How Granny and Daddy Bo's Fight in 1975 Helped Me Find Some Old Photos Today

Click to Enlarge

Daddy Bo, Granny and me around 1970 likely at The Smokies

I recently found more really old family photos thanks to my 12-year-old self and my grandmother, Elizabeth Castellaw Williams.

I actually got my first taste of genealogy from Granny, as we called her, one summer when I was about 12. I was spending a week with my grandparents near Holly Grove in Haywood County, and a heated argument broke out between them. I remember it like it happened yesterday. I was hiding behind the well house in their back yard, surrounded by irises, so I had a perfect view of Granny standing on the landing at the back door, hands on her hips, breathing hard, and Daddy Bo down below looking like he was ready to explode but not quite sure how.

I remember she had a tissue in her hand and she was wiping sweat off her forehead. Some pretty ugly accusations were thrown around and Granny threatened to throw Daddy Bo out and take "Poppa's land" and there was no way she was going to let him send her to Bolivar. I remember him being at a loss for words, shaking his head and walking away.

I would eventually discover they were a passionate couple. Heated arguments one minute with him living in a trailer in the back and then holding hands the next. You could easily tell the status of their relationship by whether his recliner was in the den or if he had moved it into the kitchen so he could watch wrestling alone. One never knows what really goes on in a marriage but I know for certain, their's was never boring.

Anyway, Daddy Bo left and spent the rest of that day at the barn and I guess Granny needed an ally so she began talking about the past and her parents and siblings and things that happened years ago.

She pulled out some old albums and some envelopes stuffed with papers and photos and began telling me some fascinating stories that involved sex, death, land-stealing, arson and the place everyone in Haywood County feared, "Bolivar," which was, and actually still is, the location of Western State Mental Hospital.

I was terrified and excited all at the same time.

Click to Enlarge

Joe Williamson and daughters
Janie (Daddy Bo's mother), Jessie, Nannie, Jo and Mai

As she was telling the stories, I mentioned I needed to figure out a way to remember who was in the pictures so she got a pen and began writing on the first one. I stopped her after that first photo and got some paper and drew outlines of the people and she identified them. Since I was so into it, Granny said she would give me the photos when she died.

I gave the paper with the drawings to my mother and went on with my life. 

True to her word, when Granny died in 1998, among some of the things in the chest she kept in the guest bedroom was an envelope with "give to Scott Williams" written on it. Along with the old photos she had shown me she had also added a few others.

I recently ran across the drawings at my mother's house and it made me remember the envelope of photos Granny had left me. I located the photos in the same envelope in an old filing cabinet we keep in the attic.

Below are the drawings and the photos from the envelope:

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

Robert Edward "Bob" and Zula Zera Watridge Castellaw
and children around 1908

back row l to r: Bob, Isaac, and Daniel
front row l to r: Brant, Rob Zula and Irene

Ruby and Elizabeth were not yet born

This photo is still in remarkably good shape and has a lot of details. It shows how much Bob had aged by the time the photo above was taken. Daniel is looking like he wants to get away.

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

Robert Edward "Bob" Castellaw and sons Isaac,
Daniel and Robert Jefferson around 1899

Although my grandmother identified the people in these photos, I am not certain she was correct. After chatting (via Facebook) with my cousin Sandra, we believe the lady in the photo marked as number two is actually Nancy Marianna Johnson Castellaw who was Granny's paternal grandmother. 

We're still checking on the identity of the others.

Click to Enlarge

Likely Robert Edward Castellaw around the 1890s

Click to Enlarge

Likely Nancy Marianna Johnson

Click to Enlarge

Likely Zula Zera Watridge Castellaw around the 1890s

Also in the envelope were six photos of my dad as a boy.

Click to Enlarge

Bob Williams

My grandmother must have liked this photo of herself since it was the only one she included. She and my grandfather have a Bonnie and Clyde thing going.

Click to Enlarge

Lloyd "Bo" and Elizabeth Castellaw Williams
at a gas station around 1935

If you went to the Memphis Zoo in the '40s and '50s you probably had a photo made like this one of my father.

Click to Enlarge

Bob Williams at the Memphis Zoo in the late 1940s

I had to get my dad to help identify these people. A few of them we can't ID. Email me if you know who they are.

Click to Enlarge

children on front row: Jerry Taylor, unknown, Bob Williams,
Glynn Watridge, Unknown, Ann Sullivan

second row: Edna Watridge, Elizabeth Williams, Martha Edna, Hubert Jones

back row: Everette Watridge, Bo Williams, Sonny Boy Taylor

For more, visit my Blog Home Page or the Haywood County Line Genealogy Page.

