Thursday, June 21, 2012

Out of my grassheart Rises the bobwhite



"I am earth, earth 

Out of my grassheart Rises the bobwhite. 
Out of my nameless weeds His foolish worship." 



from Thomas Merton's Book of Hours, among the meditations for Dawn on Thursdays.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Finding George Annie Hardin


This is Rhody Keith, my great great great grandmother on my mother's mother's side.  More about her later. Researching my family lines through the women is presenting challenges.

The first challenge is simply finding out who was who in my family - on both sides - and what they did and where they lived. My people were laborers and farmers, many farming someone else's land. Many were illiterate and poor.Often too poor to have portraits taken or living in remote parts of the frontier where amenities like that photography and gravestones were scarce. Nearly all of these people seemed to move from place to place, a common happenstance in the 19th century. Someone could start life in North or South Carolina and end it in Texas and showing up in the census for a variety of places, and having their numerous children listed as being born in different towns and states.  The second challenge is specific to women's history. Women didn't join the military. Women didn't vote or hold office - for example, I have a couple male ancestors who were appointed the postmaster for their little communities. The women often died in childbirth and left children but little else to remember them.

I began wanting to find out what I could through the internet about my mother's mother's line. I had the basic story that had been told to us.  My grandmother's mother, George Annie, had married a Huggins by whom she had four or five children.  My grandmother, Clara Irene, and her younger sister, Mary Lillian, were the only two I really knew or could recall from the stories.  George Annie was evidently a saint.  She divorced Ervin Huggins when my grandmother was 10 years old.  He was declared insane and, I was told, died in a mental institution. She left my grandmother with family while she tried to make a living.  She came for my grandmother when she married Mr. Jordan, with whom she had one more child, Winnie.  We have a portrait of the three of them.  I learned that George Annie was a cook in a boarding house. She was such a great cook that working single men would come to the boarding house just to take the meals she prepared.  When my grandmother Clara started school, the teacher tried to break her from using her left hand - a common practice at that time.  The next day, George Annie came to school and gave the teacher heck, and my grandmother's lefthandedness was never a problem again. (My mother, I, and another sister are all left handed.)

These are great stories, and may be more than most people have of their key ancestors.  But, in a few hours research online I learned more.  If I had been told, I had not heard or retained...my great grandmother George Annie Hardin Huggins Jordan* was an orphan. Her mother died giving birth to her.  That alone blows me away and somehow enhances the aura surrounding George Annie.  There is more however, her mother, Annie Foster, was the second wife of George Washington Hardin.  George Washington Hardin's first wife, Margaret Brown, died as well in childbirth, leaving him with five children.  Not too long after that, he marries a 16 year old Annie.

The tragedy doesn't stop there. George Washington Hardin himself dies two years later.  So I ask myself, who raised George Annie?  It didn't appear that her half-siblings did - the oldest was herself barely 17 years old and the younger ones were still children.  I found a note, which I need to corroborate, that George Annie was raised by "a cousin Cora Ann Hardin Harris Roach," suggesting another great story and person to uncover.

If you do even the most casual geneological reserach online, you will find that you can go down paths that you didn't have on your list.  I went down one that was fascinating.  In trying to find out about Annie Foster, I found out about her husband's ancestry, which I guess is mine.  George Washington Hardin was one of many middle children of Asher Garner Hardin (great name!) and Rhoda (or Rhody) Keith.  Rhody Keith herself was one of many - born in 1819 in Alabama to John Birden (or Borden) Keith and Polly Ann Crane. I found myself fascinated by Rhody Keith. In part because I found this photo of her and her long elegant neck.  She holds herself so proudly. I've had mixed feelings about my own long neck.  This time it links me to someone in a grainy old photograph. By the way, Rhody Keith's grandfather, Nichodemus Keith immigrated from Ireland in the 1700s.


*(Jordan is pronounced Jer-den)