Recollections of Recollections

By Alice Logan Wingo

                In this year 1937, the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of my grandfather’s birth, I am trying to set down my recollections of my mother’s recollections of her father so that his memory “shall not perish from the earth”.

                Arthur Foster Jackson, Esquire, of Jackson Hill, North Pacolet, in Spartanburg District, South Carolina, was born September 21, 1787, four days after the historic Seventeenth when the Constitution was signed and our young Republic formally and officially set upon its feet.

                The country into which Foster Jackson was born was only eleven years removed from British control (eleven if you count from the Declaration of Independence; six, if you count from the Yorktown surrender) and the agrarian South continued for a considerable time, in manner of life, essentially British provincial, and the 19^th Century of my grandfather’s later years was as Victorian in America as in England – or nearly so.

                On June 20^th, 1837, when the eighteen-year-old Victoria was awakened at dawn to be told that she was queen of England, my mother was one year old, lacking three days, and the household of which she had become a toddling member was one of plentiful offspring and rather austere Presbyterian piety. Adeline Marilla was the twelfth child and there were two more yet to be born.

                Her oldest brother, Alexander Carruth, was twenty-one, the year of her birth and left home to make his own start in life. He soon attained a responsible position in the county seat town and was made a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church of Spartanburg. His visits home were among my mother’s earliest happy memories. This stately young man with his gallant manner toward their gentle mother seemed like a prince to the little sister. His name, Carruth, was his mother’s maiden name and her mother was Sarah Logan, daughter of Robert Logan, an officer in the Patriot Army in the Revolutionary War. The Logans had come to the up-country from Charleston. One of the three Logan brothers who came from Scotland together died in Charleston and was buried in St. Philip’s Churchyard. Robert Logan established himself in what is now Polk County, N.C., and built a home of unusual comfort for the day in the mountainous country. Its system of water works with pipes made of three trunks became a local tradition.

                The Carruths lived in the Rutherford District and their land titles are recorded in the Court House register. My mother went to the courthouses of both Rutherford and Polk to examine the records in her effort to collect information about the family. Alexander Carruth married Sarah Logan and their daughter, Marilla King Carruth, married Arthur Foster Jackson.

                The Jacksons belonged to a Scotch-Irish community in the Waxhaws District of upper South Carolina. John, the grandfather, and Samuel Jackson, the father of Foster, and Alexander Carruth, his wife’s father, were both soldiers in the Revolutionary War.

                The Jacksons had flocks and herds and apparently moved from the banks of the Catawba to the North Pacolet River in search of fresh pasturage. My mother distinctly remembered the plantation homes of uncle Billy (her father’s brother), Cousin Robert, Cousin Jim, Cousin Andrew, uncle Sam (a cousin, but always called “Uncle Sam”), and Cousin Tom on South Pacolet.

                Foster Jackson’s home was called Jackson Hill, and the Post Office in his house was given that name. The neighbors coming for their mail would linger to discuss public affairs and would break the wax wafers that sealed their letters and share their personal news with each other. Foster Jackson was a close reader of the newspapers of his day and liked to have good talk around him.

                The year that marked the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne of England saw the inauguration of the first president of the United States who was not born a British subject. As Martin Van Buren rode to his inauguration, Andrew Jackson, whom he was succeeding, sat by his side in the phaeton and on the platform listened to “Little Van” as he read his inaugural address, which Philip Guedalla tells us, was marked by “dignified circumlocutions and a distinct spirit of optimism” Officially proclaimed optimism was not, however, able to stay the crash of 1837 which plunged the country into a nationwide financial panic.

                The nation at that time, it must be remembered, covered less than half its present area. The states made from the Louisiana Purchase – Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana formed our Western frontier. In 1837 Texas declared herself free from Mexico and applied for admission into the Union, but President Van Buren did not feel disposed to add complications with Mexico to his very sufficient perplexities and the Lone Star State had to wait. Because of his rather deft touch in handling difficult situations, Van Buren was sometimes called “the little magician”, but at this crisis, says historian Guedalla, “he refused to wave his magic wand and 16,000,000 Americans had to get through 1837 somehow.