Hugh Jackman, Andrew Lytle and I in the Bahamas

Click to Enlarge

l to r: Hugh Jackman, Hugh Jackman's nanny, and me

So my wife and I were at a water park in Atlantis at Nassau a few days ago with Hugh Jackman, the actor. OK, so we weren't exactly "with" Hugh but we were at there at the same time and, as you can see, I have the picture to prove it.

Traveling can be a pain but, in addition to offering the occasional opportunity for a random celebrity sighting, it's a great chance to catch up books that need to be read.

For this trip, I included "A Wake for the Living" by Andrew Lytle which was published back in 1975.

I've run across references to Lytle several times in researching my own Tennessee ancestors and wanted to find out more about him and his writing. He was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1902 and went to Sewanee Military Academy, Exeter College in Oxford and Vanderbilt University.

Lytle helped to found the Southern Agrarian Movement in the early 1930s with eleven other well-known southern writers, poets, essayists, and novelists. They were major contributors to the revival of Southern Literature in the 1920s and 1930s now known as the Southern Renaissance.

"The Twelve Southerners" as they were called, valued many aspects of Southern culture and confronted the "widespread and rapidly increasing effects of modernity, urbanism, and industrialism on Southern culture and tradition" in the early '30s.

In this book, Lytle does pretty much what I try to do with my Web site which is explore each branch of his family tree and try to present who they were by looking at what they did.

I was hooked on the book as early as page three:

"If you don't know who you are or where you came from, you will find yourself at a disadvantage. The ordered slums of suburbia are made for the confusion of the spirit."

That's one of those sentences that are worth reading a few times. If I was going to get something tattooed on myself, that might be it.

In "A Wake for the Living," Lytle writes about many of his family's experiences during the decades leading up to The Civil War and then shares a lot of second-hand information told to him about being in and around Tennessee during the war.

I had many Tennessee ancestors who joined the Confederate army so his recounting of the 19th Tennessee Regiment on page 189 was especially interesting as it's possible it included my second great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Castellaw.

"The weather was almost unendurable. It rained ice. The surface of the roads froze. Snow fell, and the covering was slick as glass until the heavy wagon wheels broke through into the frigid slush beneath. In places the teams went down belly-deep, and Hood's barefooted infantry staggered through the freezing mud, sometimes up to their armpits. The jagged ice cut their frostbitten feet and smeared the way with blood, congealed enough in places to mark the ice. An ox, exhausted with work, fell by the side of the road; and before the blood could congeal, the desperate men had stripped his hide from his smoking body and tied it about their feet."

Dang, that's some good writing.

Lytle wrote many other books, several of which I have now ordered and plan to read the next time I am headed out looking for celebrities to stand close to.

"Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company" is considered one of the best works about the Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Lytle spent the last 20 years living in his cabin on the grounds of the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly, not far from the campus of the University of the South. He died in 1995 at the age of 92.

Andrew Lytle Obit in The New York Times
December 15, 1995

Andrew Lytle, an author, critic, teacher and raconteur and the last of the 12 Southern writers who banded together in the 1920's to form the Agrarian movement, died on Tuesday at his cabin in Monteagle, Tenn. He was 92.

Although he was overshadowed by such Agrarians as Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson and Allen Tate, Mr. Lytle is considered to have more than earned his chapter in "I'll Take My Stand," their 1930 manifesto warning of the perils of industrialization and urbanization.

More so than the others, Mr. Lytle, whose essay, "The Hind Tit," was a paean to the small farm, actually lived the agrarian tradition. The only real farmer in the group, he ran a series of family-owned farms and tended a garden that supplied virtually all the produce for his table until he was well into his 80's.

As an author, Mr. Lytle was a writer's writer, one whose finely honed intricate tales tended to win more critical praise than popular acclaim. His first novel, "The Long Night" (1936), and "At the Moon's Inn" (1947) were both well received, but it is "The Velvet Horn," (1957) that is regarded as his masterpiece.

For more, visit my Blog Home Page or the Haywood County Line Genealogy Page.

Grave Hunting

Click to Enlarge

l to r: Louisa Johnson, Bob Williams, Scott Williams, Charles Randall Johnson

I recently wrote in this blog about my third great grandfather, Charles Randall Johnson. During the recent holiday week, my Dad and I decided to try and find the grave of our ancestor and his wife, Louisa Wood Johnson.

We headed to the Johnson Grove area of Crockett County, TN and after a lot of wrong turns and asking a couple of strangers, we finally found the cemetery. In case you ever want to visit Charles and Louisa, once you pass Tucker's Grocery on Castellaw Rd., you'll turn left at Johnson's Grove Baptist Church.

Click to Enlarge

Tuckers Gro. on Castellaw Rd.

Click to Enlarge

Johnson's Grove Baptist Church

There is actually another connection between the church and my third great grandfather. He donated the land on which the church stands.

