Family Archeology

My apologies faithful readers for the long dry spell. I’ve been buried in a project that had my room so full of memorabilia, photos and other family history that I could barely swing a cat in here. Finally last night I got it sorted and put into plastic bins and away in a fashion that I can come back to it when I’m ready, section by section for the next phase. What it was, were the last couple of boxes from my fathers’ house. When he died two years ago and we subsequently had to clear out the house to sell it, I was nominated “family historian” being the only one among us with any real interest in that sort of thing.

What that meant was home to my tiny house with about 20 boxes of letters, photos and other stuff from a life of 84 years. I made great progress in the winter of 2006-2007 on processing all these things and getting them organized in some way that made sense to me, this meant by family – mothers or fathers ancestors? By era, 1800’s, early 1900’s, or later. By place of residence, was this the Missouri period, Connecticut or North Carolina? And on, and on, and on it went. I got to a point where I just could not take another minute of it, I got things put away and my room back into some kind of decent order so I could think in here again and then there were just a couple of more boxes left….


Well those boxes sat in the corner and other things were added to the pile over the course of the year until I had another fairly large stack that needed to be dealt with. Thing was, when I opened the last box of pictures it was a really old box and there I found photos of my father as a boy wearing knickers, as a young man wearing a suit and tie, of his parents holding him as a baby, of his twin brothers as toddlers, kissing each other on the steps of the front porch of the house where they grew up, none of these had I ever seen before.

I dug deeper and found pictures of my great grandmother. Lula Tamplin, you may recall the story from the southern roots tour of the autograph books from my great grandmother circa 1886, this was her, all these beautiful pictures of her as a young woman I had never seen. In our family the history line tends to go back through the men on my grandmothers side, no info about her mother, no info about my fathers father, his family being from the wrong side of the tracks, we didn’t delve there.

Inquiring minds want to know, I want to know- who was my great grandmother- where did she come from, who was her family? And my paternal grandfather too- what about him?



Deeper still into an earlier generation, I find the letters written by my great-great grandfather to his wife before and during the civil war. They are hard to read, written with a quill pen and ink, fancy script, but I’m learning to decipher it, transcribing the letters into the computer, slowly but surely, the story is unfolding. This is fascinating and like reading a mystery novel, what will come next? From his obituary I know he was a captain in the confederate army, that he spent all 4 years in the war, 15 months in a prison camp, later became a merchant in Arkansas. I can’t wait to find out more. Here is a taste:

"My nature would have to undergo a change, both physical and mental or else I would not be satisfied in Heaven unless you were there, Dear Wife your temperament is not so orderly and impetuous as mine, and you cannot comprehend nor conceive whenever the fountains of your affection are stirred up of the devotion, love, and even idolatry with which I worship you, if husband ever doted on wife more than me, [he would] almost forget his creator in the worship of the creature, Wife you must and I know you will excuse this effusion, if for no other reason than that it is the first of the kind I ever wrote to you, if it was from the pen of an unmarried lover you might question and doubt the protestations, but coming from your husband, who has I trust, always manifested the truth of what is stated, it is different, for Mollie you know I commenced my courtship after our marriage and kept it up ever since, and expect to act out the true character of a lover till death separates us which God grant may not be till we are both prepared to be resurrected in Heaven”


This was written in 1859, 10 days before the birth of their third child, the first letter in the stack. Wow. Now maybe I can get back to some normal state of things with my room back in order. I’ve scanned and placed in protective archival sleeves all of the pictures that are 80 plus years old from my father’s side- I still need to do that for the box from my mothers side but they are waiting and can be more easily handled as they are already sorted. Then I plan to begin retouching and printing copies of the old pictures and putting them in albums that will tell the story of the families from as far back as I am able to go. Here is a favorite shot of everybody eating watermelon circa 1925.

That's my great grandfather on the far right and my grandfather in the middle of the windows and my papa sitting on the left side of the stairs.

Southern Roots

I'm on the road this week, in the midst of a deep south tour of family history. I've been to Atlanta to see my cousin J., the only girl cousin on my mothers side that I ever knew well and haven't seen her in a number of years. I forgot how much we had in common, our mothers who were sisters, both died two years apart over 20 years ago. They were too young to die and we were too young to lose our mom's. Our fathers died more recently, after good long lives and while difficult, esp for J. whose father fell and broke his neck, they both died in their homes, with hospice care and their families around them, both ready to let go and their children ready to let go of them. J. and I are both the baby girls of our family, both had troubled teen years in the 70's getting into things that were dangerous and crazy but came out all right on the other side. We talked for hours and stayed up late poring over family trees, bibles and pictures, trying to link together who was who and how they were related to the others.

From there I rode on to Mississippi, to visit my Aunt C. my mothers baby sister, her last living sibling. She lives on her husbands family farm where she moved over 50 years ago. My cousin M. lives beside her in his paternal grandmothers home. M. farms 1200 acres of flat Mississippi delta in soybeans, hay, corn and cattle. He proudly toured me in his truck through each field and pasture, all clean and tidy, put to bed for the winter, flat and smooth and cut by deep ditchs edged with cane and bordered by hedgerows of bare hardwoods and green cedars. I was surprised by the beauty of the land in its winter starkness, flocks of birds flying up from the stubble in undulating masses. M. had two big bulls, one each in pastures across the road from one another, they snorted as they stomped around the field, 2000 pounds of shiny blackness and solid power.

Aunt C. looks exactly like my grandmother with nips of my mother jumping in now and then in a smile, mannerism or expression. She's still going strong, 13 years younger than my mother, we went to the gym together and worked out. She taught me to bake my grandmothers rolls, which she does by feel rather than by measurement, I hope I can carry on the gauntlet. We stood in the kitchen together by the stove, eating them for dessert, fresh from the oven. They were scrumptious; soft, brown and buttery. We too looked over the box of family history I had carted along with me, C. filled in some blanks, gave me info on my Grandaddy's side of the family to help fill in the picture, we have info from Grandmothers family all the way back to the first colonies in 1715. She helped ID some of the mysterious faces in my tattered albums, others stare out from the browning photos, dressed in victorian high collars, too old for anyone to remember.

I journeyed on through the Mississippi delta and crossed the wide muddy river. The low winter sun, just a week before the solstice, shone across the flat land, lighting the bare trees at the back of fields bright green with winter wheat. White cotton piled at the edges of the road, bare pecan trees, vase-like, lined up in ancient groves. On to Little Rock and my fathers side of the family. I'm at Aunt H's house now, my fathers mothers last house, tiny and filled with family heirlooms, china, crystal and silver from a century ago.

We too reviewed the pictures and family trees. Yesterday we marveled at my great grandmothers autograph albums from the 1880's, brown pages dissolving under our fingers, lined with fancy script and expressions from a time long gone. My cousins here, showed off their offspring and told tales of the family reunions, games we played as children, the deaths of those that have traveled on before us. This side of the family can trace our roots to the Virginia colonies as well. So much history, so much past, all waiting to be revealed.

Last night I tossed in the antique bed, birthing this post and woke at 5 to a flash of lightening and the sound of thunder. I rose and stood on the carport, listening to the sound of rain pattering on the roof, so foreign after all these months of dry. I looked down at the lights of North Little Rock, glowing like stars through the bare trees and fog. Today I will travel with my beloved brother J. to Hot Springs for yet another chapter, more reminiscing, more reviewing of where we came from and who we all are now.