Who Knew I'd Find a Sheriff on the Family Tree?

After years of thinking about it, I’ve finally started digging into family history, searching through old records, connecting the dots back from me to whomever I find somewhere back there. And, having started, I’m finding it hard to stop.

It’s like working a puzzle, trying to determine how to take bits of information that you’ve retained from family conversations, the names of relatives met briefly—and maybe only once--at weddings and funerals, and attach them to the family tree. But when you suddenly come upon a census record from the early 20th century that has a name you remember or a parent described as the 2-year-old child of your grandparents, there’s a thrill that runs up your spine. That’s my Daddy, that child whom I knew only as a grown man.

My Mother's Mother, Susie

My spine tingles at least once during each session I spend on Ancestry.com. I’ve found newspaper articles that mention “Mrs. George Artope.” She was returning to Cedartown after a visit with her sister, Mrs. Johnnie Bagwell (whom we knew as Aunt Lula Bagwell), in Atlanta. Now I’m feeling some confusion about this tidbit because Mrs. George Artope was my great-grandmother and Lula Artope Bagwell was her daughter. Maybe the newspaper got it wrong and it was my grandmother, Mrs.Raymond Artope, who was going back to Cedartown. Confusion about which Artope woman was meant, to find any female ancestor in an old newspaper gave me a charge.

By the way, these were not folks of high society by any means. But their visit was mentioned in the 1921 Atlanta Constitution just the same. It was a simpler time. That was long before Facebook was either possible technologically or conceivable intellectually. In those days, it seems, regular folks’ comings and goings in Georgia made the newspaper. The Atlanta paper included our family name in the “East Point News,” East Point being a suburb of Atlanta before being swallowed up by the sprawling city Atlanta became. [I’m struck by the dichotomy of my own mother saying to me in the late 1990s when my name appeared in the Dayton Daily News because of some TV scheduling issue: “In my day, nice women didn’t get their names in the paper, Lee.” Hmmph, Mama, I wish I’d known about Granny (or Great-Grandma) getting her name in the Constitution when you chastised me!

And then, there’s the sheriff. Yes, according to 1880 census records, my great-grandfather on Daddy’s side was a county sheriff at age 31. I’d always known that my father’s mother’s family was well-known in their South Georgia county. There’s even a crossroads there named for them. But, despite the fact that I knew Daddy’s grandfather had married three times (two of the wives were sisters) and sired ten children, I had never heard (or didn’t remember) that he had been the sheriff. By the time the 1900 census was taken, his occupation was listed as “farmer.”

My Mother's Father (right)

And there are the carpenters. I knew my mother’s father was a carpenter. He shared his love of woodworking with us when we were kids, taking us to his basement workshop and making little stools for us to sit on at a safe distance from his sawing and hammering. He made pieces of furniture for us that we still cherish.

What I didn’t know was that I would find carpenters back along the bloodline before him. In the 1880 census records from South Carolina, I found yet another carpenter in the family, this one my mother’s great-grandfather. There’s something in the genes, perhaps, although I’m sad to say that particular part of the genetic code didn’t make it to my generation.

What set me on this course of searching the family tree was sheer curiosity. I have no need to discover that I’m related to anyone famous or rich or royal. What is fascinating me as I explore each new limb on the tree is simply the idea that I’m touching the lives of those who have gone before me. Their experience of life is outlined in the records available, sometimes clearly and other times with more obscure references that leave me wondering and imagining how they lived.

I find myself wishing I had listened more attentively to my parents’ stories about family members. I wish I had asked more questions of parents and grandparents when they were alive. Unfortunately, even the curious among us don’t exhibit enough curiosity in childhood about the “old people.” I missed many chances at weddings and funerals and family reunions. Now I must rely on small snippets of memory to guide my way through the records so that I don’t follow the wrong trail. And I’ve already found that others who are researching available information are willing to share.

