Below are 1,500 self-indulgent words. But also a lot of interesting old photographs. If nothing else, scroll down for those.
Visiting with my grandmother, I asked her if she remembered the DVD that someone made her of all the old family portraits. She did. And would she mind going through them with me again, telling me the names of the people she knew. She said she would, but she didn’t know them all since that was a collection of her in-laws.
We never did get around to that DVD today, but we did trace her family back quite a way.
This is a cell phone picture of what is probably a Xerox transfer into a vanity publication. Two people in the family, one of whom I know and the other who doesn’t even sound familiar, spent countless hours putting together an amazing book. That tome probably proves my great-grandmother’s point, “We’re just kin to everybody.”
When we tried to make sense of it all, you could see the wisdom in her argument. But it also seems to go back to 1820 Tennessee for that branch of my family tree, and this wedding license:
Prior to that, the few traces of evidence only leave us with more questions. So we’ll just start with Samuel and his new wife Nancy. They raised a family, including this man, whom they named Pleasant, who was born in 1836.
He joined the Confederate Army in 1861, was mustered in as a private in Co. H of the 26th/50th Alabama Infantry, where he became the company musician. The book suggests that Pleasant was a fiddler and says all of his kids played instruments.
History tells us the 50th was a bad unit to be in:
Ordered to Tennessee the unit fought at Shiloh, saw light action in Kentucky, then was placed in Deas’, G.D. Johnston’s, and Brantley’s Brigade, Army of Tennessee, and was active in North Carolina. At Shiloh the regiment had 440 effectives, but because of casualties, sickness, and exhaustion, the number was less than 150 by the second day. It lost 4 killed and 76 wounded at Murfreesboro, 16 killed and 81 wounded at Chickamauga, and totalled 289 men and 180 arms in December, 1863. The unit sustained 33 casualties in the Battle of Atlanta and was badly cut up at Franklin. Few surrendered in April, 1865.
But Pleasant lived through it. He got married to Martha Ann in 1863 and after the war they raised a family of eight children. Six of those children, born during Reconstruction, lived until after World War II. Pleasant was a farmer, his wife a seamstress, a very typical lifestyle, which becomes common up this branch of the family.
Pleasant was my grandmother’s great-grandfather. He died at 52 and is buried in Tennessee.
One of Pleasant’s boys was Jim. He was born in the winter of 1871, a year when the crops didn’t come in and the cotton caterpillars ravaged what was there. Jim married Sarah in 1904 and and they lived on a farm that her grandfather bought in 1854. These are my grandmother’s grandparents. There’s a story in the book about a neighborly dispute. A dog killed some sheep. The neighbor was upset about his dog being killed and is said to have put his foot on the doorstep, and Sarah cleaned his clock with a liniment bottle. It says she was “Wild Tom’s” daughter and she had heard enough. So leave that lady alone. (Tom’s grave. Tom married Elizabeth. Her father, Jesse, Jr., was born in Lauderdale County in 1820, the year after Alabama gained statehood. His father, Jesse, Sr., was born in 1787 in Virginia, the year the Constitution was signed.) Sarah’s exclamation of surprise, the kind of detail that should last longer than dates and cemeteries, was “Well, Goodnight Isom!”
They were from the same community, as was often the case, and much of the family still lives within 20 miles of there. These were my grandmother’s grandparents, and she remembers them with a sweet smile.
