This morning I am sitting on the front porch of a historic home in Plains, Georgia known as Mother Allie’s House . Rain is falling softly and the birds are singing. Everything is peaceful and beautiful – and I am grateful for the opportunity to be here. This is the home where former First Lady of the United States, Rosalynn Carter, was raised along with her three siblings. Today, it is a beautifully preserved rental guest home/VRBO, lovingly and meticulously put together by the family to deeply reflect the warmth and history of someone I have discovered to be an absolutely remarkable woman – Mrs. Frances Allethea (Murray) Smith – affectionately known to many as “Miss Allie”.
The family has generously placed many wonderful books about the Smith and Carter families in this house, making it easy to learn during your stay about the history of this home and the people who lived here.
By all accounts, Miss Allie’s early life was filled with the warmth of a happy childhood. Born just south of Plains on Christmas Eve, 1905, she was the deeply cherished daughter of John William “Captain” Murray and Rosa Nettie Wise Murray. Before Allie was born, her parents suffered a devastating heartbreak when their only son tragically passed away before reaching his first birthday. After that profound loss, Allie grew up essentially as an only child on the family farm. Knowing the sorrow her parents carried surely made them dote on her even more, pouring their love, protective attention, and family resources into their only daughter.
In 1924, after Allie graduated from Plains High School, her parents did something truly extraordinary for a rural farming family: they sent her to college. To understand how vast that ambition was, you have to realize that during that era, less than 5% of all Americans held a college degree. It was a time when a woman’s opportunities were drastically limited, but Allie’s family obviously deeply valued the intellect of their daughter. She moved to Milledgeville to attend the Georgia State College for Women. There, she earned a degree in teaching, specializing in home economics, and graduated with her diploma on June 7, 1926.
Less than two weeks later, on June 20, 1926, she married her sweetheart, Wilburn Edgar Smith, who was nine years her senior. Theirs was a rare, lifelong romance that had begun years earlier. Later in life, Allie would frequently tell her children that Edgar was the only man for her, and that she could never love another—a promise of absolute devotion she kept for the rest of her days.
Historical records and Rosalynn Carter’s own memoirs reveal that Edgar Smith’s passion for education was rooted in his own deferred dreams. Edgar was an incredibly intelligent man, but because his own family needed him to work, he never had the opportunity to go to college himself. He spent his life surrounded by books, reading voraciously, and watching the world change. Because he couldn’t pursue higher education, he made it a mission of his life that each of his children would.
To build a secure life for his new bride and the four children that soon followed—Eleanor Rosalynn, William Jerrold, Murray Lee, and Lillian Allethea—he became a true jack-of-all-trades. He was an avid farmer, a clerk at a local store, and a school bus driver. Most notably, he stepped up to meet the demands of the changing times by owning and operating the very first auto mechanic and repair shop in Sumter County….just down the street from where I’m sitting now. He was the man who kept the rural community moving forward, fixing the temperamental engines of early automobiles and maintaining the tractors that were revolutionizing modern farming. Beyond his manual labor and entrepreneurial drive, Edgar was a deeply respected civic leader, actively shaping the town’s future as an elected member of the Plains Town Council.
Through genius and sacrifice, Edgar used his multiple jobs to quietly build a college fund for his children, methodically purchasing U.S. Savings Bonds and funneling every spare penny from his mechanic shop into a sacred, untouchable account. I am amazed that he was so forward thinking – that he valued education so much that he saved (during hard times) to send his children to college. Can you imagine?
In 1928, when their eldest daughter Rosalynn was just a sixteen-month-old toddler, Edgar and Allie moved the family into a house on South Bond Street – the same house where I am spending the week. Together, they built a life here on a foundation of community service, visionary hard work, and family devotion…and looked forward to a long life together.
However, in the late 1930s, Edgar fell terribly ill with leukemia – and at that time there were no effective treatments. For over a year, the family watched his health decline, comforted by local neighbors like Miss Lillian Carter—Jimmy Carter’s mother—who visited daily as a registered nurse to administer his routine medical injections. On October 22, 1940, Edgar passed away at home at the young age of 44.
At just 35 years old, Miss Allie was suddenly a grieving widow with four young children and no job to support them. When you look at the ages of her children at the time of her husband’s death, the sheer weight of her new reality is staggering: Rosalynn was 13, Jerry was 11, Murray was 8 (turning eight on the exact day his father died), and Allethea was 3. In the immediate aftermath, a heartbroken Miss Allie penned a line that laid bare her grief:
“I miss him and I don’t know what I will do without him.”
When Edgar died, he managed to leave behind a small inheritance and savings account for his family. But as Howard Norton details in Rosalynn, A Portrait, Rosalynn recalled that her mother fiercely resolved never to touch a single cent of that inheritance. She was determined to bring up and educate her children entirely through her own efforts, keeping Edgar’s sacred college fund intact. What a determined lady.
The blows kept coming. Less than a year after losing her husband, Allie’s mother, Rosa, passed away at age 60. Suddenly, Allie was not only raising four small children alone, but her aging, grieving father, “Captain” Murray, came to live with them in the house. It is almost impossible to imagine how terrifyingly hard it must have been for her. For fourteen years, she had lived a sheltered life centered around being a protected homemaker. Now, she had to navigate intense, compounding family grief while carrying the sole financial survival and care of six people on her shoulders. I am sleeping in Miss Allie’s bedroom this week – and when I lay down at night I have been thinking about the weight of responsibility she must have felt – yet all of the stories I hear from others about her are stories of her love, her faith, her strength, and her joy. What a remarkable lady.
