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Biography
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| Esther Royer Ayers, the fifth child of eight children, was born
into an Old Order Mennonite family in a farming community just outside the town
limits of Columbiana, Ohio. Since Old Order Mennonites are not allowed to marry
outside the religion, surnames are very important to them. My direct surname
history is as follows: Great-grandmother was a Wenger, grandmother a Lehman,
mother a Rhodes.
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| "I attended Columbiana Public School until seventeen. At that time,
my mother, disenchanted with the Old Order Mennonite religion, moved her
children to the big city of Akron, Ohio. I graduated from Akron’s North High in
1957 - then promptly went to work for the B.F.Goodrich Company. I left Akron in
1964 because of my husband’s employment.
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| "When in my twenties and
raising my two sons, I realized how differently I was raised and wondered what
my childhood religion was about. I began writing down some of my childhood
stories so I’d never forget them. It took me decades to put everything
together. However, these childhood stories are now the basis of early chapters
in Rolling Down Black Stockings: A Passage Out of the Old Order Mennonite
Religion."
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