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.

Read More

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.”

Read More

The Pope/Clement Sofa, A Family Heirloom

Nannie Elizabeth Clement and Ben Hill Pope, circa 1957. Note Charlotte and Carl’s wedding photo in the background.

My family doesn’t have a lot of heirloom/antique items that have survived the generations. One of the few pieces that has survived is an old sofa that had belonged to my great grandmother Nannie Elizabeth Clement Pope. The sofa was never in use during my life. It always sat in the back of Grannie’s shed, hidden under piles of junk, slowly decaying away. When I was a teenager, I told Grannie I wanted to get the old sofa and fix it up. I never had a chance to do that, but not too many years later, my mother did. She recounted her memories of the restoration for me:

In 2001 I got the old homemade couch out of the big shed. The rats had eaten it up. Mama had just been told her breast cancer had gone to her bones and I wanted to fix it for her to see.

When mama was still living in the white house she had that couch in the back den that had been closed in when I was about 10. She had gotten the couch from her parents when they died and it had been handmade–possibly by J.C. Clement, Lizzie’s father.

Mike tore the couch apart and removed the old green paint Mama had painted it with. He had to put some new wood in it. It used to open up and make a bed but he removed the springs and then took it to an upholsterer in Summerville to have him re-pad it. I selected an old fashioned tapestry fabric to recover it. Only a couple of small pieces of the original fabric were salvageable and I used that to make two small pillows for the couch.

The Pope/Clement sofa was restored by Michael D. Scoggins, wife of Rhonda Jordan Scoggins, in 2001.

The heirloom is all the more special knowing a bit of its history and the love that went into restoring it. Today, my mother proudly displays the sofa in her home in East Armuchee.

The photos here show the sofa. The first photo was taken in about 1957, showing my great grandparents Nannie Elizabeth “Lizzie” Clement and Ben Hill Pope. Note the photograph of my aunt Charlotte’s wedding on the mantle behind them! The second photo was taken during the restoration process. The third photo was taken by me of Grannie on the sofa in 2001 after the restoration was complete. Notice the wall of family portraits behind Grannie.

Do you have any treasured family items? Do you know any stories about the heirloom? Furniture and other tangible objects often carry their own lineage and make up an exciting part of family and local history.

Mary Pope Jordan sitting on the Pope/Clement Sofa, restored by Michael Scoggins.