. We had a small radio and would listen to news and baseball. The boys hunted. Music was a part of life. Daddy bought Bill his first guitar. We always had a dog.” And of course, every year or so there was a new baby. Sam was born in (1934). Annie was born in 1935.Victor was born in 1937; and now the family numbered 12.
Now deep into the Depression, work was scarce and financially, things got worse. By the mid- 1930s, unable to support the family, William and Anna arranged to send Eva, Ruth and Abe to live with other families in the area. Ruth, the youngest of this group, was about ten years old when she went to live with a couple nearby. They were older and were family friends. Ruth often walked home to spend a few hours at the Banis family household.
In 1936, Anna’s mother died. Unable to afford the trip to Ohio, Anna missed her mother’s funeral.
The family gave up on the Pennsylvania experiment and returned to Eaton, Ohio, circa 1938. Anna’s sister Clara and her son drove to Alexandria and moved the family to Eaton. Once again the family was near the Wing clan, Anna’s family. They lived a few months with Clara, then moved to the “house by the creek.” Abe and Ruth rejoined the family for the trip back.
Eva continued to live with her “foster” family in Pennsylvania and graduated from high school, the first in the family to do so. Shortly thereafter Eva moved to Dayton, Ohio (about 20 miles east of Eaton) where she worked as a telephone operator.
Bill dropped out of school and at the age of 17, joined the Civil Conservation Corps (CCC) and left for Nevada in early 1939. Within the next few years, May dropped out of school but found a job and joined Eva in Dayton. In October 1940, Abe, also a high school dropout enlisted in the Army at the age of 18 and was stationed in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. In 1941, Ruth left home and moved to Dayton where she lived with her sisters, May and Eva. The three “girls” lived in a boarding house on West Third Street in Dayton. In the fall Ruth entered Roosevelt high school as a junior. Pat was born in September, 1942, and the family now numbered 13. It was a difficult and nearly fatal labor for the 42- year-old Anna. Bill returned home from the CCC and other adventures “out west” later that fall. Bill was inducted into the US Army in November and departed for basic training in early December.
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