                My mother being only a year old naturally had no recollection of depression talk, and indeed, the depression was little felt by the home-living, self-sustaining agricultural population. They raised their own meat and grain and sent their cattle and hogs in droves to nearby markets and the up-country Carolinian made an annual marketing trip to Columbia to lay in a year’s supply of sugar, coffee, tea, spices and dress materials. On each trip some fine horses could be sold and the master would return with enough currency of the realm in his saddlebags to last through the ensuing year.

The ex-president, who, during his occupancy of the executive office, had kept the country in considerable agitation, was not easily forgotten, and when my mother, as a little schoolgirl, saw his picture in the history books she thought he was her father’s cousin Andrew (son of Thomas, son of Samuel). The resemblance was striking but she was told that although the families were both Scotch-Irish and from the same Carolina piedmont region, no relationship could be traced. Stonewall Jackson also belonged to the same Scotch-Irish stock and it is likely that there was a connection for J. B. O. Landrum in his History of Spartanburg County says that the Jacksons of that county came from Virginia. My mother’s recollection was very definite, however, on the point of a settlement first on the Catawba and then on the Pacolet River.

                These Jacksons were stamped with the genuine British ball mark – a sense of property, a strong instinct for holding land; the Scotch habit of “looking on both sides of the family penny before parting with it” was not altogether absent; but their ruling passion, perhaps, was their love of good horses. My mother would often speak of the great pasture where she, as a little girl, would sit on the fence in the late afternoon and watch the horses and colts come up for their feeding. Every son and every daughter was assigned his or her own saddle horse, and much of the happiness and much of the heartache of her youth was associated with horses. She loved the story of her father when he was a tiny lad living with his grandmother. One day he saw a grand lady come riding up through the grove and stop at the horselock. He ran to his grandmother crying, “Oh, come, there is the beautifullest lady on the beautifullest horse.” His grandmother hurried to the door and said, “My precious baby, that is your mother.” The young mother had been on a sad pilgrimage the whole length of the state, taking her husband in an improvised ambulance, with a bed swung in a covered wagon, to Charleston to seek expert medical advice. Her servants drove the wagon team and she rode on her horse alongside. The patient did not recover and she made the trip back with the empty wagon and the faithful black men. Later the young widow married William Kelso, a very fine Scotch gentleman and Foster Jackson had Kelso half brothers and sisters.

                My mother had very distinct memories of her father as an active citizen, a devoted churchman, a friendly neighbor, a watchful parent, and a kind master of slaves.

                Public funds for schools, if any, were so inadequate that neighborhood schools had to be supported by private subscriptions of the patrons, and my grandfather was a liberal contributor as he always furnished a generous number of pupils. That she had to walk three miles to school seemed no hardship to the little daughter Adeline, school was such a region of enchantment. Professor York, the best remembered of the masters, came from some vague region called the North and seemed to know everything, and Adeline’s eagerness to learn everything was as keen as a physical hunger. Murray’s Grammar, Webster’s Spelling Book and McGuffey’s Readers offered a challenge that she accepted with as excited a sense of coming victory, as any knight of old picking up the gauntlet of his challenger.

                Spelling classes gave her a chance to work her eager way to the head “turning down” great tall boys twice her age. Friday afternoon “speaking” brought before her delighted imagination “Horatio at the Bridge”, “Bingen on the Rhine”, Marco Bozzaris”, and “Linden when the Sun was Low”, which the boys roared out with “fine frenzy”. But here Adeline had to recognize her limitation, the handicap of being a girl-a girl in the Victorian era. Boys were permitted to wave their arms like windmills if they chose, but a girl must never left her arm from her side. The elbow must be held close to the waistline with feminine reserve and modesty. Adeline longed to cry, “Charge, charge – on, Stanley, on”, but how could she get Lord Marmion’s dying fury into it with only a wave of her hand from the wrist?

                School offered opportunity for the development of an ethical code, and the big girls formed themselves into a club in which they agreed upon certain rules and standards of lady-like behavior. They were never to walk upon the school road with boys. They would linger, packing up their books and slates until the boys had gone, and then they would walk together. It was unthinkable that one of their number should be untruthful or dishonest but when such a case arose they dealt with it thoroughly. A girl named Sallie Anne had been making trouble by telling one girl that a certain other girl was “talking about her”. Presently she had half the big girls in the school at odds with each other, passing their best friends without speaking. Then the girls had a meeting and solemnly vowed never, never again to believe a word that Sallie Anne said, not as long as they lived. Estranged friends flew back to each other’s arms and peace and confidence were restored.

