Ex-slave’s gift to widows nourishes town’s soul : In cherished annual rite, bequest brings flour, sugar to homes of Ohio women during the holidays.

The 110 widows in town are baking again this holiday season, courtesy of a former slave who included them when he made his bequests more than a century ago.

From their ovens in subsidized apartments and stately frame houses flow zucchini bread, pumpkin and sweet-potato pies, chocolate chip and butter cookies, date and apricot bars.

The village public works crew has delivered nearly all of the annual allotment--10 pounds each of flour and sugar--that Wheeling Gaunt has guaranteed them.

In an era when loss of community is often mourned, the parcels’ arrival at every widow’s doorstep each December is a bittersweet reminder of the grief caused by a husband gone and the warmth of knowing that somebody notices and cares. The observance of this rite, 102 years old and going strong, helps knit together the entire population of just under 4,000.

The widows’ benefactor was born in 1812 on a Kentucky tobacco plantation. Blacking boots and peddling apples, he saved enough to buy his freedom for $900 sometime during the 1840s. Next, driving wagons and laboring on farms, Gaunt bought his wife for $500 and then a male relative--a brother or a son--for $700.

In 1862, he settled here in the hometown of Antioch College, 20 miles east of Dayton--maybe, historians speculate, because a colony of freed slaves from Virginia already had been established.

He prospered. Shortly before he died in 1894, Gaunt asked the village--no one is certain why--to take on the task of distributing flour for Christmas baking to the widows of Yellow Springs. The ingredients were to be paid for with proceeds from the rental of nine acres of his property after he was gone.

He left land to a black college in Xenia, to the south, and to a local black church. But the flour was for all town widows, black or white, old or young, with children or without.

At first, tenants planted the acreage in corn or used it for pasture. Now the land is a public park, named Gaunt Park, naturally. The municipal Widows’ Fund money comes from swimming pool and baseball diamond revenue. And Wheeling Gaunt’s thoughtfulness lives on.

During the 1950s, the village added sugar to the Christmas present, recognizing that the widows no longer baked their own bread, but made treats instead.

This year, the five council members were so enthusiastic that they competed to be first to make the motion for the purchase, according to Village Manager David Heckerling.

As the town honors its compact with Gaunt, the widows pass the gesture along. Ginger cookies, jam cakes and lemon pies make their way to children, grandchildren, churches, retirement homes, the homeless, the Police Department. Of course, the public works employees are not forgotten.

“We reap what we sow,” said a grinning Kelley Fox, who has pulled flour and sugar duty for 13 years.

The first time that Fox or his colleagues appear, “it really establishes you as a widow,” said Bobbie Marshall, the 82-year-old occupant of a brick house with plaster moldings that Gaunt had built. She has received flour and sugar since 1991, when her husband died after a series of strokes.

Yet the sting of sadness is soothed by the balm of sympathy expressed by the gift. “The holidays are hard to get through,” said Pearl Stanley, 77, who lost her husband to heart trouble in 1995. Her eyes misted over. “But in Yellow Springs, everybody is there for you, and that means a lot.”

All year, the village manager’s assistant, Lina Verdon, monitored obituaries in the Yellow Springs News, adding new widows to the list, deleting those who have died.

On Monday, the rounds were late getting underway because the work crew had to change a traffic light. Finally, Fox, Michael “Zap” Applin and Joel Crandall hopped into a utility truck, cleaned out for the occasion, and motored over to Weaver’s Market with a purchase order for $828.

They ferried their cargo to familiar homes and familiar faces: Evelyn Smith, Fox’s wife’s grandmother. Betty Perry, who worked with Applin’s mother.

The visits can be sobering. Applin blinked back tears when an attendant opened the door at Viola Gudgell’s house. The widow lay listlessly in bed before a blaring television. “She’s a lot worse off than she was last year,” Fox muttered.

Most often, however, the encounters are jolly. Inez Shultz, 73, insisted that each man take a homemade mint. Gola Rhea, 82, had oats, raisins and brown sugar already measured out. The flour and sugar men set their packages on her kitchen counter. She immediately took her whisk to a stick of butter.

“I just think it’s fabulous,” said Goldie Crawford, 72. “I look forward to it every year.”

There is only one minor quibble in some quarters. Maybe, suggested Nina Myatt, curator of the local history archive at Antioch, it’s time to update Gaunt’s bequest to include widowers as well.

“I know many men who actually bake,” she said.