Susan E. Williams
By: Nina Bagey
In 1905, the first annual Harrisburg, Pennsylvania beekeeping convention was held on December 6th and 7th. Among the people who attended was a woman named Susan E. Williams of Moorestown, New Jersey. Miss Williams was a reasonably new beekeeper. She was a good listener and highly enthusiastic, making the speakers feel more at ease with her presence. E. R. Root found Miss Williams to be a part of a different class of women beekeepers. He complimented her on how she has enriched the beekeepers from all around and how these women occasionally give the beekeeping world some practical suggestions and scientific facts.
E.R. Root wrote “Scientific Amateurs” under the department of General Correspondence (The Modest Small Beekeepers), “Miss Williams has kept bees for a comparatively short time. She represents a type of “scientific amateur,” if I may use the phrase. She has a neat apiary in her backyard where she gets much pleasure and profit.” (Gleanings, 1908, Jan. 15, pg. 88). E. R. Root classified her as a “type” of a class of beekeeper who was not solely in it for the almighty dollar. He respected the fact she was a nature lover and that Miss Williams was performing an invaluable service.
Miss Susannah Williams was born in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1873, the youngest of six. Her father was superintendent of West Town Boarding School in Chester County, PA. The family were orthodox Quakers. Miss Williams was interested in bees because a friend asked if she would teach a class to some children on natural history subjects. Miss Williams pleaded ignorance to get out of it. Now her friend insisted and said, indeed, you can read enough to be able to give a simple, childish talk. So, she gave in to her friend just like most of us would have done.
She started to read about bees, spiders and birds. Now, we can guess the results. We have all been there. Miss Williams became so interested in the bee world that she didn’t even get around to the spiders and birds. Miss Williams wrote, “Spiders I abhorred, but I learned to tolerate them and greatly admire their skill and wisdom. But the bees I was fascinated with. Such industry! Such sagacity! Such cleanliness! Such perseverance! Truly, it borders on the miraculous.” (Beekeeping for Women, A. I. Root, 1906.)
She read Maurice Maeterlinck’s poetical book with much delight. She also read one of my favorites, Mrs. Comstock’s How to Keep Bees, which was another treat. Mrs. Comstock was a regular writer in the mid-1800s for Gleanings in Bee Culture. She was a Quaker who wrote about her experiences in plants and beekeeping. A. I. Root called her a particular type of woman. Miss Williams also studied the ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture by A. I. Root. Her interest grew, and she planned to have bees in the Spring of 1905.
She had an older sister Rachael, a doctor, and she had three hives of the standard black bees and said she could take care of them for a share of the honey, which she agreed. Having read so much, she still did not know what a bee looked like or the inside of a hive. So in May of 1905, Miss Williams commenced her beekeeping adventure at thirty-two. She wrote this: “No veteran can imagine the awe with which I first beheld the interior of those hives, and how I should ever learn to handle the frames was a frightful unsolved problem. My friend ascertained that one colony was queenless (a fact I never should have discovered alone), and he deemed it wise to unite the bees to other colonies. This he did and removed the hive. Thus my stock was reduced to two colonies.”
When Spring came around, she sought help from two beekeepers, Mr. Selser and Mr. Horner. The two men kindly invited her to see their work with the bees occasionally, learning more from them than she could ever gather from books.
Miss Williams purchased an Italian hive from A. I. Root, and she thought they were beauties and never tired of looking at them. She would eventually replace all of her black queens with Italians, and she thought it was short of a miracle to see the bees turn yellow. Now she needed to figure out the financial part of it, but she hoped to make it pay one day. A beekeeper of long-standing said to her, “Remember, you are now getting experience, and experience costs money.”
She started with two hives in 1905. The following year, she increased her hives to six. She took over a hundred and twenty pounds of honey off her bees and increased her hives in 1907 to twenty-five using the Alexander method of taking off a thousand pounds of honey. In addition to that, she caught two swarms that year. Miss Williams was accustomed to getting stung. She compared it to a mosquito bite.
In conclusion, she wrote: “I have nothing to say to those who must make money at beekeeping, for I have not tried it long enough to know of which I speak, but for those who wish a pleasant, healthful, varied and interesting occupation. I would say keep bees by all means, and you will be repaid in honey and health, at least.” (Beekeeping for Women, A. I. Root, 1906.)
Miss Williams would continue beekeeping. She would marry a Mr. Rueben Hall-Spencer, born in 1879 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. They were married in Morristown, New Jersey, on April 17th, 1915. Rueben was a bookkeeper for a coal company. Now Mrs. Susan Williams Spencer, would give birth to a daughter, Agnes W. Spencer, in 1918.
Short-term birth sequelae of the 1918-1920 Influenza pandemic in the United States, caused a high rate of maternal deaths. Mrs. Spencer was forty-six years old, so there were risks for a woman having children at her age. She was blessed with a healthy daughter, Agnes, named after Rueben’s mother.
She was seventy-two when her husband, Rueben, passed away on April 11th, 1945. He was sixty-one.
Her daughter Agnes graduated from college. She worked as a secretary and married John Newman Sumner at forty-one. He was married before to Mrs. Margaret Southhall Hayman of Moorestown. They had three daughters when she passed away in 1958. The following year, John N. Sumner married Agnes W. Spencer at her cousin’s home in Moorestown, New Jersey. It was her first marriage. She was only married for twelve years before she passed away at age fifty-one on February 8th, 1970. Mrs. Susanna Williams Spencer passed away the following year, on November 3rd, 1971. She was ninety-eight.
I would agree in her case that keeping bees rewarded her with honey and good health. I know Mrs. Williams Spencer knew little about the bees when she began. But I believe she figured out over the years how to make the bees pay for themselves and still enjoy the honey. Beekeeping is hard work. All that hard work extracting the honey gave her an appreciation for the bees and brought happiness and honey, and if the bees made a little money, that was her reward. Mrs. Spencer enjoyed her honey on waffles during the Winter. She said they were so wholesome and delicious! “One of nature’s finest gifts.”
“He is not worthy of the honeycomb, that shuns the hives because the bees have stings.”
~ William Shakespeare
Nina Bagley
Ohio Queen Bee
Columbus, Ohio