                Foster Jackson saw that his children were regular in their school tasks and had the schoolmaster often at Jackson Hill to stimulate and encourage them. He himself was the advisor and the playmate of his boys. On the level, grassy yard under the oak and chestnut trees father and sons had many contests of strength and endurance, the father doing wheel-springs and somersaults with the agility of the youngest. In winter fireside games he liked to take a sly part, making a surprise ending to the delight of the youngsters.

                My mother remembered one evening when they were playing indoor hide-and-seek, her father sitting in his big chair reading his paper. When the “seekers” had all gone outside, the father rose and put the “hider” into his chair, gave him his paper and slipped out to await events. The “seekers” trooped back in and looked everywhere behind doors, tables, in closets, behind curtains, everywhere, and at last gave it up. Then the father came in, gleefully rubbing his hands, and lifted the newspaper and revealed the “hider” in his coat and spectacles.

                Sometimes Adeline would be awakened in the night by the baying of hunting dogs and distant shouts. The next morning at the breakfast table the boys would say: “The McKinneys and Grays were out with their dogs last night. The Maybry boys from Tyger were up here yesterday. Guess what that brought them.” If the Jackson boys wanted to join in the fun they did not say so, for Foster Jackson never encouraged night sports. They excited the negroes, and led to night prowling. The boys had their horses and could take their pleasure in the daytime. It is probable that they went down in the river pasture sometimes to watch the negroes race the horses when the father was away. If so, nothing was ever said about it. My mother could ride any horse in the pasture and all her life longed to see the Derby but never did.

                Adeline remembered her father in those days of his middle life as almost constantly in the saddle, a heavy-set figure with blue eyes and florid complexion, riding over the plantation to see that the darkies were at work; or making a round of calls on the sick; or riding over to the other river plantations to see if Billy and Sam and Robert and Jim and the rest of them were all right; or stopping at every house in the neighborhood to invite everybody to the preaching service at the little North Pacolet Church. They had a sermon only one Sunday a month, but it was unfailingly of generous length and packed with solid doctrine. Foster Jackson was a ruling elder who did not neglect the duties of his office. At home on Sundays he would gather the children around him in a circle and have them study the Shorter Catechism. They used to wonder why it was called shorter! They were yet to wrestle with the Larger Catechism and, the Confession of Faith. Adeline delighted in the long and learned words and soon had at her tongue’s end the definitions of sanctification, regeneration, adoption, original sin, and all the rest.

                Perhaps the most highly valued of all the guests that frequented Jackson Hill were the ministers. They were hospitably invited to come and bring their families, and spend the summer, which they not infrequently did, and thus the master and mistress of the home and their children formed some of their most enduring friendships. Little Adeline would read greedily all the books the guests brought with them and her mind was soon well furnished with scriptural interpretations and Calvinistic implications. Every two years there was a baby to be baptized in the family –my mother never used the term “Christened”-and she did not know that there was any other form of administering the rite except that to which she was accustomed, until one Sunday when she was taken to a riverside where she heard singing on the bank an saw tents to which the wet figures withdrew. She was in great perplexity, thinking that her father should have told her of this thing. As soon as she reached home she ran to the big Bible with the pictures to see if she could find the tents. Failing in this, she went to her father and asked him what it meant. He explained that there were people who held a different belief from his. “But how could there be a different way of thinking about things that you had been taught were right and true” her unbending young mind protested. And she took her own little Bible and went up on the hillside to sit beside the graves of her mother and little sister Martha and think and think.

                The dearly loved mother had died at the birth of her fourteenth child, Elizabeth, when Adeline was only six, and two years later her playmate, Martha, next to her in age, had been laid beside the mother in the family burial ground on the hill which Adeline could see from her lonely window. After the mother’s death her sister Margaret Carruth, whom the children called “Auntie” came from Florida to care for the baby, and so fully occupied was she with her charge that she took little notice of the solitary Adeline, except to call her to come and hold the baby’s diapers in front of the fire to warm, or to bring the baby’s basket with the castile soap and bag of starch to powder its little hips, or to run to the kitchen to tell the cook to get the baby’s orris root and sugar teat ready.

