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History can inspire

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History has always been a passion to me. I love to read about what happened and delve deeply into whatever topic of history I am learning about.

While today finds me expanding my knowledge of world history, as a youth, it was primarily the American experience which fueled my exuberance – the Revolution, the War of 1812, Mexican American War, the Civil War, WWI and WWII. These wars were all moments in time for which I sought our family connection. The young male desire to learn generally leaned more toward the physical struggles and the fighting. The sense of excitement was what drove my childhood mind. Overcoming the adversary and surviving to return successfully to your family was an enriching story and satisfying story. The deaths however always brought a sense of sadness knowing that someone would not be returning home.

The stories of home didn’t really excite me until I reached adulthood. By then I realized we each spend most of our lives repeating and doing what a child would consider mundane to keep the home fires burning.

I talked with my surviving uncles who had served in WWII. WWI was still alive for my gra ndparents as that was the war of their youth and their friends and family faced being sent to fight. I had two great uncles go, one returned in ill health and tried to get back to life but the impact of the war took a toil that saw him eventually succumb to long-term impact of his injuries. Great Uncle Tom returned in a wooden box and we always remembered his sacrifice for our country especially on Decoration Day (Memorial Day).

For their parents, it was the Civil War. Most of their children recalled more of the impact of upon daily life, the limited food and supplies long after the war, the guerrillas who raided the farms claiming allegiance to one side or another. The absence of men who went off to fight, some for North, some for South. I had grandfathers on both sides.

The oral and written history of the War of 1812 and the War of Independence were also sought. And there were stories that passed. I had grandfathers in both. Currently, I have found about 13 Patriot grandfathers who fought in the Revolution. I fondly remember getting to visit cousins, sitting by the fireplace that my Revolutionary ancestor Greenberry Wilson had sat in front of and listen to my cousins share the stories passed down. I played upon the paths and the furrows that Adam Sherrill had farmed.

They were alive to me as a youth through the words shared. As I grew, they were not a name in a family tree, they were part of me. As real as they were standing in front of me sharing a bit of their story with one of their grandchildren. I heard the story of Adam falling from his spooked horse at the Battle of Boyd’s Creek in 1780 at French Broad River, Tenn. breaking his ribs. The Indians had laid in wait flat upon the ground for the patriots. While dazed, an Indian springs upon him with a tomahawk about to end his life. Then a musket ball from a comrade fell the Indian, saving Adam, who escaped and joined in pursuit. I heard about the march of the Over-mountain men to fight the Battle of King’s Mountain.

All these fueled a desire to find more connecting me to cousins like Davy Crockett who gave their life at the Alamo in Texas in 1836 and so many others.

I have found battles around the world where my grandfathers fought hand-to-hand against other grandfathers. I am lucky they had already had their children, or when they died, I would not be here.

I have shared all this to say, thank you to those who struggled through all that they may have faced to raise the next generation. I am here because of the mundane and the extraordinary that you experienced. For those who fell in war, thank you for your sacrifice.

Special places can connect the decades

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Have you ever stood in a particular place, scanning the horizon taking in all that is in sight?
For my exercise I stepped upon the front steps of the Ringgold Depot in Ringgold, Ga. looking northwards along the route of the U.S. Highway 41.
As you recognize all within your purview, could you imagine how many have stood exactly where you do seeing the same view through history?
The Ringgold Depot was completed in 1849, two years after the founding of the city. Upon its dedication by the Western & Atlantic Railroad, I can imagine the new city commission standing in front of it looking out upon Ringgold.
My cousins George Anderson and Michael Dickson, who were on that commission, may have stood there imagining what their community would become now.
A decade earlier, Cherokee Assistant Chief Richard Taylor stood looking out upon his former domain as 1,000 people began the long journey to the Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears. Among them were some of my cousins who would marry his daughters.
Twelve years later in January 1861, two more cousins Joseph T. McConnell and Presley Yates would stand there looking out before stepping up on the train to travel to Milledgeville. Their trip in the coming years would change the vista from the Ringgold Depot. They were sent to vote in the succession convention. One would vote for and one against. The majority chose to leave.
A year later, the stationmaster would stand there watching the General, the Texas and the Catoosa speed by as part of the Great Locomotive Chase brought about by Andrews Raiders.
One more year would pass and the future President Ulysses S. Grant would stand looking out at the town of Ringgold as shots fired down upon him from White Oak Mountain behind the station as his army was trying to beat the retreating army.
In the 1898, thousands of soldiers would stand looking upon Ringgold on their way to Camp Thomas in western Catoosa County to train for the Spanish American War. Seven hundred and fifty two of those soldiers would not look out on the view again for their return trip. They perished from camp diseases.
For years to come, the soldiers would stand and look out one last time at their childhood town, as they would leave for WWI, WWII, KOREA and Vietnam. Many would hold on to that view and the partings with their mom, dad, wife or girlfriend throughout their journey hoping to see it and them again.
With the abandonment of passenger service to the area, the Depot only took on occasional cargo shipments but it soon became simply a fading memory of the past until the city businessmen turned it into a concert venue.
For me I stood there and welcomed thousands while hosting monthly gospel concerts for over a decade and as a council member I helped ease the building into its role as a community center.
One place to stand, one ever-changing view with unchanging elements, thousands of eyes, thousands of stories, 18 decades, I have reflected back upon.
Is there a similar place that you are in daily, weekly, monthly in your hometown? Do you know how it touched people’s lives or do you take it for granted. Does it need some attention, some love, some recognition, or some signage? Maybe you could help make that happen.
Even the simplest place can reach across the years and connect us.  