I actually have a fairly significant stack of old pictures, some of them tintypes, that were left in my care.  Unfortunately, even my mother didn't know who some of the people in the pictures were or why they had come into our keeping.  I find myself wanting to know their names and why their photographs are in my hands.

So I have begun my quest to know better those who came before me and to attempt to learn what I can about their lives. I imagine my father’s spirit somewhere out there, chuckling that his offspring finally has a deeper appreciation of history.

You were right again, Daddy. It is interesting to learn about the way we were and you were also right that I should have paid more attention to what you tried to tell me. I’m hooked now and determined to document what I learn for those who come after me. And, as you said, it’s fun, too.

Sounds and Sights of Southwest Florida

Osprey with lunch

It’s beautiful this Tuesday in Southwest Florida. Some might complain that it’s cloudy rather than sunny, but I’m not one of those people. Instead, I am grateful to be enjoying the call of an osprey from its nest atop a palm tree in my sister’s front yard. I can hear, too, the sound of the little fountain in her pool on the lanai, the occasional rattle of palm fronds in the breeze.

Somewhere north of here friends and family are living with one of those unusual snow and ice storms that come farther south than Nature intended. For Southerners, it’s more fun than not, an opportunity to watch the snow fall, or maybe find something on which to slide down a hill. For those less excited by these conditions, it’s a challenge to clear sidewalks and driveways, find one’s way to work, if necessary, knowing that most of us born in the South don’t drive well in snow and no one really drives well on ice.

But I’m not there today. Instead, I’m basking in 70+ degree temperatures on a little island off the Gulf Coast of Florida. Ft. Myers Beach is a haven for those who choose to escape from winter, whether in Ohio or Hamburg or Middlesex. As we take our morning walks, we say our “mornin” greetings, usually reciprocated with a crisp “morning,” the “g” intact, as pronounced by those raised in the Northern U.S. or Canada. Then there are the distinctly accented responses, those that clearly reflect a homeland across the ocean. This is a popular destination for Brits and Germans.

We take long walks before breakfast, taking pleasure in the soft sea air. This morning there was thick fog across the landscape, limiting visibility beyond a couple of hundred yards. That was tolerable because within our view were so many sights to enjoy.

People-watching is a constant delight here. Those who live here year-round bundle up when the temperature drops below 60 degrees while the visitors are wearing bikinis. Fashion tragedies occur minute-to-minute as every imaginable combination of tank tops, flip-flops, sequins and orthopedic shoes appear. Then there are the midriff-barers who should be arrested for crimes against nature. It’s truly amazing how we human beings choose to attire ourselves.

There was a flock of ibises using their long curved beaks to explore a neighbor’s yard. They were snapping up something that must have been tasty because they weren’t the least bit distracted by our passing close by along the street.

There were all sorts of trees and shrubs we don’t see in North Carolina, some blooming gloriously with huge red or peach-colored flowers. We who are not accustomed to palm trees marvel at the many different varieties of palms, both trees and shrubs.

Then there are the homes themselves. This is an area of canals, so most homes have boats behind them, many with pools covered with the huge “cages” or screens to keep out the summertime bug population. The houses come in a variety of colors with many approaches to the “Florida” look.

There are mailboxes made to look like manatees or dolphins. There are mailbox posts that look like the pilings that hold up docks. There are houses decorated with birds or seahorses or suns.

There are tile roofs and lawns of rocks interspersed with grass lawns that are perfectly manicured. There’s the house down the block that has been abandoned for a couple of years, sitting derelict among well-tended homes, its curtains hanging forlornly, eaves sagging, landscaping unkempt.

And everywhere, all around us and usually in eyesight, there is the water. The water in the bay is an aquamarine color that shimmers under the sun. The ocean water is a darker blue until it reaches the shallows along the gleaming white beaches where it becomes a pale blue-green. Sometimes the canals and creeks and sloughs have water in them that is so dark it appears almost black because you can see through it to the black earth beneath.