                                But this was a time of silence with the black mammy. She knew her master was a good man. He was good to his darkies and never called them slaves or niggers. When they were sick he got on his horse and went for the doctor himself; he would not sell his darkies but when our Lovey married Marse Sam’s Ben, Master bought Ben so he and Lovey could live together; and didn’t Master take his darkies to the white folks’ church to hear the preachers from way off? Yes, Master was a good man. And the young girl on the bed heard only the crooning voice as the black mammy rocked back and forth. Some of the words of the hymn she was singing came to Adeline, for she knew it well:

                                “When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,

                                My grace all sufficient

                                Shall be thy supply;

                                The flames shall not hurt thee,

                                I only design

                                Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.”

Adeline groaned to think how much dross there was in her to be consumed. The preacher who had come for a week’s meeting had made her dismally aware of her sinful nature. She longed for the good Dr. Daniel Baker who could make you aware of God. He could tell her if loving her clean, nice book was sinful pride. She had been rebellious and angry. Oh, so much dross to consume! She would go up on the hill and sit by the graves.

                When Adeline was in her teens the fashion of Christian name diminutives became popular and she began to be called Addie and her sister, Elizabeth, Lizzie, and Addie she was from that time to the end of her four score and five years-“Aunt Addie”, “Cousin Addie”, “Miss Addie”. Once when one of her old servants announced that she was going to name her baby for Miss Addie, another one of the darkies asked, “And, what you gwine call it?” She replied, “I gwine call “Miss Addie” of course.” And so it was that the little black girl became “Saddie”.

                Addie’s teens did not pass without a touch of romance. Of the few love stories that she was allowed to read the one that stirred her imagination most deeply was that of Yehan of Agra who built the matchless Taj Mahal in memory of a dead love and a desolate home. When my mother was eighty years old she re-read the old story in a twentieth century magazine, and closing the book said, “Wonderful to have been loved like that.” Yes, in her teens she had her dreams; and into the neighborhood there came visiting a strange young man with merry ways and pleasant phrases who won her fancy, but the rumor began to run around the community that he was one who “looked upon the wine when it was red”, and Addie was warned. To her, duty and conscience were law’ and the harder a thing was, the surer she felt that it was right. “Stern daughter of the voice of God-Duty” settled the matter for Addie. But it left a scar.

                When a suitor from the growing and rather glowing town came, the careful father made inquiry and found that he was a young man of industrious and steady habits and as bookkeeper in the leading dry goods company (Twitty Brothers) had good business prospects. He was approved by the father and the wedding day was set.

Of the courtship customs of the 50’s my mother could never be persuaded to talk freely. Reticence in such matters was a part of her code. On being pressed for an answer by some teasing young cousin once, she said, “No, indeed, I never kissed your cousin William before we were married.” “But did he kiss you?” they urged. She reserved the right not to answer this question but told them that it was not considered modest for a lady to allow a gentleman to touch her ungloved hand.  She could put her foot into his outstretched palm for him to lift her into her saddle. This was a graceful way to mount. There was a familiar saying, however, that by reason of protecting skirts and pantalettes, a gentleman could never know the size of a lady’s foot except by measuring her track in the sand.

                The bridal festivities of the period were planned to cover three days. From the bride’s home where the initial feast was held, the wedded pair was attended by their young friends to the second day affair given by relatives of the groom, then the bridal procession proceeded to the place where the young couple were to make their home. Many years after my father’s death an old friend of his, trying to describe my father as a young man, said, “He was so graceful!”, and it came about in the late 50’s that my graceful father and my pretty mother, with clear blue eyes, dark smooth hair and rosy cheeks were borne away by merry friends from the old Pacolet home and left peering into a future that looked very fair and friendly.

                When my mother’s first baby was in her arms the War Between the States called the young husband into service and he left with his regiment-Black’s First Carolina-for Charleston where the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter. My mother took her baby and went to her father’s North Pacolet home. All Foster Jackson’s sons and sons-in-law of service age, and the oldest of his grandsons enlisted in the Confederate Army and all the young men of the community hurried to the front. The old men, the women and the children, were left under the protection of the negroes whose faithfulness to their masters’ families is perhaps without parallel in human history. The time was lawless and the plantation homes were in constant danger from roving bands of robbers. The negroes would watch and bring the news. At Marse Sam’s one night the robbers said they were going to hand Marse Sam up if he would not tell them where they had hid their gold and silver. Old Mill had her sons’ gold watches in her bosom and the negroes had taken valuables away in trunks to hide. The robbers let Marse Sam down, and went away but said they were coming back to get him. Night after night the negroes would creep out into the woods to see if the robbers were coming, but they were thought to be deserters dodging pursuit, and they did not venture across the river.

