Halloween Memories in East Armuchee

‘Tis the season when ghosts and goblins start to make appearances. Halloween has always been one of my favorite times of the year. You’d never know that to be around me on the holiday, though. I haven’t dressed up in years. I don’t go to parties. And due to the infamous Greenwich Village Halloween Parade that passes steps from my front door, I typically bunker down for the evening and don’t step foot outside until November comes. Yes, I’m a cynical New Yorker, I admit it!

But, still, Halloween is a fun time of year. It brings out creativity and imagination in people, which I appreciate.

Halloween was a big part of growing up, too. At East Armuchee Baptist Church, we used to hold fall festivals. The community would gather for an old-fashioned weenie roast decked out in our Halloween costumes. We even had a pumpkin carving contest one year. I remember one lady from the church–I can’t recall who–taught me how to carve the wickedest-looking eyes. Every year I carved a pumpkin at home after that, and I always did it the way she taught me. The photo below was taken in 1987 and was one of those later Halloweens. See those pumpkin eyes? That’s how I learned to carve them. I always thought it was the coolest way to make the eyes. Oh, and that’s me… dressed up as a dog. If you can’t tell which one is me, I’m on the left. The one on the right is Rounder, my best friend growing up!

Jordan dressed up as a dog for Halloween, 1987
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Two Mules, A Buggy, and Some Friends

Photo from collection of Martha Dell Grigsby Richardson

Today’s post is the above photo (be sure to click to see the full image). I don’t know much about the image other than who the people are. I estimate it was taken in the late 1930’s. I’m not sure where it was taken (possibly somewhere in East Armuchee, as that’s where the people are from, though I suspect it could have been taken somewhere along Pocket Road) or why everyone posed for this particular shot. But it’s a fantastic image, so I wanted to show it to you. I don’t have a story to tell or a history to recount. Sometimes, a photograph speaks entirely for itself, and this is one of those images.

Moving left to right, the people above are as follows:

A special thanks goes out to Martha Dell Grigsby Richardson (sister of David Grigsby, pictured here). This photo is from her collection.

The Language of Genealogy

Learning about family history teaches you a lot about history in general. The obvious areas are things like the Civil War and even World War II. When you connect your family to the collective stories of history, suddenly those grand narratives seem a bit more personal.

Photo by luke kurtis

As a New Yorker, I can’t help but wonder how the next generation will look back and remember 9/11. As it is, I already know people who were not alive in 2001. But I lived through it. I watched those towers fall with my own eyes. I photographed them as they burned and fell (this is one of my photos here). I lived in the no-entry zone and had to show a photo ID just to get into my neighborhood. I walked over to the West Side Highway and stood with other New Yorkers cheering on firefighters who sped up and down the highway for weeks on end after those towers fell. How does my personal experience translate to the pages of history we see presented in books and documentaries? It doesn’t. The pages of history record the grand narratives and the dramatic events. But the quiet recollections of those of us who lived through it are just as important.

Often when people look at events around us–the events we know will one day be studied in history books everywhere–we talk about how much history has changed. In the case of 9/11, we use terms like “terrorism” to try and define what happened. Language, though, is limiting. The very moment we put words to tongue we somehow fail ourselves. Yet also those words are something we can’t do without. It’s important to be aware of the limitations we create through language, how our own words confine us, and how–hopefully–we can transcend them.

When we hear about violent events–say, for example, another shooting has made the news–many of us react with a “What’s happening to the world?” kind of attitude. The truth is that nothing is happening… at least nothing that unusual. We have a tendency to romanticize the past as if it represents some sort of ideal. This type of nostalgia for the past is something we all do, and it’s another way in which language fails us. Matt Novak, writing about the public’s perception of the history of the space program, warns that “romanticization of the past has real-world consequences because it breeds a certain kind of futility, a belief that we’re simply not able to accomplish things without every American behind the idea.”

