Knox County TN mail list

knoxcotn-digest Saturday, July 15 2000 Volume 01 : Number 109

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Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 13:16:34 EDT

From: Blindmansi@aol.com

Subject: [KnoxCoTN] Dana Bruce m. Charles Murphy 1967 Knox county

Can anyone help me find any info on either of these 2 person's married in

1967 in Knox county - perhaps the middle initial of charles or what other

family members he might be related to , or Dana's parents 1st names (I

believe her father was a Charles Bruce) - and if this union created any

descendants?? Any help anyone could offer would be wonderful !! Thanks!!

Beth - blindmansi@aol.com

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Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 20:44:01 -0700

From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org>

Subject: Re: [KnoxCoTN] Knox County Pest House

This is way cool info -- thank you!

Wonder if we could get the authors to let us put the book on-line?

At 09:28 AM 7/12/00 -0700, J. C. Tumblin, OD wrote:

>diseases in Knox County during those early days of medicine, but Dr.

>Platt's History of Knox County Medicine has a number of references.

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Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 21:13:00 -0700

From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org>

Subject: [KnoxCoTN] Civil War Pension File Card Indices

Ancestry has put 2.5 million or so Civil War Pension file index cards on-line.

Go look! It's the Images Online link near the top center of the page on

www.ancestry.com

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Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 13:24:02 -0400

From: "Clayton McNew" <cmcnew.wats.bar@worldnet.att.net>

Subject: [KnoxCoTN] Mary Adcock Hamilton

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Does anyone have any knowledge of Mary Adcock born 1894 died 1915. =

Married to Vollie E. Hamilton Jan 21, 1913. Buried in Thorngrove =

Cemetery.

Clayton McNew

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<DIV><FONT color=3D#000000 size=3D2>Does anyone have any knowledge of =

Mary Adcock=20

born 1894 died 1915. Married to Vollie E. Hamilton Jan 21, 1913. Buried =

in=20

Thorngrove Cemetery.</FONT></DIV>

<DIV><FONT color=3D#000000 size=3D2>Clayton =

McNew</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>

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Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 11:03:44 -0700

From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org>

Subject: [KnoxCoTN] 16 July 2000: Sunday Afternoon Rocking

Jan's essay this week really moved me.

I've always considered myself just a temporary guardian of family heirlooms

that have been entrusted to my care. After all, the items and the stories

and the ancestors they represent belong to the next generation. Over the

past couple of years, as my precious nieces and nephews have begun reaching

out their hands toward adulthood, I've found myself studying them closely

to see who would genuinely appreciate which treasure. It's a heavy burden,

but I am grateful God thought I could carry it successfully, for I have

truly enjoyed making my life's journey in the close company of my ancestors.

=============================================================

When Serendipity Has Given us Roots" (from the Sunday Afternoon Rocking

series)

Afternoon All,

It is a white stoneware pitcher, quite heavy to hold. It has absolutely no

decoration, is very plain and in its own way almost elegant in its smooth

curved lines and lack of adornment. And there is a story of 150 years

behind its travels through a family, a story not unlike many stories behind

our family treasures, if we but knew what they were. In this case, the

story is known.

Not long ago I spoke on the roots of our families that are lost...to rest

unknown in antique malls, museums, to grace the home of a stranger. But

there are other thoughts I have had along these lines. It has long seemed

strange to me how the roots of the past are distributed, how they manage to

turn up in the oddest places, perhaps even with descendents or connections

to a family that they were never at one time intended to end up with. So

many things can account for that: untimely deaths, the need for speed

rather than thoughtfulness in winding up an estate, descendents living too

far away to enter into the finalization of family property, the

decision-making generation not being one to appreciate the treasure in

those things they have taken for granted for so long, debts that take

precedence over keepsakes, remarriages...the possibilities are endless, and

always they bespeak of a "meaning to", a "going to get around to", that

never really happens. Sometimes, of course, where a piece of a family's

past ends up is not so much unfair or sad, as it is a curious quirk of fate

and events...an unfolding of a long story that finally meant that

"heirloom" wound up in the hands of someone who truly treasured it, and

understood the serendipity that brought it into her hands. My story, the

true story of a simple white milk pitcher, may be very similar in nature to

the story that brought you too, something worth little in terms of monetary

value, but worth a good deal in terms of roots and belonging.

1858

Marcilla Brandon Carney was young when she died in 1858, only thirty years

old. She left two year old daughter, Elizabeth, to be raised by her father

and later, a step-mother. She left little in terms of worldly possessions,

but among what little she had was a white milk pitcher.

