Today’s entry in the School Days series is quite different. Whereas the previous school photos were taken in the 1930s, today’s school photo was taken in 1990. It is, in fact, my 5th grade class from Armuchee Valley School. I love how this photo is labeled with all the names–making any detective work much easier!
The names in the photo are as follows:
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Delila Brown Ward has been the focus of two recent posts here at Jordan’s Journey. This will be the third and final piece on Delila.
I’ll end this series by talking about Delila’s beginnings. She was born to William Brown and Nancy Pruitt in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. According to the 1850 census, William Brown hailed from Maryland. They are counted in Union County, South Carolina in 1820, 1830, 1840, and 1850. According to an article by Evelyn Morgan Shahan (writing as Mrs. Maxwell Shahan), the Browns relocated to northwest Georgia in about 1853. This is probably the same time Delila (already married and with a family of her own) also moved to the Armuchee Valley area. In Georgia, William Brown ran a dry goods store (where it was located, I do not know–this is a detail I would love to discover). As the owner of numerous slaves, he no doubt ran a farm as well (Walker 406; Ancesetry.com 1820, 1830, 1840, 1850).
William did not live in Georgia for very long. He died on 2 Jul 1858 in Chattooga County. His wife Nancy survived a number of years longer and lived with her daughter Delila in East Armuchee (Ancestry.com 1860, 1870).
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Last week I talked about Villanow and Subligna as the scene of my family tale going back many generations. Delila Brown Ward is one example among many of those deeply rooted connections. Let’s look a little closer at Delila to show how even a single ancestor can take you down many interesting paths.
Delila Brown married Alfred C. Ward (son of Absalom Ward of Union County, South Carolina). Delila and Alfred’s son Andrew Clement Ward is my 3rd great-grandfather. Andrew married Martha Ann Keown, my 3rd great-grandmother, connecting me to the well-known Keown family of Armuchee Valley (and beyond).
It’s important to look beyond your direct line ancestors too, though. Exploring the many branches and stems can lead to new and interesting connections. In the case of Delila, two of her other children married into the Puryear family. Some of Delila’s grandchildren married into the Shahan, Morgan, and Hunt families.
But that’s still not the end! Delila leads the way to yet more discoveries. An examination of her siblings shows connections to the Ramsey and Rea families (as an aside, one of the Brown/Rea descendants was one of my good friends in high school and I didn’t even know we were blood cousins until very recently). If you keep following the branches there are more and more connections (to the Keown family and Pope family and more).
I won’t bore you here with details about the links to these and other important Armuchee Valley families, but you can see my tree at Ancestry.com for a deeper dive. As always, leave a comment here to get in touch, and we can discuss any connections in more depth.
That web I spoke of last week is so expansive. It connects us all–literally–in a sprawling family tree. But beyond that, we are one in spirit as well, each of us a unique expression of individuality and hope that transcends the generations. Delila is but one symbol of the interconnectedness between us all.
Many thanks to Judy Blackstock for the above portrait of Delila. Judy’s generosity with her mother’s (Evelyn Morgan Shahan) archive has been key in my quest to document the Armuchee Valleys.
When I was growing up I always thought of the two sides of my family, mom’s side and dad’s side, as being completely segregated. Mom’s family was from Villanow, and Dad’s family was from Subligna. It seemed like two different places, and people from one place didn’t really know people from the other even though they were only 10 miles apart. It wasn’t until I started studying my genealogy that I realized the cross-pollination between these two rural areas–each located at opposite ends of East Armuchee Road–was much more extensive than I thought. I don’t mean today or even the years I was growing up, but going back generations before my parents or even grandparents were born.
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I love studying genealogy–and not just the genealogy of my direct ancestors. I love looking at all the different branches of my tree and discovering unique and interesting connections all over the place. Sometimes, you can map out distant relationships to famous individuals, and other times you discover you’re kin to people you’ve known for years… but never knew you were related. Either way, unexpected connections are always a lot of fun.
I made one of those unexpected connections recently. I found a relationship between my family and the family of my best friend, Tammy. A fellow writer and artist, Tammy and I have always shared an intense creative spark. We love to work on creative ideas together, and I’ve photographed her a number of times over the years. Above is the most recent of those portraits (taken in Anderson Cemetery in Subligna).
