Infinitely Precious on a Small Scale
Methuselah Pumphrey lived to be 96, writing along the way another chapter in Chesapeake Country’s African American history. The history he made was not earth-shattering. He didn’t walk to the North Pole, like Marylander Matthew Henson, or gain equal pay for Maryland black teachers and then desegregate the nation’s schools like Thurgood Marshall.
Pumphrey’s was the kind of life most of us live: infinitely precious on a small scale.
Pumphrey was born in Calvert County in the era of Jim Crow discrimination, limited opportunity and backdoors.
“Dad went to get a burger at Hunter’s Restaurant and Bar in Wayson’s Corner,” said daughter Marilyn Cooper. “He wasn’t allowed to go in the front door but instead had to order and pick up around back.”
“But that back door gave him a good view of the kitchen and he saw mom cooking,” the fifth of Pumphrey’s seven daughters said. “He said after he saw her and tasted that burger, he just had to meet her. He returned often and ordered a lot of burgers at that back door.”
In 1943, the 22-year-old Pumphrey joined 24-year-old Mary Estelle Ford in saying I do at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Lothian. Then, as the greatest generation was hitting its stride, Pumphrey headed off with the U.S. Army, serving in France and Germany.
Once home safely, Pumphrey and his wife moved to Anne Arundel County.
“Dad had only a fifth-grade education,” Cooper said, “but he was a great learner.”
He farmed tobacco and raised pigs, chickens and cows, branching out into animal husbandry and horticulture and taking classes to study native plants and trees. With mechanical, electrical and plumbing skills he had gained in the military, he eventually began his own jack-of-all-trades business, Methuselah Pumphrey and Son Diversified Service. For more than 1,000 customers, he provided bulk refuse removal, bush-hogging, recycling and just about anything else people needed.
As well as eight children, Mary contributed school learning and traditional skills to the union.
“Mom was tops in her Prince Frederick high school class and excelled in math,” Cooper says. “She later worked for the Treasury Department, but she did the books for Dad’s business for 35 years. Plus, she canned everything from our garden and sold them to make money.”
Both Mary and Methuselah were devoted churchgoers. Over 75 years of marriage, they got up early on Sunday mornings and headed in opposite directions — he to Sollers United Methodist Church in Lothian, she to Coopers United Methodist Church in Dunkirk.
“He may have been the jack of all trades,” Cooper says, “but she was the queen. She went to her church, and that was that.”
The Pumphreys’ long lives brought them recognition they could never have imagined in their early days.
Seventy-three years into their three-quarter-century union, they were honored as the oldest-living and longest-married couple in Anne Arundel County. They were also featured in the 2016 Banneker-Douglass Museum exhibit on marriage, Jumping the Broom.
In 2017 and again in 2018, Pumphrey was selected to lay the commemorative wreath at the annual Circle of Angels Initiative World War II USO remembrance in Solomons for all those who served and especially for those who gave their lives during the war.
Mary missed that honor, having died in June of 2017.
“She would have liked to have seen that,” Pumphrey said at the time.
With Methuselah’s death Dec. 26, 2018, both Pumphreys have passed, joining the majority of the millions of their generation.
They leave behind a legacy of love and devotion carried on by their family: eight children, seven daughters and one son; 14 grandchildren; 14 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.