Peeking through a keyhole into the past

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I will never forget when I was about 9 years old, I began a fascination with learning more about family history.
It began with a third-grade book report on World War I hero Sergeant York. As I read his story, I was taken by the similarities between the area of his living in the Valley of the Three Folks of the Wolf near Jamestown and ours in the Valley below the Gravelly Spur. I had a cousin who also shared that name, so I soon discovered a loose family connection.
This was the spark that drove me to a greater desire of learning about our family experience and gathering the available data and thus I became an amateur genealogist. Back in those days, there was no internet, so you went from relative to relative, graveyard to cemetery, courthouse to courthouse, and library to state archives in search of the pieces.
My parents were supportive within the reason of affordable travel in helping me on my quest. Coming from two Appalachian families, I did however pose some problems. The stoic nature of our peoples, led to there being a limited desire to talk about the past. I attribute this mainly to not wishing to relive the hardships which tended to interweave each story. Much of the oral tradition of sharing great tales of past family heroes had faded and many stories had been lost. I was able to gather nearer in time information and find many clouded tales of past ancestors that were on shaky ground. Many of my older relatives were contemporaries of Sergeant York, and their husbands or brothers went along as well training, fighting and some dying in World War I. A few stories of the Civil War, trips to the western frontier, and early settlement days did manage to find spots in different folks’ memories.
I did so much of this, at about 13, I was able to publish a short book highlighting what I had discovered at that point which many of our relatives purchased. Though I stopped the serious aspects of documentation and collection in my late teens, I have never stopped the pursuit of greater knowledge of my ancestors.
The advent of the internet has proved to be a wonderful resource to break barriers that came into my path at 12. That has it challenges as well, the information is only as good as the person who put it into the system. I always seek to find the correlating source materials that confirm their conclusions.
In recent weeks I have been blessed to make break throughs on several family lines that have had me stumped for decades. Often times locating one name or one location can open a door that allows you to peer deeper and deeper into the past.
I have managed to break down some of those blocks of late. One line which halted in the Civil War era had stood with no hope until I found some old notes I took from my grandmother and one of her sisters which gave me some potential siblings names. The combination of names in an internet search helped me in two different cases to open the lock and find the lines. I have located new cousins, I never knew and found photos I didn’t know existed of my ancestors.
One was such an amazing key that it opened up a door and walked me back before the time of Christ. Two millennia, I could not believe what I was finding and learning about each subsequent generation. Much of this was compiled by other genealogists, while some was new data, I was finding thanks to search engines. As I mentioned, I am always cautious about conclusions unless I can check the support documents. With that in mind, I traveled back to the founding of Jamestown, and across pond to England, Ireland, Scotland and through the centuries back to the Druids, the Saxons, the Welsh, the Normans, the Vikings, the Franks, the Jewish, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Egyptians just to name a few. I learned of ancestors who walked beside Popes, fought in the Crusades or alongside conquerors, ruled over principalities and dukedoms that I never heard of. I learned of ancestors whose lives ended in execution, mysterious murders or in battles with the goal of consolidating ruling power.
To many such history is of no interest to their daily lives, but to me and many like me, it brings our heart joy to know the names, see the images or depictions of those whose shoulders we stand upon. More than all that though knowing their stories.
Today, I am much richer within my heart because now I can literally travel across modern-day Europe and when I am in a country I have never been in before, there is likely a place, assuming they survived time and wars, where there’s may be a surviving house, castle, historic place, a graveyard, a monastery or convent, a statue, or museum containing artifacts that I can visit, point to and say ‘This is part of me and my story.’
I hope you always carry in your heart a bountiful number of family stories and history, and if not, you could with a bit of effort.