This, then, is a visual smorgasbord of land and sea, people and places. As my friend Anne says, it’s a place meant for “nothing to do and all day to do it.” Even as we explore and discover the natural and man-made beauties, we do it on Florida time—no hustle, no bustle, just living life as we come to it.

All photos by Mike Lumpkin

Tis the Season for Family, Friends, Fun and Feasting

Here we are in one of my favorite times of year, the amazing mix of crazy and calm, frantic and reflective that I associate with the final two weeks of the year. Asked today by a young friend in China (with whom I email regularly) about how we celebrate Christmas, I had these thoughts: family, fun and feasting. One of her professors had started her thinking about it when they spent some class time on the way Americans view the holiday.

Once the Thanksgiving holiday is past, the momentum picks up. We try each year to buy things we think will make good gifts when we see them. There’s a closet into which these items go, awaiting birthdays and Christmas. The good news is that we find things that someone might really like and we get “ahead” this way; the bad news is that we often forget that we’ve already bought a present for someone, so we buy another. And, of course, as the season ramps up, the urge to buy ramps up, too.

Even when I’m fighting traffic at the mall, I’m thinking about family and friends for whom I’m finding gifts. As I’m vying for a parking spot with two or three other agitated drivers, I’m thinking that there must be one special thing or one more thing that will make this Christmas really special for someone we love. There must be something on sale that is really great, better than whatever I bought two months ago that was good, but maybe doesn’t seem so special now.

It’s the time of year, too, for the holiday letter. This is when we can catch up on our friends’ lives and tell them what’s happening with us. For our Facebook friends, it’s probably redundant, but others get our year in a page of highlights. It’s become a creative outlet for me and a way to show off some of Mike’s great photographs. My challenge every year is to try to remember how Microsoft Word works so that I can put words and pictures together. Our theory is that some will read and enjoy, some will be too busy to read it, but might look at the pictures and others will simply sigh and say this is what retired people do because they have too much time on their hands.

Now we’re getting down to the short strokes. Christmas is only a couple of days away and we’re ready to travel, the car is stuffed with the packages we’ve wrapped and the few clothes that we still have room to take. We’ll spend the next week driving from place to place, hugging and laughing and trading gifts, both precious and silly. And we’ll eat. Then we’ll eat some more.

There will be meals, of course, with the bounty of the holidays on each table. Meats and side dishes will be followed by cakes and pies. In between meals, there will be cookies galore and dishes of candy and nuts. Egg nog and mimosas will surely add to our caloric intake and I can’t pass through Nashville without indulging in the boiled custard that appears on store shelves there this time of year. Our “yums” will be followed by “ughs”, perhaps accompanied by a polite belch and, finally, “zzzzzs.” There will be a nap or two, undoubtedly, and, weather permitting, a walk to help digest the volume of refreshment that passes through our lips.

One final thought about my young friend’s query is ambrosia. When I was a kid, my mother always made ambrosia, a kind of fruit soup made from orange sections, crushed pineapple and coconut. We ate it as dessert or breakfast or a snack from a big bowl that she kept in the refrigerator.

As my life has unfolded and various folks have influenced the mixture of ingredients, I’ve added cherries and miniature marshmallows and deleted the coconut. These changes haven’t diminished in any way the dish’s diverse attractions. If we’re too sated to eat it after one of these filling holiday meals, we just attack it late at night or eat it for breakfast. I still use a spoon to scoop out the oranges, section by section, rather than cut up the orange or resort to canned mandarin oranges, already sliced. Mama always said having your hands in the process added to the sweetness of the result.

For me, the natural sweetness of ambrosia (no sugar need be added) with its mixture of flavors -- the acidic pungency of the orange and the exotic tang of the pineapple, the sweetness of the cherries and marshmallows – represent perfectly this time of year. There’s a certain amount of work involved in getting ready, an almost hour-to-hour variation in pace from frantic shopping, wrapping and decorating to the serenity of listening to our favorite Christmas music and reminiscing. Then there’s the finale: the opening of presents and the sharing of joys both hoped for and unexpected.