Click to Enlarge

The deed of land to the church
from Charles Randall Johnson's

Number 711
C.R. Johnson
To Deed
Baptist Church


Haywood County Tennessee
Know all men by these ? that I Charles R. Johnson of the state and county above ? have this day ? unto the Baptist Church of ? called Johnsons Grove and worshiping in Haywood County Tennessee may right and title to one acre and nine poles of the land upon which this house of worship now stands. The title to be fully and entirely vested in through long as thoz shall use the house and land to worship as a Baptist church having the privilage to extend the house to other denominations as a matter of ? which ? in this ? beginning at a...
1851

C. R. Johnson 

Once you drive about a half mile down Johnson's Grove Rd, you'll see The Castellaw Cemetery up on a hill on the right.

Click to Enlarge

The Castellaw Cemetery

In addition to Charles and Louisa, there were lots of other family members buried in the cemetery.  

Click to Enlarge

Headstone of John Edward Castellaw

John Edward Castellaw married two of the daughters of Charles R. Johnson. In 1854 he married Margaret Wood Johnson and then after she died, he married her sister and my second great grandmother, Nancy Mariana Johnson. Interestingly, John Edward was also a half brother to Nancy's first husband, Tom Castellaw. John Edward and Tom had the same father, Thomas Jefferson Castellaw Sr. who was my fourth great grandfather.

Once we left the Castellaw Cemetery, we headed a few streets west and found another of Charles and Louisa's children, William R. Johnson and his wife Mariah. This couple's grave sits surprisingly close to the road on the edge of a field.

Click to Enlarge

Headstones of William R. and Mariah Johnson

Click to Enlarge

Headstones of William R. and Mariah Johnson

In the past, their graves were each next to a tree but now, the trees too have died and there remains only stumps where they once were. That is likely what kept their headstones from being destroyed by farming equipment.

From what I have been able to find, it appears they did not have children of their own, but after William’s father died, he became the legal guardian of his youngest siblings, Zach and Louisa. I have not found any more information on the siblings.

As we headed back out of town, I noticed a possible cemetery in the middle of a field. Out in the country, if you spot a clump of trees that farmers have not touched, there's a good chance someone is buried there.

Click to Enlarge

I ran through what looked like to me like grass (sorry, I'm not a farmer) and pushed my way through a lot of growth and discovered...

Click to Enlarge

the solitary grave of Major J. E. Varner who was born on March 11, 1842 and died February 15, 1873. I don't know who he was but I do know he was a Mason. If you have been looking for your Varner ancestor, here he is.

Click to Enlarge

Major J. E. Varner

That ended of our grave hunting for the day and we headed to Herbie Town.

For more, visit my Blog Home Page or the Haywood County Line Genealogy Page.

Road Trip to Herbie Town

Click to Enlarge

Herbie and Marie Adams with my father, Bob Williams

Yesterday, my Dad and I headed to Crockett County near Alamo, TN to search for some graves of our Johnson ancestors. We found what what we were looking for, which I'll share another day, but we also had a lot of fun hanging out some friends of his at a place called Herbie Town.

Located near Alamo, off Highway 54 on Gibson Wells Rd., Herbie Town is the creation of Herbert and Marie Adams.

If Alice fell down the rabbit hole and woke up in a John Wayne movie, this is what she would find.

Herbert and Marie, who have been married 63 years, have spent 40 years turning their backyard into a museum of early 1800s culture but with the twist of Herbie's unique sense of humor manifested in the art he creates with iron, wood, and anything he can get his hands on.

"Found art" is everywhere in Herbie Town. From a riding lawn mower created by combining an old push mower with a bike to furniture created using pieces of antique farm equipment melded to scrap metal and wood, literally everywhere you look, you see something interesting.

Here are a few photos I took during our visit.

Click to Enlarge

Welcome to Herbie Town

Click to Enlarge

Have Fun!

Click to Enlarge

Herbert Adams in his Workshop

Click to Enlarge

Found Art Christmas Tree

Click to Enlarge

Horseshoe Rocking Chair

Click to Enlarge

Knives Made from Railroad Spikes

Click to Enlarge

Riding Lawnmower

Click to Enlarge

Jail

Click to Enlarge

View of Herbie Town from Second Floor of Saloon

Click to Enlarge

Walking Stool

Click to Enlarge

Planter

Click to Enlarge

Inside an 1800s Cabin

Click to Enlarge

Livery Stable

Click to Enlarge

Sideways Rocking Chair with Cup Holder
and Magazine Rack

Click to Enlarge

Iron Chickens

Click to Enlarge

Bottles

Click to Enlarge

Men's and Women's

Click to Enlarge

John Wayne Courage Quote

Click to Enlarge

Giant Chickens

Click to Enlarge

The End

Visit my Blog Home Page or the Haywood County Line Genealogy Page.

Let's Go to the Races...at Big Star

Click to Enlarge

I hope newspapers survive.