For most of us, history is learned in language that glorifies the good parts, polishes them over for more than they’re worth, and skims over the bad parts. But those “bad” parts hold a lot of value and can, potentially, teach us just as much if not more than the “good” parts. History is not good. History is not bad. History just… is (or maybe “was”).

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Earl Jordan’s Barn [video]

It’s time for another Jordan’s Journey video. Last time, I explored some Civil War-era family roots out in Arkansas with my Caney Fork video. That video was a bit longer form than anything else I’ve done here so far and took a more explicitly documentary approach. The video I’m sharing with you today takes us back to Armuchee Valley, where I grew up–and I explore memories from my childhood instead of searching out long-dead ancestors.

In the Earl Jordan Barn video, I take you on a tour of my grandfather’s barn. This barn was a big part of growing up for me. It’s one of those places with great emotional resonance and instantly gives me the feeling of home. There’s no particular historical significance to the barn. It’s not that old or even that nice of a barn.

But it was my grandfather’s barn. That’s enough to make it special to me.

I spent a lot of time with my grandfather growing up. He was never the type of man you “hung out” with. He mostly kept to himself, tinkered in the shed, or worked on the tractor. Which, if you know me very well, is a lot like my own personality–except I’m more of an artist and tech geek than a farmer. He had one hell of a sense of humor, though; he loved to laugh.

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Connections: Ogletree, Phillips, and Hackney Families

Most of my posts here on Jordan’s Journey have centered around the Armuchee Valley area of Walker and Chattooga Counties. This is because three out of four of my grandparents are deeply rooted there (it’s also where I grew up). My other grandfather–Earl Jordan–is rooted in Whitfield County and has a slightly different history. I have not touched as much on these lines because I don’t know as much about them–and the interesting connections don’t come up as often since those lines are more segregated from the other three major branches of my tree.

But there are still some exciting connections to explore. So, I’m going to look at one of those today.

If I follow the Jordan line back a few generations, James William Jordan married Mary Jane Evans (my 2nd great grandparents). Mary Jane’s mother was Charity Hackney, my 3rd great-grandmother and daughter of Joseph P. Hackney and Mary “Polly” Phillips (my 4th great-grandparents). Mary “Polly” was the daughter of William Phillips and Piety (maiden surname unknown).

Now, we’ve moved beyond Whitfield County into Wilkes County. This is where William Phillips died in about 1795. He was only 24 at the time. His and Piety’s daughter Mary “Polly” would have been just a baby at the time of his death. Piety and John Ogletree–apparently a family friend and possibly neighbor–were named as the administrators of the William Phillips estate. Sometime after her husband’s death, Piety even married John Ogletree, making John step-father to Mary “Polly”. Given that Polly was just a baby then, she would have had no memory of her biological father (Davidson; Kiser).

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Sisters & Cousins: The Scoggins and Bagwell Family Connections

Addie Bagwell, Fred Scoggins, Annie Scoggins, August 1958

Earlier this year, you might have seen one of several articles on the Jordan’s Journey book that appeared in northwest Georgia newspapers. If you haven’t read them, be sure to check out the press section of this site, which will link you to each of them. It was hard work talking to the press! It’s an experience that is difficult to prepare for, and even having experienced it on a small, local scale, I have a whole new appreciation for what it’s like to be a high-profile celebrity who constantly deals with the press. It’s not that the reporters twist your words or ask trick questions or anything quite so nefarious, it’s just difficult to put your words together clearly and elegantly when you’re on the spot–especially when you’re dealing with a subject as convoluted as genelaogy can be!

One of the things I mentioned in the interview for the Dalton Daily Citizen article was that brothers and sisters often married each other. Uh, what?! Yes, that was my reaction when I saw it printed on the page. I realized immediately that what I said sounded very… wrong. What I meant to convey was that siblings from one set of parents often would marry siblings from another. That’s a very different thing than brothers marrying sisters. You can see how my words were not formed as accurately as they should have been. And I fret to think that genealogical researchers years from now may stumble across that article and think, “Wow, that guy who wrote Jordan’s Journey made some crazy claims!”

