School Days: Villanow School, circa late 1930’s

Villanow School, late 1930's
Students at Villanow school, late 1930s. Collection of Mary Pope Jordan.

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

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Concord Road [video]

Today, 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.

Little Country Church: Memories of Music at East Armuchee

Hymnals from East Armuchee Baptist Church, Villanow, Georgia, USA

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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Uncovering the Past through Art: Sacred Harp and Forgotten Family Memories

This Sacred Harp hymnal belonged to Clarence Ralph Jackson (1867-1929), grandfather of Letha Delores Jackson Grigsby.

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!

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Forever Young: Mapping Connections Between Armuchee Valley Families

Young Cemetery, West Armuchee, Walker County, Georgia, Feb 2012

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.

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Pope Pedigree: Henry Morris Pope

Even 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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Armuchee (ᎠᎽᏥ)

ᎠᎽᏥ is Armuchee in Cherokee

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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Ridges and Valleys and Streams… Oh My!

View from John's Mountain
Looking west over East Armuchee Valley towards Dick’s Ridge

The area of northwest Georgia where I grew up is part of the Valley and Ridge region. This region comprises “long northeast-southwest-trending valleys and ridges that give the region its name” (Geology). The area is not unique to Georgia and “extends continuously from New York to the edge of the Coastal Plain (fall line) in Alabama” (Chowns). This expansive area is undoubtedly filled with numerous communities and fascinating genealogies. Generations of my family are nestled deep in these valleys in Walker and Chattooga counties in northwest Georgia–and that is where the meat of Jordan’s Journey takes place.

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