PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Great-grandma Sherline McCabe lay on her deathbed at the age of one-hundred-and-one surrounded by four generations of her progeny. Her voice was weak and she was as thin as a ghost as she began the final rendition of her tale.

“Listen here. I was born on the Woman’s Commonwealth commune in Belton, Texas in the year of our Lord 1882. Mama had just left my old Papa Silas Sean O’Neill who was a wife beater and a drunk.

“The women raised me and took care of each other and were not only fine Christians but successful in business and commerce.”

It’s Wednesday and time again to participate in this week’s edition of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers. The idea is to use the image above as a prompt for crafting a poem or short story of no more than 100 words. My word count is exactly 100.

Normally, I’m pretty literal in my interpretation, but once I found out the sunset shot was taken in Belton, Texas, I thought to look up the town’s history. One item caught my attention. According to Wikipedia:

In 1868, Martha McWhirter, a prominent figure in Belton’s non-sectarian Union Sunday School, created the Woman’s Commonwealth, the only Texas women’s commune of the 1800s. The commune started several business ventures including a successful hotel. In 1899, the group sold their holdings and relocated to Maryland.

Looking up the Woman’s Commonwealth, I discovered more:

The Woman’s Commonwealth (also Belton Sanctificationists and Sisters of Sanctification) was a women’s land-based commune first established in Belton, Texas. It was founded in the late 1870s to early 1880s by Martha McWhirter and her women’s bible study group on land that was inherited when the women’s husbands died or quit the home.

Residents of the commune were women and their dependent children; many of the women fled abusive homes to join the community. At one point, there were between 42 and 50 women members on record, including at least one African American woman who is thought to have been a former slave.

You can click the link I provided to learn more, but it was a pretty surprising development for me to discover.

Oh, the last survivor of the commune died in 1983 at the age of 101.

My story suffers from being limited to 100 words as my fictional Sherline McCabe probably has a lot more to say. Oh, Silas O’Neill is also fictional and these people are just meant to represent the theme and history of the commune residents.

To read more stories based on the prompt or to include your own, visit inlinkz.

The big news for this week is that the Kickstarter for “Ruins: A Space Opera Anthology” is doing incredibly well. We’re at 159 backers with 13 days yet to go. As the stretch goals keep being exceeded, backers are rewarded with extra perks, such as, so far, six bonus e-books written by contributing authors (none of them are mine).

If things keep going like they have, then backers may see additional benefits and *ahem* we authors will receive a bonus payment.

So, please, please consider becoming a backer and pass along the link and this info to your friends and followers to support we indie authors and publishers.