So here I am to set the record straight: it was not common for a brother to marry his sister. Yet, brothers from one family often married sisters from another family (or cousins from another family). Let me give you an example.

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Connections: Pretty People at Puryear Woods

Puryear Woods
Taken at the “Puryear Woods” on John “Jack” Puryear’s place near the brick store in Villanow.

The Puryear family is a well-known family in the Armuchee Valley area. While I do not descend from the Puryears directly, they do (like the Suttles) connect in my tree through marriage. Nancy Elizabeth Ward, my 3rd great-grand aunt, married Hamilton Young Puryear (1841-1903). Hamilton is a son of William Marcellus Puryear (1810-1866), and grandson of John Puryear (1786-1836). William Marcellus had a brother named John “Jack” Puryear (1822-1907).

Jack Puryear is among those old-time settlers of East Armuchee.

His homestead was located on lots 80 and 81 of Walker County District 26, Section 3 (Will; Property Tax Digests). In layman’s terms, this is located on the north side of Highway 136, around where Dicks Creek Road crosses the highway. Clements Pond is a feature on the map that is on this land (presumably named for C.A. Clements who, according to the Walker County Tax Assessor, later owned this land). It is interesting to note that these lots (80 and 81) are directly north of lots 101 and 100–the plots that made up my 3rd great grandfather Micajah Pope‘s (1808-1867) home place. So Micajah Pope and John Puryear were neighbors and certainly would have known each other (Deed). Jacob Goodson‘s (1808-1882, another 3rd great grandfather) home place was just to the east of these Puryear lots.

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Coming Home: More Music from East Armuchee

Lord, I’m Coming Home from Christian Praise hymnal

When I asked my mom if she knew of any recordings of music at East Armuchee Baptist Church she at first told me no. Then, almost as if I had willed it into existence, a few days later my mother–rummaging through some old junk–found a bag of old cassette tapes. She wasn’t sure where the tapes had come from but decided they were probably from her mother (my Grannie). One of the tapes was labeled Singing Sermon. David Pruett, the pastor at East Armuchee since 1981, often sang for the congregation. Usually, he sang one song after the congregational singing was finished. But sometimes, on Sunday evenings, he did several songs in lieu of a sermon, dubbing them “singing sermons.”

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The Mythology of Genealogy (or, The Stories We Tell)

Grave of Alfred C. Ward, my 4th great-grandfather. Unpublished photo from “Jordan’s Journey” by Jordan M. Scoggins.

Recently I wrote a series of posts on Delila Brown Ward (see here, here, and here). Today is a sort of follow-up to those posts, focusing on Delila’s husband, Alfred C. Ward.

Alfred (or Alford) C. Ward, my 4th great-grandfather, was a son of Absalom Ward and Nancy Ann Coleman and the grandson of Nathaniel Ward and Susannah Trail. Nathaniel had been a veteran of the Revolutionary War. The Absalom Ward family lived in Union County, South Carolina. Absalom and Nancy were members of the Gilead Baptist Church in Jonesville (Marby 293; Hair 64).

It was in Union County where Alfred would have met and married Delila Brown. Alfred and Delila are first counted together on a census in 1850, still in Union, already with their first two children (Ancestry.com 1850). Sometime during the following decade, they migrated to the Armuchee Valley area of northwest Georgia, where they were counted in East Armuchee on the 1860 census (Ancestry.com 1860). Alfred is the only one of his family who left Union County (Walker 406).

More details of this story are told in the Jordan’s Journey book and are not repeated here–as the focus of this article is not to duplicate the book but to expand upon what is already there.

As with many other men in Armuchee Valley (and throughout the South in general), Alfred soon picked up the call to arms and joined the Confederate army. He enlisted as a 1st Lieutenant in the 39th Regiment, Georgia Infantry in LaFayette on 4 Mar 1862.

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School Days: Subligna School Children

Subligna school children
Subligna school children, names and year unknown. From collection of David and Delores Grigsby.