The connection to Tammy comes through my great aunt, Battie Lee Smith Pope. A descendant of the Brock/Kinsey families of the Armuchee Valley, Battie lived only two doors down from me when I was growing up. I stayed with her occasionally when I was a little boy. Her mother was Margie Smith. I remember Margie well from East Armuchee Baptist Church when I was growing up. I even remember a community dinner at Margie’s home one summer. We all gathered on the grounds–her house stood on top of a hill not too far south of the church–and had a good old-fashioned Southern potluck picnic. I remember playing hide and seek inside the house. The place seemed ancient and mysterious. Indeed, it was an old house and so far gone that it was torn down after she died. But in my mind, it was a grand house, glorious and dignified. It is one of many very old Armuchee Valley homes that has faded into the past over the years. I wish I had a photo of it. I’m sure that house has a story to tell if only I could uncover it.
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Today I have another entry for the School Days series. This time, I present a photo from the Villanow School, which stood in Villanow at the opposite end of the valley as the Subligna School photo I shared last time. The Villanow school was among the last one-room schoolhouses in the area. The school originally opened, judging by various references in the Walker County Messenger, sometime in the 1880’s. It operated until 1952 when the Armuchee Valley School opened.
This photo is from the late 1930’s or possibly very early 1940’s. It contains three close family members: my grand uncle Guy Adam Pope, my uncle Robert Jordan, and my aunt Mary Earl Jordan (though some of the others in the image connect in my tree as well). The writing on the image is by Uncle Robert.
In March 2012, Guy Pope was able to identify almost everyone else in the photo for me.
Front Row (L to R): Robert Jordan, Reba Eakers, Guy Pope, Raymond Carpenter, Davis boy, Bob Stansell, Betty Eakers, Mary Earl Jordan, Davis girl, Louis Roper, Elizabeth Morrison
Read MoreToday, I present the second history video on Jordan’s Journey. The first video, Suttle’s Mill, was just a short teaser to get things started. This new video, Concord Road, takes the concept a bit further.
Concord Road is one of the more minor roads in the East Armuchee Valley. It’s not a main thruway, and most of the road has never been paved. My Pope family ancestors lived along this road—and some of the other Pope descendants still do today. The video above should give you a good idea of what things are like in the Armuchee Valley. There’s probably much more history surrounding Concord Road than I know, but this is just one part of my effort to preserve the area’s history (not just my specific family lines). If you have any interesting tidbits, please let me know.
Take special notice of the music in this piece. I asked my friend Michael Harren to compose music for my Jordan’s Journey videos using Sacred Harp as a creative springboard. His score for this piece more than exceeded my expectations. The music is forward-thinking yet explores the past interestingly and creatively–which is exactly what Jordan’s Journey is about.
Thanks to Tammy Bartlett and Christy Bartlett for their assistance in making this video. You were a lovely crew to work with!
What kind of videos would you like to see in the future? I want to continue documenting the history this way, so hit me up in the comments below and let me know what you want to see. And if you have any old video footage of Villanow, Subligna, or anywhere in the area, please also get in touch.
If you were to ask me what are the most important things to me, music would certainly be one of the top items on that list. Looking back as far back as I can remember music has always played an important role in my life. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know music has even played its part in my family history research.
Not long ago I asked my mother, “Do you think you have any audio tapes of music from East Armuchee back in the day?”
“No,” she responded. “I don’t think we ever recorded anything like that.”
I was disappointed but told her to ask around to see if anyone might have a recording. I wanted more than anything to redisocver the sound of that rural country church from my childhood. She didn’t think anyone would have anything, though.
I have so many music memories from that church. It wasn’t a particularly learned environment for music. There were no professional musicians and no formal choir… just like Scared Harp. It was a “do-it-yourself” sort of aesthetic, and I think that influenced me a lot in life in ways far beyond music.
For most of my childhood, East Armuchee used the Christian Praise hymnal, published in 1964 by Broadman Press. Christian Praise is a shaped note hymnal and relates to the Sacred Harp in that way. But out of 471 pieces, it contains only a couple of songs actually from The Sacred Harp hymnal. We always referred to this book as “the red hymnal.” These books contain bookplates at the front indicating who donated money for that hymnal, and to whose memory it was dedicated.
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Way back before Jordan’s Journey came out, I was doing all kinds of work, not only writing, photographing, and designing the book but also figuring out how this website was going to work, what I wanted to do for the book trailer, and of course the research itself. Almost everything I do as an artist has some purpose or meaning behind it. This sense of aesthetic plays an important role in what sets Jordan’s Journey apart from any other genealogy book I’ve ever seen.