A daisy for Momma

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The old T model Ford chugged and stammered its way along the thin pig trail that crisscrossed up the side of the Gravelly Spur Mountain.
On one side looking down was a shear drop, while the other side was straight up.
As Pearl looked off the mountainside, in the valley below the farmer’s new crops of corn were beginning to show some strength in the neatly planted rows they laid off earlier in the year traipsing behind their best mule teams.
The mountain laurel dotted the side of the mountain and a faint smell of wild roses occasionally whisped through the open car.
This trip up the mountainside would eventually reach a point where the car would stop because there was no more passable road and Grandma Kitty, Grandpa Bill and little Pearl would get out and walk the rest of the way.
Their goals were three fold — Grandpa Bill was scouting the mountainside for any usable timber, Grandma Kitty was planning to hit her favorite spots to gather remedy roots, barks and berries, but the main goal involved a tremendously large bouquet of daisies tightly grasped in Pearl’s hand.
You see this was Mother’s Day weekend and for Kitty and Bill their mothers were both in heaven.
Grandpa Bill’s mother lay in a green patch of ground nestled between stately cedar trees on the side of the mountain where generations of the family rested, while Grandma Kitty’s mother was buried miles away in another county.
Through the years they had created a tradition of alternating between the locations on days like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Memorial Day.
As the T model hit the end of the road, Grandpa Bill shut her off and picked up the lunch pales sitting neatly in the back seat. Grandma Kitty pulled her burlap sack from beneath the seat and Pearl jumped out without losing a single daisy from her bouquet.
As they walked up the old mountain trail Grandpa looked over at an old cabin and said, “Pearl, that there is where your great, great, great grandpappy built his home after beating them there Red Coats.”
Though abandoned the lonely the cabin still held its position strongly on the side of the mountain creating a natural fortification against potential attack from indians.
Grandma Kitty spied a bit of wormseed and she strayed from the trail to gather some to grind. Some of the neighbor’s kids had needed a batch of her remedy to rid them of worms.
The canopy of the dogwood trees almost hid the entrance to the little cemetery.
As you walk between two majestic oak trees, in a clearing high on top of the mountain, was this lush green field with lines of stones marking departed loved ones. Some stones were store bought with fancy writing on them while some were simply mountain stone where someone had chiseled in the name of those gone on.
Pearl had made this trip before and knew the ritual just as if it was a part of daily life.
As they stopped near the edge of the cemetery, Pearl gave half of the daisies to her father ‘cept six.
He took them and walked over to where his mother slept. He sat down on the grass next to the stone and started talking with her. He told her about how the crops were last year, how the children were, and anything he thought might interest her.
As he did this Kitty took Pearl’s hand and they walked to the graves of the other six mothers who came before her and placed one daisy on each plot of mountain ground.
When they finished Bill had placed his flowers on the grave, told his mom how much he loved her and said goodbye once again.
He joined Kitty and Pearl and they walked slowly to the edge of the cemetery that went up to the very edge of the mountainside.
Pearl still tightly gripped the other half of the bouquet and when the time was right she gave it to Kitty ‘cept one.
Kitty quietly held the bouquet and looked to the east to her ancestral home, she called out to the four winds to carry her love to her mother dear and she tossed the daisies across the sky and they flew through the air off the mountainside.
As Kitty walked back to join Bill and Pearl, Pearl looked up at her and handed her the one remaining daisy she would not relinquish earlier.
“Mommy, I want you to have my love now. I don’t want to wait until I have to talk to a stone or to the four winds.”
Kitty put her arms around her and Bill put his around Kitty’s. They stood there and gazed off the mountainside watching the four winds carry the daisies across the sky.
For more stories of the Gravelly Spur, see the book “A Mountain Pearl.”

