Ollie went to private school in Markham, VA in a two-story house which is still standing. His mother sent him to Morgantown, WV to college, where he stayed with his brother Doc [Alban Dosier Poe] and worked part time, driving an ice wagon and working in a glass factory.
He dropped out of school, returned to Virginia and farming, and married young Eva Josephine Pe. on January 28, 1914, and lived at the Morton place with his parents. On the way home from the wedding, the horse pulling the buggy dropped dead. They moved to a small tenant house until William Walter Pe., Eva's father, bought farms which had belonged to Dr. Rudasill. In 1920 Ollie undertook to buy one of the farms with partial payment of $1000 from his father. He paid off the $10,000 price of the farm in four years, mostly by working locally as a tinner.
The farm was located over the hill from Eva's home, containing about 120 acres on the Rappahannock River. He added rooms to the cabin, and the log part become the kitchen; he built barns and small buildings himself with timber he cut and milled. His motto was to do it yourself, make it yourself, or do without.
A hard-working farmer, Ollie raised corn, rye, and wheat, planted orchards of apple, peach, and pear trees, had a garden with tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, beets, gooseberries, and raised chickens, turkeys, and guineas. Hogs were a mainstay of diet, and hams were cured and placed in the meathouse. Other food was also preserved, such as apples in the barn and potatoes in a pit in the ground. Later potatoes and canned food were stored in the cellar under the house.
A black snake was allowed to patrol the corn crib for rats and mice. Cows wore milked by hand and then later by machine for cream and milk to sell. Sheep grazed the land until the farm was paid for, then he never ran sheep again because he sold they pulled the grass roots out of the ground.
Conservative with his money, he paid his debts off during the Depression, while raising -- and with the help of -- his children.
Ollie was slender, about 5'8" tall with red curly hair (before age left him bald on top), blue eyes and freckles. He ate sparingly, liked pork, liked gravy on his tomato slices, and drank cream in his boiled coffee. When he worked or walked, he whistled. He rolled and smoked his own infrequent cigarettes, and drank a very little whiskey mixed with sugar on holidays. He could play the banjo and the fiddle. He hunted squirrel, turkey, duck, and rabbit as food for the tables and fished and seined the river occasionally. When ice froze in the river, he cut it and placed it in his father-in-law's ice house.
He used horses for transportation and farm work and also for fox hunting and had his own pack of hounds. When older, he enjoyed hunting with beagles. He played baseball and rode a horse or drove a buggy to play teams of other communities, and he also umpired at the Hume field. Wearing long underwear for a long period of the year, he typically wore a clean white shirt and khaki pants and a hat with a brim.
He liked to read the newspaper, The Northern Virginia Daily, every day, and used reading glasses. Although kind and hospitable (he welcomed other hunters in the winter and the Boy Scouts and various people who wanted to sit on the porch and talk or swim in the river), he resisted going anywhere, then had such a good time, he wouldn't want to leave.
He was not formally religious, but drove Eva to church meetings. Sunday was a day of rest, and he did not work on that day. Firm believers in exercising voting privilege, Ollie and Eva had a picture of Franklin Roosevelt in the house, and wore staunch Democrats, which was usual in the Hume community.
Although Ollie purchased and used a tractor to work with, his conservatism showed in his resistance to modern conveniences, as he refused indoor plumbing until one of his sons put water in the kitchen. Electricity, telephone, and television arrived at the farm in the 1950's, but not an indoor bathroom.
Later in life, he suffered migraines and would stand at the mantel with his head in his hands. He was hospitalized in Charlottesville for a year with tuberculosis. Although he had built a house in Hume, he refused to leave the farm after retiring and continued to walk the property with his dog. He died at the age of 80 in Warren County Hospital after suffering a pain in his jaw which signaled heart failure.