To make a living, Miss Allie started taking in sewing. She didn’t just mend clothes; she took on master-level tailoring. She crafted beautiful, intricate wedding dresses—which quickly became one of her highly sought-after specialties—and she even tackled the incredibly difficult task of making tailored men’s suits and heavy overcoats from scratch. Ladies from the community valued her work. When they found a dress somewhere that they admired, she could study it and then make it for them. There are several examples of her work here in the house – and they are absolutely beautiful.
One steady, dependable source of income came from the family farm – which she rented out instead of selling. However, even though she needed that cash to keep the household running, she insisted on funneling every single penny of that rent money straight into the untouchable savings for her children’s college funds.
She took other work to support her family – working in the school cafeteria and as a grocery store clerk. After a few years, she took the federal civil service examination, passed it, and was awarded a position as an assistant to the postmaster at the local post office in Plains. It became a defining pillar of her life. She clocked in at 7:00 AM every single morning for 29 years, walking to work from this very house. She loved her job and the daily connection it gave her to the townspeople. When she reached the mandatory federal retirement age of 70, she was still sharp, energetic, and fully capable of working. She fought passionately against leaving, but federal regulations forced her to step down against her will—an experience that deeply saddened her.
(In an incredible and wonderful twist of history, that mandatory retirement rule wouldn’t stand forever. Her son-in-law, President Jimmy Carter, signed the Age Discrimination in Employment Act Amendments into law, raising and eventually eliminating mandatory retirement ages for federal employees.)
Even after her forced retirement, Allie refused to slow down, taking a part-time job at a local flower shop just to keep busy. Her younger son Murray beautifully remembered that while the family was technically poor, “she forgot to tell us.” No matter how hard things got, Murray recalled always getting exactly what he needed, whether it was a new pair of basketball shoes or a baseball glove. She encouraged her children to work early; Murray delivered papers, delivered groceries, clerked in the local store, and worked behind the soda fountain at the drug store before he was even 12 years old.
In the book Rosalynn, A Portrait, the future First Lady reflected on the painful time when the family was dealing with the loss of her father, sharing a memory that would shape her forever:
”We depended on mother for everything after father died. And that’s when I saw my mother develop into a strong, independent person, assuming full responsibility for the family and asking no help or charity from anyone. That made a deep impression on me. I’m sure it turned out to be a permanent influence.”
In a beautiful personal tribute written later in life (found in the book Mother Allie’s Recipes), Rosalynn expanded on that legacy:
”My mother was a wonderful role model for me. She was always there when I needed her; she had confidence in me and encouraged me in whatever I tried to do; and she taught me by her example… I watched her take charge, and do what she had to do. Those early experiences helped prepare me to accept my own challenges and do the best I could with them.”
But Allie didn’t just provide food, clothes, and tuition—she anchored her children in something much deeper. Her son, Murray Lee Smith (named after Mother Allie’s maiden name), noted that his mother’s personal demonstration of Christianity in her life, combined with her insistence that her children go to Sunday school, church, and study the Bible regularly, gave them all a spiritual bedrock that never faltered. As Murray beautifully penned,
“We grew up seeing Christ through mother. She was a wonderful person and the greatest mother in the world.”
As a single parent, Miss Allie had to serve as both mother and father to her children. Rather than ruling with an iron fist, she raised her children with intelligence and example. Her oldest son Jerry recalled how his mother uniquely used psychology on them when they started dating. Unlike the parents of almost all their peers, Miss Allie famously refused to lay down a strict, rigid curfew. Instead, she chose a tactic that was far more powerful and impactful. As Jerry remembered:
”…Mother repeatedly impressed on us that she had tried all our lives to teach us what is right and what is wrong, and that if we hadn’t learned that by then, she had failed as a mother. Well, after a quiet lecture like that, when we all went out with our dates we were determined that we would do the right thing so mother would not feel that she had failed and we almost always got home at a reasonable hour.”
In his own heartfelt note (found in the book Mother Allie’s Recipes), Jerry shared just how unbreakable that bond remained into adulthood:
”Mother was my best friend. She cannot be replaced. Even though I had moved far away, married and had children of my own, she remained my best friend. She was always there in my times of need. A telephone call was all it took. Every decision ever made by me in my entire life was and will continue to be guided by the fine Christian upbringing provided by my beloved mother.”
Sitting on her porch today, I am thinking a lot about this remarkable lady. Her life inspires me – and reading the tributes from her children brings tears to my eyes. Her youngest daughter, Allethea, beautifully wrote this sentiment in her own tribute to her Mother (found in the Mother Allie cookbook):
”God made a miracle when he made Mother. She was my friend, my confidant, my inspiration, both mother and father to me… I miss her and even though she is no longer with us I still feel her presence. She did all she could do for us here on earth and now she has gone on to heaven to get it ready for us.”
Sending four children to college in that day and age as a single, widowed mother was nothing short of incredible. Yet, because of Edgar’s vision, Allie’s steel-willed determination, and their shared foundation of faith and trust, every single one of their four children graduated from college—fulfilling Edgar’s dreams and setting off a ripple effect of leadership that would eventually reach the global stage.
In future posts, I can’t wait to take you on a little tour of this historic home and show you the wonderful mementos that the family has preserved here—the breathtakingly intricate needlework, the delicate crochet, and the beautiful things she made with the very same hands that scrubbed floors, provided hugs, and sorted mail.
But today, I just want to honor the legacy of Edgar and Allie together. I am so grateful to get to spend the week in their home and learn from the examples and the ideals they lived by. In a world that often celebrates loud, flashy achievements, I am standing in awe of the quiet, fierce, unbreakable strength that built this household. They proved that with enough vision, faith, grit, and love, two ordinary people can hold the world together for their children in an extraordinary manner.
Isn’t that remarkable?
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