The book trailer has its roots back in early 2011. It started with the poem that became the script for the trailer. And after that I just let it sit for a while. Creative ideas need time to incubate. By the time I visited the homeland in September 2011, things were ready to hatch. I filmed the principal photography for the trailer early one morning on the family farm. Editing didn’t happen for at least a few weeks but by the time I did start the work, I pretty much had it all laid out in my head… down to the music I wanted to use!
The music is from the album White Spirituals From The Sacred Harp and contains field recordings of the Alabama Sacred Harp Convention made by Alan Lomax in 1959. Sacred Harp is one of my favorite types of music.
I first encountered Sacred Harp in its proper form while studying music in New York City. When Professor Andrew Tomasello first dropped the needle and introduced us to the genre, it must have sounded completely foreign to my NYC-bred classmates. But it sounded instantly familiar for me and evoked images of my childhood. Though I did not grow up with Sacred Harp music proper, the music of the East Armuchee Baptist Church of my childhood was certainly influenced by this uniquely American style. We even used a shape note hymnal. I’ve always kept a copy of that Christian Praise hymnal and showed it to my music professor one day. He was intrigued by this artifact of Southern musical culture. Connecting that emotional part of my past to my new academic interests was the icing on the cake… as if fate had led me to New York in the first place. This is only one example of how creating Jordan’s Journey would not have been possible without moving away and studying art in the big city!
Read MoreThis week I am proud to bring you the first video for Jordan’s Journey since the original book trailer. This video is about Suttle’s Mill in the area known as Green Bush in the West Armuchee Valley of Walker County, Georgia. This is a very short film, a quickly digestible experiment to get things started if you will. You’d be amazed at how much work goes into creating something so brief. Ah… the things we do for art and genealogy!
A special thanks goes out to Michael Harren for working with me on this project. He provided the beautiful score cues. You can look forward to more original scoring from Michael in future Jordan’s Journey videos. I know I am!
The photo of Suttle’s Mill, taken in about the 1940s, was contributed by Kim Hendren. Ken digitized the image from the collection of Frank Shaw of Davis Crossroads, Georgia. Both Kim and Frank are descendants of the Suttle family.
The photo of the Puryear & Hunt general store is from the collection of Evelyn Morgan Shahan, generously shared by her daughter Judy Blackstock. This particular photo seems to be somewhat widespread in collections of Armuchee Valley families as I have encountered at least two others who have antique copies of the image. It’s a wonderful shot and I am grateful it has survived the generations.
To learn more about Green Bush be sure to read Jordan’s Journey. If you have any photos or other information to share, please leave a comment and get in touch.
This past week, I visited Young Cemetery in West Armuchee in Walker County, Georgia. I always enjoy old cemeteries, particularly those in the Armuchee and Dirt Town Valleys. Young Cemetery is overgrown. It’s challenging to navigate through the graves, and I got stuck by more than my fair share of briar branches… but hiking through the brush makes it that much more my kind of adventure.
Read MoreEven though I descend from many generations that mostly lived and died in the same general area where I grew up, many people in my extended tree had more adventurous spirits and planted family roots elsewhere. I enjoy exploring those lines and stories, contemplating the way some of us take different paths and ultimately lead very different lives than even our closest family members.
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When I tell people I grew up in East Armuchee, they almost inevitably say, “Ar-what?” If you spell it out for them, they say, “Ar-MU-chee?” It’s hard to make people understand the way we say it: Ar-MUR-chee. Yes, it’s weird, I know that. But it’s the way we say it. It’s like how in New York we say “How-stun” Street instead of “Hew-stun” like the city in Texas. If you say “Hew-stun Street” in NYC, we’ll look at you as if you have three heads, just like if you say “Ar-MU-chee” back home.
Armuchee (ᎠᎽᏥ) is a Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ) word. Cherokee is an endangered language, but tech companies are doing their part to help preserve this valuable part of our world heritage. You can use Cherokee on your iPhone or search Google with the language (Murph; Google). Despite this, no one knows precisely what “Armuchee” means. There are various interpretations, including “land of beautiful flowers” and “much water” or “much fish” (Armuchee). In the words of Larry Salmon, “perhaps the real meaning was lost on the Trail of Tears” (Salmon).
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Now That You’ve Gone and Come Back $30.00
Hang Five $20.00
Springtime in Byzantium $20.00
Architecture and Mortality $30.00
Train to Providence $20.00