The loss of history dooms our future

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As we worked in the recording studio, the nearby fireworks popped and boomed in the sky nearby.
After a 10-hour day in the studio of producing the amazing talents of a group of youth bringing together some original music to share to radio, my mind set back to the coming day ahead – Independence Day.
In our family, the day always marked my late mother’s birth, now 91 years earlier, but my folks never let me forget that it stood for something so much more when a group of American patriots gathered, debated and ultimately signed a document to cut our colonial ties with England beginning years of war.
For most of these men, it meant loss, hardships and an uncertain future, but because they made the choice, our country was set on a path to freedom.
We are still a young country in the realm of our world’s history, yet in recent years, it seems many people and groups the align with spend a lot of time reframing history to reflect the lense if today’s experience and thinking. Overseas under the cloud that has risen the last two decades, we have seen terrorists destroy historical places, statues, artifacts, because those that created them did not align with their beliefs. Thousands of years wiped from the face of the earth because of the thoughts of someone today with no respect for those who came before or a desire to learn from their existence.
They judge the actions and thoughts of those set in a different time and place and often in a world we could not even envision living within, condemning them for their place in history sometimes on one aspect of their choices within the bounds of the society in which they survived.
Generations of our ancestors lived in a world in which slavery was the norm, in fact many of our own ancestors, were slaves at some point, whether they were sold into slavery for profit or as the spoils of victory between warring peoples, were born as a serf spending their life toiling for a royal land owner, or became an indentured servant to work off a debt or secure something better years in the future.
In reality, today, there are millions of our brothers and sisters living around the world who are toiling in slavery today, with their lives bartered and sold at the whims of others. Sadly, this is true even within the shadows in our present day America, inside the norms of certain cultures, and in the sex trafficking trade.
Many of us have seen the news or historical reports of millions of people killed in places around the world in an effort to end the existence of a race or tribe of people, a group of people who worship in a particular religion, or people with a different political ideology and national allegiance.
Even within our short-lived history in America, our ancestors have fought wars, skirmishes and battles to win the American continent from native indigenous people and other European powers that dominated various regions and took public policies on our own soil, that resulted in certain people following particular religions, being or certain race or nationality being persecuted or not given equal opportunities.
So, some activists, choose to wipe out the admiration and acknowledgement of millions of past Americans for the contributions of presidents, governors, legislators, scholars, educators, explorers, statesmen, military officers, and just plain folks because they condemn where that person fell on an issue, belief, political alliance or life choice. Unfortunately, now, many of have found themselves in positions of power, whether elected, appointed or hired and they bow to the loud voices of the present ignoring the voices of the millions who came before and choosing to hide away our history. Though in their time they worked and raised monies to erect statues, place monuments to people who in their time and their circumstances were those who moved or changed the world in a positive way.
As a result, we have seen statues moved, monuments destroyed, plaques taken down. At least in our country the activists have not taken on the ‘let’s blow it to kingdom come’ approach we have seen of some of our world’s greatest treasures overseas.
If we revise our history and the people who made it to suit our present prospectives, how will we learn from past mistakes? Our world and all aspects of the human experience were brought forward by flawed individuals. It’s by examining their experiences, their flaws from the modern-day lense, that we are not doomed to repeat the history they experienced. But if we tear down our past, we are simply setting ourselves up for more of the same. Learn from those who came before, don’t judge their actions based on where we are.
If you want to fix something, the same atrocities from the past exist today…. Fix that, if you look close enough, there is a living breathing person who is within your midst who needs the attention to change their life and circumstances. Spend your energies on fixing that, rather than trying to win a victory over those who can no longer speak for themselves.

 

Music DVD – Concert of Celebration

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Concert of Celebration DVDMusic DVD – Concert of Celebration

$25 Donation


Share America Foundation, Inc. features in the 2012 release a cast of music stars and legends Starring Randall Franks with Guest Stars (In order of appearance) Paul Brown, The Marksmen Quartet, John and Debbie Farley, Ramblin’ “Doc” Tommy Scott, and Luke McLuke, Curly Seckler, Charlie “Peanut” Faircloth with the Trust Jesus Singers, Chubby Wise,  David Davis, Johnny Counterfit, Gary Waldrep, Barney Miller, Jeff & Sheri Easter, Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys, Butch Lanham, Doodle and the Golden River Grass,  Dale Tilley, Jesse McReynolds, Johnnie Sue, and Nelson Richardson. Two Hours of Entertainment, 29 Musical Performances including these favorites and more:
Ain’t Gonna Study War ♫ Amazing Grace ♫ Grandpa Was A Farmer  ♫ How Great Thou Art ♫ Wayfaring Stranger ♫ Crying My Heart Out For You ♫ You Can’t Stop Time ♫ Lord, I Am Coming Home ♫ When the Saints Go Marching In ♫ Golden Slippers ♫ Farther Along ♫ The Way Is In God’s Hands ♫ The Other Side of Heaven ♫ Cripple Creek  ♫ In the Garden ♫ Swing Low, Sweet Chariot ♫ You Better Get Ready ♫ Back Up And Push ♫ When They Ring Those Golden Bells for You and Me ♫ What a Friend We Have in Jesus ♫  The Old Gospel Ship ♫ Meet Me in Heaven ♫ I Want to Go There

Two Hours of Entertainment, 29 Musical Performances featuring a host of stars raising funds for the Share America Foundation, Inc. available for a $25 donation.