Here’s Jim as a young man, and I’m going to blame my cowlick on him for a while:
And here he is a few years later, looking like he wants to ride with Jesse James (to whom I have some distant relation on the other side of my family):
On this side of the family that we’re discussing today they were just normal salt-of-the-earth types. The recorded history has a lot of farmers and working-folks. Here’s Jim’s wife, Sarah — my great-great-grandmother — as a young woman:
And as a much older couple, my grandmother’s grandparents, Jim and Sarah once more:
(I think my grandmother favors her grandmother a bit, myself.) This was recorded sometime before 1953, when Jim died. Sarah passed away in 1970, the mother of 11 children. And while it is hard to imagine people your mind only registers as “old” being young, here is a picture of four of those 11 kids. On the far right is my great-grandfather, who was playing in the mud or had a sunburn or something:
Horace, the little guy on the right, was born in May of 1909 and would grow up to be a dashing young man and a farmer. He’d meet and court and marry Lela Mae who was also born in 1909. My grandmother’s parents were married in 1928 in Giles County, Tenn., 10 months before Wall Street fell. This photo is undated:
They both lived into my lifetime, though I don’t have any memories of either of them. If I did, that would mark 12 grandparents or great-grandparents I knew. Horace and Lela Mae had seven children, including my grandmother.
Here are Horace and Lela Mae at their 50th anniversary party — an event I was apparently at but don’t recall:
So that is my paternal grandmother’s father’s side of the family. What about her mother’s side?
Lela Mae’s parents were Pink and Sarah. There are two poor photos:
Apparently, if you’ll notice Sarah’s long hands and fingers, you’ll see a distinguishing family trait. I did not receive this gene. All of Pink’s family moved to Texas, but Sarah’s father offered him a farm to stay in Alabama.
Pink was born on October 19, 1867. There was a lot of rain that spring, the rivers had been up, but the crops were bad. Sarah was born in 1872, a year when the crops were recorded as above average. Both were from Tennessee.
They were married in either 1889 or 1890 in the community of Prospect, Tenn. Google suggests the church isn’t there anymore. They’d eloped on horseback, though, and the rivers were up again that year. The story apparently went that Pink and Sarah were almost drowned, but they went on with their wet clothes to the church and said their vows. Pink and Sarah P. had three of their children in Tennessee before moving to Lauderdale County, Ala. in 1896 or 1897, where they would have seven more children. They were together for 40 years. Sarah died in 1930 and Pink died of typhoid in 1932.
So those were my grandmother’s other grandparents. They died a few years before she was born.
Pink’s parents were Thomas and Louiza. Thomas was born in 1849 in Tennessee, Louiza was from Alabama. They were married just days after the official end of the Civil War. They moved to Alabama and had 12 kids, all of which, except for Pink, moved to Texas. Pink stayed because his father-in-law offered him a farm to keep him in Alabama, a big moment in family history.
Sarah’s parents were Ben (who was born in 1827 in Alabama and buried at a family cemetery in 1899) and Sarah Ann (which confuses things) who was born about 1841. Sarah P., the younger, was born in Lawrence County, Tenn.
Ben, by the way, was a noted card shark. At one time he won a sawmill in a hand of cards. At another table he won a farm. He also served as a private, Company A, 53 Regiment Tennessee Infantry, which served at Fort Donelson over the Cumberland River to protect the approach to Nashville. Some 11,000 rebels were captured there, but I’ve no way of knowing if that happened to Ben. The unit would later fight in Louisiana, Jackson, Mississippi, Mobile and the fighting north of Atlanta, including the Battle of New Hope Church (We have a lot of family history there.) just north of Atlanta.
Ben’s dad, Burgess or Bergus, was born in South Carolina in 1800. His wife, Margaret, was born between 1800 and 1805 in Alabama. Burgess’ dad was Johnston and his mother was Rhoda, both thought to have been born around 1874 in Edgefield, S.C. There’s a mention of a paternal grandfather, Jeff (or John, depending on the document). He was born before the Revolutionary War. After that the haze turns to murk. We’re back to the 1700s, though, in South Carolina, with my grandmother’s great-great-great-great grandparents. Yet another side of the family tree that has been around for a while.
Since you’re still reading, three more pictures. This is Horace, my grandmother’s father, in his buggy, which is being pulled by Ader the mule:
This is Horace’s father, my great-great grandfather, Jim:
And finally, the last one, the one that’s worth it. This is my grandmother, in the foreground, as a baby:
The hand-written caption reads “Every time someone tried to take this picture her diaper feel down. So what? Let’s get the shot anyway!”