                Uncle Sam and his wife Martha, nicknamed Patsey, had a large and rich plantation and they were the greatest sufferers from the ravages of war among the Pacolet Jacksons. Their son, Madison, had married a few years before the war and had built his home on the South Pacolet. He with his two younger brothers, Robert and Alex, went into the army at the outbreak of the war. Robert was killed at Gettysburg and Alex, unmarried, died in prison at Point Lookout. Madison got back home after the surrender but became a victim to the tragic aftermath of war. In a sudden decision to go to Texas he arranged for his wife to bring the children and join him as soon as he had found a suitable place. She was a brave spirit, Cousin Carrie, and was soon on the way West with her five young children. When she reached the place appointed for the meeting with her husband, she was told that he had died while she was on her journey. After going to his grave and talking with every one who had seen him, she turned her face homeward – to the place on South Pacolet where the little family had been so happy and hopeful. She had a good plantation and built a handsome house in the colonial style which she called “Ingleside.” Later she married Dr. J. B. O. Landrum, beloved physician and author of the History of Spartanburg County.

                Robert Jackson married Martha Gouldlock, sister of Cousin Carrie. They left only one child, Ella. Large families were the rule among the Jacksons and this was an almost unique case of “an only child” in the family connection. A very lovely young lady was Cousin Ella, with beautiful hair falling below her waist. The chief ambition of the belles of the period was to be able to sit on their hair, and this was achieved. Cousin Ella married Thomas Collins and her eldest son, Col. Wilbur Collins, is in the military service of his country-so completely has the country been reunited since his grandfather fell at Gettysburg.

                The soldiers returning to their homes at the close of the war found scenes of such utter desolation, land neglected and impoverished, incapable of producing without the aid of commercial fertilizer, which they had no money to buy, and from Texas came such alluring stories of rich black soil, it is small wonder that a steady stream of covered wagons could be seen journeying westward in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

                First and last, as many of Foster Jackson’s children went west as remained in the native state, to be exact, seven of the fourteen were caught in the westward migration. First and farthest to go were Perry and Wilds who answered the Westward Ho of ’49. A marvelous thing had happened. Mexico, had ceded the great California region to the United States in 1848, and in 1849 the discovery of gold on what had just become United States territory caused a frantic rush to the Pacific coast. Perry and Wilds took the journey by water, and wrote back thrilling accounts of doubling the Horn, but after they reached California their reports were not reassuring. California had not proved the El Dorado of their dreams, it was feared. Their letters became scattering and at last stopped. The news came later that Wilds had died in 1869, after his marriage to Miss Sue Appling. Perry died in 1876.

                During the 50’s and 70’s Cotesworth, Penelope, Leland, and Arthur went to Texas. Cotesworth married Carrie McDonald Jones in 1855. Leland married Fannie Woodward in 1867. Arthur married Lenora Painter in 1866. Lizzie married William Hammelt in South Carolina in 1869 and went to Texas the following year.

                Pinkney Wolfe who had married Penelope Jackson in 1849 had gone early to the west and had built up a very successful business in Fannin County, Texas, the town that grew up being named for him, Wolfe’s Mill and later Wolfe City. Around this center the brothers-in-law built their homes. My mother went out to visit them in the 80’s and found a community of kinsfolk with the stamp of the old North Pacolet traits upon them. The descendants of these sons and daughters of my grandfather are now prominent in the civic and religious life of Dallas, Fort Worth, and Wolfe City. Many have scattered beyond the state-some are in California, some in Washington, D.C. The descendants of Cotesworth Jackson have preserved the family trait of good horsemanship. As wife of an army officer one of his granddaughters has ridden in the different Army posts up and down the land. Some of the descendants of Penelope Jackson and Pinkney Wolfe are still in Wolfe City; others have long been substantial citizens of Dallas, associated with the outstanding work of Dr. George Truett’s great church. One of the branches of this family has produced considerable musical talent.