With any luck, we’ll all experience the wish expressed by Clement Moore in his famous poem, “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.”

Photos by Mike Lumpkin

Remembering Dorothy Ann Moon Pettes

 I have been lucky in life, not least in the remarkable women I have known. These women have shared their strength and experience with me, mentored me and offered me their friendship, their warmth and their wisdom. They have, one and all, inspired me with a variety of ideals to be both admired and emulated.

Dorothy Pettes

One such woman died a few days ago in Atlanta. She left this earth richer for her time here and us poorer for her loss. Her legacy extends well beyond the children she raised and the friends she made. Her life achieved a goal many seek and fewer realize—she made a difference. Her integrity alone was a positive influence in the lives of many.

Young Dorothy

Dorothy Pettes was less than a month shy of her 99th birthday when she left this life. Born Dorothy Ann Moon in St. Louis in 1912, she had earned a nursing degree and worked as a visiting nurse and college nurse before her marriage to Tom Pettes. Once married, she became a wife and mother and, in my view, a true domestic engineer and the mother of four children.

I met Mrs. Pettes when invited to her home by her daughter, Sara, a high-school friend. I was amazed, first by the orderly and intelligent design of their home, then by Mrs. Pettes herself. I was not unaccustomed to formidable women as my mother was one herself. But where my mother’s force was some electric combination of high intelligence sparked with high emotion, Mrs. Pettes, also very intelligent, was more reasoned in her intellect. She was clearly cut of another cloth.

Her practicality was evident in her dress and style. She was attractive without having made much effort with makeup, lean and wearing a simple housedress with sensible shoes. No frills were in evidence, no hairstyle of the moment. Sara has said that her mother came to understand Sara’s love of fashion only late in life.

As I explored their home I marveled at the room in which one whole wall seemed taken up by a world map. I was awed by the design of the house with its retractable walls allowing rooms to grow or diminish in size as needed. What astonished me most was a posted schedule of activities and duties for mother and children. This was a practical household run by an educated, organized and pragmatic woman.

When it was time for dinner, rather than yelling for her children to come home, Dorothy Pettes simply stepped outside and blew a whistle. They not only knew what it meant, but learned to expect that sound near suppertime and to respond forthwith.

What I’ve learned about Dorothy Pettes since was that she was a woman of distinct and deeply-felt opinions, a life-long liberal who lived her beliefs, rather than just espousing them. Sara has told me that after Dorothy’s children were grown and on their own, she cared for foster children and, a lifelong member of the League of Women Voters, engaged in local political activities.

Engaged is a word that seems well-suited to Dorothy Moon Pettes. From her early decision to become a nurse through her years as an involved and loving parent to her lifetime commitment to social action, she was engaged in life. She saw the value of order in life and seemed to see clearly the way in which lack of disciplined care for others could be irresponsible and hurtful.

One of my favorite memories of Mrs. Pettes is that she took Sara and her friends (including me) to see the Paul Newman movie, “Hud.” For those who haven’t seen the film or don’t remember the main character, Hud is an angry, often drunk and abusive cowboy, described on the movie posters as “the man with the barbed wire soul.” I don’t remember clearly why she went with us. We might have begged her to go with us to a movie rated beyond our years or she accompanied us because she felt it inappropriate for us to see without an adult to provide perspective. In either case, it was we girls who simply had to see that particular movie and she acquiesced.

We girls, then teenagers with raging hormones, found Newman’s sultry portrayal of Hud at once frightening and exciting, crude and sexy. As we left the Emory Theater, Mrs. Pettes stopped on the sidewalk commented tersely that she “certainly wouldn’t want to live next door to that man.” I’ve never forgotten how stunned I was by her practical analysis of the character. Though we laughed at her comment later, we’ve acknowledged in our grown-up years that she had, indeed, hit the nail on the head.