Not just the group of journalists, editors and photographers (and ad sales people) who gather and report the news in an official capacity, but the actual item...news presented via ink on paper. For me personally, that hope is not so that I can find out whats going on in my community and around the world because I get that from my ipad or by going online.

To be honest, I have not actually read a newspaper, other than at my mother's house, in many years. It makes my hands feel dirty and the size is weird. Think about how strange it is that newspapers are so tall and wide. You have to spread them out on the floor and lay on top of them or hold them up with your arms straight out. It's just awkward to me.

The main reason I hope actual newspapers survive is so people can continue to clip out articles and put them in envelopes and boxes and place them in attics so that long after they have passed away the articles can serve as a resource for those researching family histories.

I don't think people print out and save online articles like they do actual newspaper clippings.

I went through a box belonging to my late grandmother, Virginia Lovelace, and pulled out a few of the articles she had clipped and saved. All these articles are from The Brownsville States Graphic.

The one at the top is from when she won $500 in the "Let's Go To The Races" promotion at the Big Star in Brownsville. She won because her horse came in first but she would be the first to tell you it wasn't gambling because "no purchase was necessary." Plus, she was a Southern Baptist and gambling was right up there with drinking in the list of things you definitely don't do. I can remember her mother, Mama Allie, not liking the fact that we played Monopoly because we used dice. I guess it was hard to explain why a bunch of kids sitting around throwing dice and passing money back and forth in my grandmother's living room was not gambling. Just to be sure we could keep playing, we hid the whiskey.  

I do wonder how this whole racing concept was pulled off though. I looked online a little and it seems the races were all filmed on 16 mm and then copies of the race were sent to the affiliate stations and tickets were distributed to participating grocery stores to give to customers. According to one person, more winning tickets were sent to stores where business was down to help drive customers.

Click to Enlarge

Uncle Hobert Lovelace was my grandfather, Guy Lovelace's brother. I never knew that he and Aunt Carolyn went to London. They ran Hobert Lovelace and Sons Store in Brownsville and must have won the trip through a contest with one of their suppliers.

As a kid, they always seemed to me to be a little more sophisticated than the rest of us. They had a piano and fancy oil paintings and furniture that seemed more English than what I was used to. Now I know it was probably because they had been to London.

Click to Enlarge

Today, my mother, Shirley Lovelace Williams, is a citizen. In 1946, she was a "Citizen of Tomorrow." She is the third one over in the middle. From what I have read, similar to "Lets Go to the Races" this was another brilliant way to part people from their money in a time and place where there wasn't much of it. In an article in the February 28, 1963 "Arthur Graphic Clarion" the writer states that 61 local families took their children to be photographed for the series and 120 children would appear in the newspaper.

"Herb Farny, the photographer, has been taking children's pictures for newspaper series since 1931. He covers about 40 states every year and maintains a residence in Florida. He works with Woltz Studios of Des Moines, Iowa, in international company. Farny, who is a semi-professional magician, was sorry he didn't have more time to perform tricks for the children."

I wonder what percentage of the parents purchased the package of photos they must have been selling. I also can't help wonder why they didn't just call Farny a professional magician rather than "semi-professional." What does it take to go pro in the photographing magician field?

Click to Enlarge

In 1977 my father, Bob Williams, who had worked in various lay positions in many different churches, felt led to become an actual minister. He and my mother sold everything they had, loaded the few things they kept, including my sister and I, in a U haul and headed for Texas where he attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Looking back, it must have been a really big deal for my extended family because, until then, very few on either side had moved further than Memphis or Jackson. 

His mother, Elizabeth Castellaw Williams' was proud he was a minister but hated to see him leave the area. She was such an interesting character I could write a whole book just on her. I have here her copy of "Nicholas Cobb Descendants", a book written by Joe H. Cobb that includes a lot of history of Haywood County. It's a great resource and my grandmother has made several corrections and additions regarding our family throughout the book. In the back she has written:

"On March 1992 the 22nd day Bobby Williams preached a sermon for the spring revival Sunday morning and Sunday night. I did not attend but my prayers were with him. Went to Providence (church) as I felt my place was up there. I pray to God he is being led by his Lord."

So I guess you could say she was proud but worried. And by writing it in the Cobb book, she was making sure he was part of Haywood County history...at least in this copy.

Click to Enlarge

My mother's first cousin, Phil Lovelace, was one of the two sons of Uncle Hobert and Aunt Carolyn above who were headed to London. Phil and his wife Sandra and their son Shey went to Texas about the same time as my family, also to attend seminary, so we spent a lot of time together.

I have heard my father say he didn't think he could have made it without Phil and they remain close friends today. Eventually, both returned home and pastor churches in Haywood County.

Visit my Blog Home Page or the Haywood County Line Genealogy Page.