                In South Carolina remained Foster Jackson’s eldest son, Carruth, who married Elvira Fielder in 1846 and moved from Spartanburg to Anderson County where he developed various business enterprises connected with the cotton interests. His descendants are still associated with the textile industries and banking. Carruth Jackson, like his father, was always a community leader and a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church to which his descendants faithfully adhere.

                In 1843 Sarah Jackson married Jason Wall, who established his home at the New Prospect on the main road from North Pacolet to Spartanburg. Here they reared their nine children and by his industry and sobriety he became one of the most trusted leaders of his community and a faithful deacon in the New Prospect Baptist Church. Sarah was a tireless housewife, never idle a moment. She made a garden after the pattern of the one at the old Jackson Hill home. On the day the bridal pair moved into their new house they planted two boxwoods at their garden gate; one named for him, one for her. Noted in the community were Jason’s fine peach orchards. The children of Margaret, Mary, Carruth, Penelope, and Addie gathered there with the children of Sarah through many years to eat of the fruit of these trees.

                Mary Joanna Jackson, who married Foster Clark in 1841, lived only twelve years after her marriage. Her son Arthur fought in the Civil War, afterwards married Rhoda Bomar and moved to Texas.

                Margaret Pinkney Jackson, who married William Collins in 1844, lived only twelve years after her marriage. Her daughter, Marilla, married Luther Bomar and moved to Texas. I have a child’s memory of these two cousins, sisters-in-law, Rhoda and Marilla as very lovely young women.

                Myra Jackson was the school marm of the family, and in 1869 at the age of forty-two she married John P. Sitton, a prominent citizen of Pickens County and an elder in the Presbyterian Church. The following year she died.

                Addie, who married William Johnson Wingo in 1857, had all of her household goods packed and ready to be lifted into a covered wagon for the Texas adventure in the early 70’s, but someone must stay behind to care for the father, Auntie, and Aunt Rachel. My mother volunteered, and in her decision was supported by my father who gave up his position in the town (Spartanburg) and moved his little family, the wife and three small daughters to the North Pacolet plantation. Some of the old servants had remained on the place after freedom was declared and with these my young father and mother went to work with energy and hopefulness. The old servants still looked to the old master for advice, direction and employment. My mother often told the story of one of her old colored “Aunties” who, after the War, had gone out to hunt for work. One day when a machinist from the North was repairing my mother’s sewing machine, my mother called Aunt Lovey in and introduced her saying, “Here is one of your friends, Aunt Lovey. One who helped to set you free.” “Set me free?” exclaimed the old woman, “Set me free from bread, that’s all they set me free from.” On the other hand, the younger generation of Southerners felt that they had been set free from a heavy burden of responsibility, and although the years just after the war were lean picked to the bone, they worked with a new sense of independence and a feeling that they were building on a surer foundation.

                Uncle Billy, my grandfather’s brother, and some of the cousins were still on the river plantations but there were few left to bear the Jackson name. Cousin Robert, who had married Nancy Jane Thompson, of the historic Nazareth Church settlement, left two children Margaret and Joe. Margaret married Professor William S. Morrison, whose distinguished career as teacher of History in Clemson College is a part of the History of higher education in South Carolina. Joe left four children, one a son named Robert for his grandfather, and this son has named his son Robert. This Robert is the third Robert in direct descent from Thomas Jackson, brother of Samuel, who was the father of Foster Jackson.

                Cousin Madison, son of Samuel, son of Thomas, son of Samuel, left five children, two of whom were sons, and these children were all reared on the South Pacolet estate, and some of the Jackson heirs still own and live on the ancestral lands. John, youngest son of Madison, built a very handsome residence on the Pacolet property near Campobella, not far from his mother’s home, “Ingleside,” which was the center of a fine hospitalite when I was a child. The lovely wedding of Cousin Leila was an event of much family interest, one of the daughters of Penelope and the oldest daughter of Addie were bridesmaids. One of the sons of Carruth Jackson was a frequent visitor at lovely Ingleside.

                Cousin Perry, son of John, son of Thomas married Emily Green. They built a very commodious house at Tandrum, S.C., but left no children.

