Wolves at the door

The one who was the church clerk

Last week my cousin from New Hampshire was visiting, and we made the genealogy rounds.

Samford University's Special Collections has a treasure trove of old Alabama Baptist church records. In between learning that one ancestor was a church clerk and that another was excluded (thrown out) twice, I overheard this conversation:

"Listen to this. The church has been in two previous locations."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. It says they had to move the first time because the church was built in a spot with no access to water. The second time, they had to move because of too much activity from Timber Wolves in the area!"

Actually I'm sure they meant Red Wolves (Canis rufus), since there never were any Timber Wolves (Gray Wolves, Canis lupus) in Alabama.

The Red Wolf was declared extinct in the wild in the 1980s.

There are now over 16 million Southern Baptists.

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Red Wolf Recovery Project

Red Wolves of Alligator River

Red Wolf Coalition

This page shows the historical range of the Red Wolf. The subspecies that lived in Alabama, called the Florida Red Wolf (Canis rufus floridanus) was completely extinct by 1930. A second subspecies, the Mississippi Red Wolf, Canis rufus gregoryi, was extinct by 1970, leaving only the Texas Red Wolf, Canis rufus rufus, the species being used in the Recovery Project.

100 years ago

I was bitten by the genealogy bug.

I was also bitten by the 19th century fashion bug. More precisely, the bug pertaining to the period of fashion between 1840 and 1920. (The better to date old photos.)

The side effect is that I have become one of those people who wants to shout out historical inaccuracies in the middle of movies.

"They won an academy award for this?! Women didn't wear bustles in 1900!"

Or, "That sleeve wasn't invented until 1880!"

Even, "That dress has an 1840s bodice and a 1910 sleeve!"

And so on.

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The photo was taken in northwest Georgia, a little over 100 years ago. Judging from the baby's age and the plant growth: around September 1905. The two men in the middle (wearing bowties) are my ancestors three and four generations back. The older woman is my great-great-grandmother Martha, born in 1852. She's the daughter of Julia Ann of the broken heart.

The baby in this picture, Ennis, died in a Typhoid outbreak in July of 1921. A relative wrote:

"During the huckleberry season, about 9 people in our community had typhoid fever from drinking water from the stream in the mountain. Grace and I recovered." Seven others died.

My Mom told me that they normally started picking huckleberries on the 4th of July every year. Ennis died at one o'clock in the afternoon, on Sunday July 17th. He was 16 years old. (Antibiotic treatment for typhoid would not be available for another 27 years.)

I imagine his family had been frantic, calling two different doctors to see him. He had two death certificates, filled out by different doctors. The first began treating him on July 10th, and the second on July 13th.*

I love collecting stories about relatives from the past, but they are often so tragic.

The inscription on Ennis' tombstone reads, "Just in the morning of his day, In youth and love he died." This was apparently a fairly common saying to put on a young person's stone, and I wondered if it was from a poem.

I found in "Hymns for Christian Devotion" (copyright 1853!) one called "Death of a Scholar". It includes the lines,

Death has been here, and borne away
A brother from our side :
Just in the morning of his day,
As young as we he died.

I believe this was later changed in some churches, to this version I found listed from another tombstone:

Death has been here and born away
a brother from our side :
Just in the morning of his day,
In youth and love he died.

I also found "so fair and young he died" as an ending for this epitaph. It seemed to have been common to use just the last two lines.

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* A historian at the Georgia State Archives told me that she'd seen two death certificates for the same person before, but never from two different doctors.

How rude!

How rude, to just disappear for so many moons with no explanation.

In the beginning, I didn't realize it would be so long. I intended to start back several times, but somehow my good intentions kept getting foiled. (Evil forces, no doubt.)

Listlessness, lassitude, lethargy. Laziness! And also a bit of a detour towards a genealogical addiction.

I know, those dead relatives aren't really going anywhere. But with the living ones, well you never know. Got to prise all those deep dark family secrets out of them while they're still around. Got to motivate them to dig in the closet for those old portraits, before they're sold for a song at the estate sale (since nobody has a clue who those old moldy dudes are anymore).

Anyway. Sorry for the long absence. Hope you'll forgive me.

In a graveyard

I dragged my mother and great aunt all over northwest Georgia last week, searching for ancestors.



The wall around this graveyard was built in the 1880s.



I like old graveyards in general, but finding people you're related to makes it even more interesting.

I don't think Elmina's family could write. So the carver inscribed the tombstone as they must have pronounced it: Elminer.

It seems in pretty good shape for something that's been out in the weather for over 100 years.



There's her husband, Berry. I'm a little surprised that they chose such a different style of headstone for him.

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P.S. Title of this post is my favorite Rufus Wainwright song. (Click the "preview" button at that link and you can hear a snippet.)

You get some really interesting images when you search Google Images for the phrase in a graveyard.