Lest I paint a picture of a woman too orderly and practical to be warm, I must say that I always felt her sincere welcome when I was in their home. She had a beautiful smile that lit up her eyes. Her home was open to her children’s friends and she accommodated our silliness and our attempts at serious discourse with patience. A woman with a wry sense of humor, she must have found some amusement in the strange politics of the occasional Tri-Hi-Y club meetings held in that room with the wall-size map.

I think she might have agreed with what Confucius wrote: “To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”

I am convinced that Dorothy Moon Pettes had set her heart right. She will be missed and she will be remembered with tears and laughter, affection and admiration.

Anger, Fear and Disappointment -- What's Next?

It seems a lot of people are angry today, at least that’s what they say. It looks more like too many of us are afraid and putting on our angry face to chase away the demons that threaten us. It’s one of those disappointing times when those who spread fear like a virus are winning and they freeze too many of us like the proverbial deer in the headlights.

They tell us there’s no room to support one another, encourage us to assume that every man, woman and family is isolated, preyed upon by everything from Al Qaeda to big government. We’re to fear the Democrats who spend too much and Republicans who only care about the rich. We’re to feel a threat from anyone who doesn’t believe as we do. Too many of us are discouraged because, in these difficult times, we don’t feel safe and we’re not sure that we and our country are going in the right direction.

It is important to remember that we’ve been here before, not once, but many times. The price of independence and American democracy is high. As long as we can acknowledge that its value is of equal or greater importance, we remain reasonable. But, at times like these, when we’re more concerned with what we don’t have today or don’t know about tomorrow, we become fearful and we attempt to protect ourselves with anger. It’s as if we believe that shouting will drown out our problems.

There’s often talk of the “founding fathers,” those men who crafted and signed the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. We refer to those men and that time as if they were in perfect harmony and had all the answers for the questions we have today. In truth, they, too, knew disappointing times, times of partisan politics, bitter divisions, fear and anger.

John Adams, our second U.S. President, and pivotal in the country’s founding, said: “The people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel, as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority."

Thomas Jefferson, our third President and a key architect of our country’s foundations famously fell out with John Adams, once a close friend. As Adams left office, to be followed by Jefferson, Adams’ last-minute appointments, Jefferson said, were “among my most ardent political enemies.” Their estrangement lasted a decade until mutual friends encouraged them to begin corresponding. They did so until both died on July 4, 1826.

Of course, the Civil War was the height of disaffection and anger that was carried to the ultimate level of conflict. We can be grateful that the current uproar hasn’t led to that! Abraham Lincoln was, of course, not popular with Southern politicians. But even staunch Union supporters managed to say some pretty awful things about him. His own Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, for whom Lincoln generally had high regard, referred to Lincoln’s “painful imbecility.”

So, it’s nothing new, this incivility. It is, however, a regrettable sign of our times. We can only hope that whatever the outcome of today’s elections, the message taken by both parties and lived out in Washington sooner rather than later is that there is important business to do in this country and it’s time to do it. It’s natural for there to be disagreement about which solutions will work. If there is no compromise, thus nothing is done, and then none of them deserves to be called public servants.

[Sorry no pretty pictures with this one.]

Back in the U.S.A.

We slept in a little this morning with a shorter drive planned today from Bangor to Boston. Interstates 95 and 295 are the quickest routes south and allowed us to have a repeat visit to the New Hampshire coast.

We enjoyed Petey’s Summertime Seafood Restaurant so much on our way north that we decided to go there again for lunch. Their lobster dishes are simply wonderful. We decided to get out and walk at a nearby state park on the beach and enjoyed the fresh air and ocean views there. There are amazing huge homes along the coast there, quite a few for sale, probably with hefty price tags.