1874

Elizabeth remembered nothing of her mother, and must have longed to have

something of her to remember by. The day she left home and married Henry

Madden Fitzhugh in 1874, she chose to take with her as a new bride one

thing that had been her mother's. It was a milk pitcher, white, heavy,

functional...but also a piece of her past. It made her feel closer to the

mother she never really knew to use this practical pitcher every day in the

same way her mother must have, to run her hands over its smooth curves as

she poured from it, and know her mother must have done the same.

1910

In 1910, Henry was beside himself, frustrated about the one thing that

mattered most to him in the world, and the one thing he had no power to

control in his world. He was known as a stern patriarch, a hard taskmaster,

but his one soft spot was reserved for his wife, Elizabeth. She grew

thinner and paler, coughing endlessly throughout the days and nights.

Finally in desperation, he cut his ties to the successful business he had

built with his brother. He rented the cars of a train to transport all of

his worldly belongings, the livestock, the household furnishings (including

of course, the milk pitcher), all of his family and farm hands that would

leave Tennessee, and he bundled up Elizabeth to take her to Texas, sure

that the wide open spaces, the fresh air, the warmth of a different climate

was his only hope for keeping her alive. They left behind three married

daughters. Minnie married in 1910, when it became obvious that she must

choose between accompanying her family, or leaving her sweetheart. She

chose Tom. She saw her mother off that day on the train, and she wept all

the way home with Tom in the wagon, realizing without a doubt that she

would likely never see her mother alive again, never share the thoughts of

a young wife, never watch her mother enjoy the grandchildren she would

bear. Elizabeth died in Texas in 1913, less than three years from the day

Henry settled her there.

1937

Minnie Fitzhugh Dennis had lived a hard but simple life. She raised four

daughters, and late in life, just when it seemed unlikely no male child

would ever appear, like Sarah of the Old Testament, she was fruitful, and

she named her son Thomas after his father, and Henry after her own. She had

been in no position to make the long trek to Texas after the death of her

mother, but with most of her children grown, when word came in 1937 that

Henry too had died, she and her young son Tommie boarded a train and went

finally to the land that her parents had settled twenty-seven years before.

It was bittersweet, being reunited with her many brothers and sisters after

so long a time, and the reason for the reunion being such a sad occasion.

Minnie wanted little for herself, but she did return with one momento of

the mother she had said good-bye to so long ago.... a white milk pitcher.

In her mind's eye she would forever see Elizabeth hovering over a bountiful

meal spread on a long ago table, the pitcher in her hand as she looked to

see that each at her table had what he needed and was satisfied.

1947

Tommie was sixteen when his mother died. He and his mother had been close,

perhaps closer than she had been to any of her other children, and during

the long years before her death, when she lay abed, brave in her pain, he

had nursed her. She lay in her sick bed with the kitchen door open so that

she could direct him in the cooking for his father and the farm hands, and

thus he learned to cook as well as she. Minnie's sister, Mavis, returned to

Tennessee for the funeral, and spotting the milk pitcher she too remembered

as her mother's, she determined to take it back with her when she went

home. But now Tommie, too, had memories of that pitcher. It represented

days when his mother bustled about a kitchen, busily tending to her family

and friends. And he knew, too, how much that pitcher had meant to her. In

his grief, he knew only that his aunt was about to take a piece of his

mother away from him, and he was not about to say good-bye to anything that

was in any way dear to her. He hid the milk pitcher, and Mavis returned to

Texas without it.

1984

My father died young, far too young. He had in his possession bits and

pieces of the roots of our family, none of these valuable in any manner of

speaking except in terms of the heart. As his only child, those bits and

pieces came to me. The white milk pitcher, since 1858 kept by first one and

then another through the generations in memory of a mother, now I looked at

and treasured in memory of a father.

2000

I have no idea why tradition and the past has always been important to me.

Perhaps it was because most of my growing up years were spent without

permanent roots in places where no one was related. Perhaps it was because

stories had always fascinated me, and I clung hungrily to each story that I

overheard that involved my own past and roots. Perhaps it was the heavy

responsibility that weighed on my shoulders when I realized that indeed our

family was very small, dying out actually, and I was the last of our line

to bear the family name. For whatever reason, the milk pitcher, as all

those other little bits and pieces, had truly come to the right person. It

has been treasured, and the story recited to those who have ears to listen,

as have other stories about other bits and pieces of the past that are here

and there about my home. But now the time has come to do more than simply

enjoy these things, but to be sure that somehow in someway the serendipity

continues, that these things indeed remain with the family they belong to,

and their stories be given with them. That too, is a heavy responsibility,

a worry....and a pleasure. And the next time the milk pitcher passes hands,

perhaps again, it will be treasured in memory of a mother.

just a thought,

jan

.________________________________________________

(Note: Afternoon Rocking messages are meant to be passed on, meant to be

shared...simply share as written without alterations...and in entirety.

Thanks, jan)

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End of knoxcotn-digest V1 #109

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