                Cousin James and his very fine wife, Isabella Grey, had two sons, but I think they left no male heirs. One daughter, Angelina, married a Methodist minister named Morgan. Letitia, our lovely “Cousin Lettie”, married a Mr. Grikey.

                My grandfather’s brother Billy had two sons, James and Alphonso, and two daughters. If any heirs of the Jackson name are living I do not know how to reach them. Uncle Billy’s two daughters remained unmarried until they were no longer young, and the marriage of Cousin Mincra to Mr. David McClure in sober middle age was the first wedding of my childhood memory. The occasion was solemn. The ceremony was in the home and I was crowded in among silent grown up figures. My eyes traveled up the broadcloth legs of the tall minister from the Spartanburg Church. Near him stood his son, a slender lad, who seemed the only touch of youth in the scene except my two sisters. When the company gathered around the heavily laden table, all standing for the enjoyment of the ample wedding feast the gloom was not dispelled. This must have been because the bride was neither young nor beautiful. Uncle Billy’s other daughter, Euphemia, married Mr. Philip Rutledge. I was not present.

                At the Jackson Hill home all went quietly. My grandfather’s children were widely scattered and few of them within visiting distance. Sarah would ride over from New Prospect, eight rough country miles. She was no longer in her first youth but was still a fine figure on horseback.

                My mother was so busy with the care of the three invalids that Aunt Rachel would say, “My poor child, you never have time to walk. You run all the time.” But she never regretted her decision to stay. Like Charles Lamb’s great grandmother Field, our Auntie became the victim of a cruel cancer that came and bowed her down but could not bend her brave spirit. The two older little girls trotted tirelessly on errands to Auntie’s room and to Aunt Rachel’s cabin, taking choice bits of food, cool water from the spring, and pinks and roses from the grandmother’s dear garden. The blessings pronounced upon her children by the grateful black mammy were, my mother felt, beyond all price.

                In the distribution of tasks I became the small companion of the grandfather, escorting him to the table, accompanying him on his walks, sitting beside his big chair in my little chair while he would read and nod. I was three and he was eighty-five. When he would sing “How Firm a Foundation”, I would sing high while he sang low. From our daily walks he would return with some little story for Addie of what the baby had said or done. I would bring her a little fistful of flowers. My first biological observations and my first philosophical reflections were gathered on these infant adventures at my grandfather’s side. One day he told my mother that I had let loose his hand to go hopping after a toad that had crossed our path and had come back to ask, “Do frogs have a horn?” Another day I stumbled and fell. My whole small length was flat on the ground for an instant, then scrambling up, I said cheerfully, “I lack a fall down.” He chuckled all the way home, “You lack a fall down. I think you did entirely fall down.” After then when we would sit together and he would take off his spectacles and lay them on his Bible and begin to nod, I would watch to see the spectacles slip to the floor and pick them up. Then when a heavy nod would awaken him, he would smile and say, “I lack a fall asleep, didn’t I?”

                And in this peaceful and gentle fashion the days passed as my grandfather in quietness and confidence approached the close of his long life. And in the old Pacolet home, in which he had lived for more than half a century, the end came, as he would have wished it and he was laid beside the beloved wife of his youth, the mother of his fourteen children. At his funeral was sung his favorite hymn,

                “How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord.”

                Fifty years later, this hymn was sung again at the funeral of his daughter Adeline in the beautiful Mount Berry Church at the Berry School.

                The half-century had brought many changes into her life. She had known the joy of being the mother of two sons, but the sorrow of losing both of them, one when he was a lovely and lovable lad of eleven, the other in the strength of his young manhood, the support of her oncoming age. Yet the firm foundation of her faith had not failed her. Always she had loved everything good and beautiful. She had talked to her children of the beauty of sunsets and stars, but best of all she loved the rainbow and often repeated the line from scripture, “He set his bow in the cloud”. We children were called to run and look for the rainbow when the sun would come out through a shower; and we learned to look for the rainbow and to love it. On the showery September Sunday afternoon when her casket was carried out of the Mount Berry Church a glorious rainbow was spanning the heavens, and it did not fade until the casket was placed in the train that was to take her back to the state of her birth where she was laid beside her husband, her two sons, and her oldest daughter.

                Her only living descendants are my sister Lily (Mrs. Henry Brooks) and myself and my sister’s children, eight daughters and two sons.