Rye Harbor

We stopped, too, at Rye Harbor to watch a lobster boat unloading its catch onto a waiting truck. The afternoon was sunny and beautiful as we hung around the docks. There are a couple of granite memorials there commemorating men and women who have fished these waters for a living. Mike took pictures and I met and talked with a woman taking photographs. She had brought her 21-year-old son there to take advantage of the relatively warm weather on this late October day. She shared their story of her son’s struggle with an illness that has been difficult to diagnose.

This positive and pleasant lady (who lives nearby) pointed us further south to Hampton Beach and another park with a row of small, colorfully painted beach “shacks.” There was also a small, creatively designed garden there and lots of people walking and jogging on the path along the seawall. All along the coast here there are benches with plaques dedicating them to folks who have lived and vacationed here.

We made our way off the beach road and down I-95 to the airport where we checked into an airport hotel and turned in our rental car. This has been a wonderful trip in so many ways, but we’re ready to head home where Michael will meet us at the Charlotte airport tomorrow. We’re happy that we could celebrate with others in Halifax. And there’s no question that we found great places we’ll want to visit again and learned about others that go on our list of places we want to go.

(All photos by Mike Lumpkin except this one by me.  Wherever we go, he's got his camera in hand, finding the shots that remind us of sights we never want to forget, memories we want to save and savor in years to come.  My joy is being in those places with him, sometimes pointing out something he might want to photograph, always reveling in his unique eye for the beauty and often the humor of what we see.  This one was taken as he turned back toward the car from the gorgeous colors of autumn on a little road in New Hampshire. You can see in his stride the pure joy he experiences in capturing the special moments we find.)

Canada Farewell

Moose Signs-No Moose

Monday morning dawned as departure day for those of us who had come to celebrate Ramona and Bill’s new life in Halifax. It was a day of flight schedules, airport runs and time for Mike and me to pack our car and head across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for our return through Maine and Boston back home to Charlotte.

Our drive took us north and west, making a big loop around the north end of the Bay of Fundy that we had crossed by ferry on Saturday. The farther we traveled away from the coast and toward higher elevations, we noticed that many more trees had lost their leaves, but we continued to see at least some golds and oranges along the way, often set against the deep green of evergreen forests.

We became intrigued by the signs for roads leading to Cape Breton, the part of Nova Scotia farthest north. One of Ramona’s friends we met in Halifax over the weekend lives and teaches there. She has promised to send us information about a possible visit. Cape Breton’s rich heritage and natural beauty make it a highly desirable vacation destination.

We also saw signs for Prince Edward Island and picked up a brochure touting its allure for travelers. Canada’s Atlantic Provinces are all attractive areas with their picturesque seaside settings, the fabulous seafood available at every turn and their rich and diverse history.

Our drive through New Brunswick took us through rolling countryside and through the Saint John River valley. Though many signs commanded our “Attention” with a moose graphic, those were the only moose we saw. We did see lots of farms, a good many of those beautifully red fields of wild blueberries and miles of the “north woods” for which Canada is so well known.

We found a lunch place on the outskirts of Fredericton in New Brunswick not too far from where we would re-enter the U.S. at Houlton, Maine. What we noticed on our travels along Canada’s well-maintained freeways, including the Trans-Canada Highway that we followed from Nova Scotia almost to Maine, was that they rarely go directly through any towns or cities, but stay outside them.

Our customs agent at the border asked a very few questions and welcomed us back to the U.S. As I drove down through the Maine countryside toward Bangor, our destination for the night, Mike kept a lookout for the moose that more roadside signs alerted us we might see. As in New Brunswick, we saw not one moose. Somehow we felt the moose were hiding behind the trees laughing at us and our eagerness to see even one of them.

Our hotel in Bangor has been a good place to stop after a long day of driving, providing a tasty clam chowder and a comfortable bed for the night. Today we will wander down the Maine and New Hampshire coast, find some good seafood and stay overnight in Boston before our morning flight back to Charlotte.

(Photo by Mike Lumpkin)