Today I’ve another update in the School Days series. The last update was very specific, naming each student and the exact class and year. That image was from 1991. Most of the time, older school photos aren’t so well documented, and history leaves us to our own devices. Today’s photo is one such image.

I know virtually nothing about this photo except that it was taken at Subligna School. Since all the students look the same age, I’m assuming they’re all in the same class. That’s just a guess though. And since I don’t know any of their names, I can’t accurately judge the year.

The one clue is that the photo is from the collection of my cousin David Grigsby. David Grigsby graduated from Subligna in 1946. Later in life, David was a local historian, particularly of Subligna school, and it is thanks to him (and his wife Delores) that I have learned a lot of what I know about those days otherwise long forgotten. Unfortunately, just because this image is in his collection doesn’t necessarily mean it was his class. If only he were still around to fill us in on the details.

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Mad Dogs and Venomous Snakes: The Inconsequential Nature of Everyday Life

This friendly guy greeted me at the Lawrence Cemetery in West Armuchee.

Whenever I get the time, I love poring through old newspapers from Chattooga and Walker Counties, searching the bits of news for names of people in my family tree. The Summerville News and Walker County Messenger are littered with my ancestors far and wide. Most of the time when an ancestor is mentioned it seems inconsequential. The more I read through these things, the more I feel like I’m looking at a Twitter feed from over 100 years ago! Indeed, social media isn’t the phenomenon of the new millennium we think it to be. Sure, the bits and bytes shuffling back and forth between our smartphones and computer screens weren’t around in our ancestor’s time. But our ancestors were just as interested in everybody else’s “status updates” as we are today… only the medium for sharing those updates has changed.

This week I started combing my records for some of these “status updates” to assemble a selection for you here. Looking for a unifying theme, I noticed a lot of talk about rabid dogs and dangerous snakes. Yep, that’s what I said: dogs and snakes. Now I don’t mean dogs and snakes at the same time. But there seemed to be an awful lot of newspaper mentions about these two animals. I suppose for a rural country area you’re going to have a lot of dogs and, well, a lot of snakes. And I suppose it also makes a good news story to talk about the latest mad dog or venomous snake. Still, it gives me a chuckle to think that over a century later this is what I’m reading about. Like I said… inconsequential.

But apparently, to our ancestors, it was enough to make the newspaper.

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Connections: A Unique Rea of Light

Voted Most Unique for THS yearbook

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that making interesting connections (whether to famous people, between local families, or even to friends I’ve known for years) is one of my favorite things to do. Just recently I talked about Delila Brown Ward and the numerous connections to other Armuchee Valley families I discovered through her. One of those families was the Rea family.

If you’ve been paying close attention, you will note this is not the first time I’ve mentioned the Reas. A look back to my post on Henry Morris Pope shows a connection to the same Rea family. This is a perfect example of how my mother’s lines and my father’s lines intersect in distant but fascinating ways.

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Childhood Melon Memories: Happy National Watermelon Day

watermelon
Photo by luke kurtis

Fresh fruits and vegetables were a part of everyday life growing up on the farm. The best meals were always those prepared straight from the garden. While my parents were not farmers by trade–they were school teachers–they always had a garden of some sort. My grandparents, however, farmed on a larger scale. One of the crops I remember most clearly and associate very closely with my grandfather Earl Jordan is watermelon. Earl would load up the back of his truck (which I proudly drove in my teenage years after he had died), sit by the road, tailgate down, and sell the delicious fruit to passersby. Of course, there was plenty to go around for the family, too. We would all gather around the table at Grannie’s house, ready for a messy feast of some good ol’ watermelon. Careful not to swallow any seeds!

Watermelon wasn’t only a summer tradition for me growing up but for my parents, too. Dad recalls eating a lot of watermelon at his Grandpa Holcomb’s house. “He grew them, and I think he may have also bought some,” Dad reminisced about the old days. “Grandmother would keep some in the refrigerator and slice it off and eat it cold, but we also ate them fresh from the field.”

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