So this week at work all the movie buzz has been about Contagion, the movie that just came out about a killer virus that threatens Life on Earth as We Know It (I haven't seen the movie yet so I'm not completely sure about that part, but I do know that Kate Winslett, playing a CDC doctor, dies heroically, so it must be really bad, if they kill off one of the stars.) I'm looking forward to seeing it - I've heard it's compelling and scary and good story-telling as well as the subject of some extremely cool but creepy marketing.
But that's not actually what kept me awake last night, even though I was really tired when I finally got to bed. Last night Tom and I watched a movie that we'd had for a while from Netflix, "The Lives of Others." I don't remember why I ordered it - we are always looking for German movies for our German-speaking family members (that would be everyone but me) - but I'm glad I did, and that we watched it before mailing it back.
This 2006 film is about life under surveillance in the former East Germany. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's a compelling story of life under pressure in a country that tried to control what people could read and write. The fonts of every known typewriter in East Germany were identifiable by State Security, and if documents were found with content that wasn't to their liking, there were people whose job it was to identify the typewriter that was used to type it. A untraceable typewriter smuggled from the West plays an important part in the story.
In 1984, when the movie takes place, writing was done on paper with typewriters, making writing an act of great risk in countries totalitarian societies. Of course writing is still risky - journalists and novelists and playwrights and poets and scholars and bloggers still risk imprisonment or worse in many countries around the world. But it's harder and harder to control words - they control the newspapers, you post to the web. They control state television, you post to YouTube. They control the internet, you use a cell phone. Probably the role of social media in the uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa has been overblown, but I am sure that the nearly unrestrained flow of information across borders has contributed to the astonishing events that have taken place this year.
I hope it is not to long before I see a wonderfully compelling movie about how things used to be under an oppressive regime in Yemen or Syria, and I'll look back and say I remember that, I remember when it was like that. Until then, there are still brave people who are putting their lives at risk for a better future for themselves, their children, their country by marching, by writing, by uploading cell phone videos, by fighting well-equipped armies with almost nothing. The best hope for a peaceful future for the region and the world is a rapid transition to democracy. We have a chance, this time, to be on the right side of history.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Off to College
Caroline left for college on Wednesday. There was lots of last minute stuff left to do, those last couple of days, but Tom and Sarah drove her to Athens on Wednesday and got her moved into the dorm. A big step for her, and for us.
During the last few days before she left, I was thinking about when I went off to college. The first roommate who only lasted a few days before she decided she wanted to go back home (I don't think it was anything I did). The freedom from attending class, all day long every day, yet the classes were so much better and covered so much more, compared with my high school classes. New friends, almost all from the honors dorm or my honors classes, some of whom I've kept in touch with and I still consider myself close to, even if we aren't as good about keeping in touch as we intend to be. Some classes I still remember (admittedly, not that many) and a professor and his wife who are still friends.
In those days - in a different era - you had to pay for out-of-town phone calls and my raised-during-the-Depression-era parents didn't make long distance calls unless there was some news to convey that wouldn't wait for a letter. So we didn't talk much on the phone, but they wrote me letters, and I wrote them back. Presumably I exercised some sort of judgment and didn't tell them the stuff they really didn't need to know. But that was it - that's how we kept in touch.
Since Caroline left, we haven't heard much from her, but Sarah gets text messages (they are sisters, and that's how sisters now talk, apparently) and I see the updates to her Facebook friends. The only communication I've gotten that was more than a brief answer to a question by Facebook message was when she wanted me to order a couple of items from Amazon.
And that's okay. She's gone away to college and her parents are no longer supposed to be deeply entangled in the everyday minutiae of her life. We could be in touch almost all the time, but we shouldn't; still, I can see totally how new technology has totally enabled helicopter parenting at a whole new level.
I'm trying hard to not be that parent.
During the last few days before she left, I was thinking about when I went off to college. The first roommate who only lasted a few days before she decided she wanted to go back home (I don't think it was anything I did). The freedom from attending class, all day long every day, yet the classes were so much better and covered so much more, compared with my high school classes. New friends, almost all from the honors dorm or my honors classes, some of whom I've kept in touch with and I still consider myself close to, even if we aren't as good about keeping in touch as we intend to be. Some classes I still remember (admittedly, not that many) and a professor and his wife who are still friends.
In those days - in a different era - you had to pay for out-of-town phone calls and my raised-during-the-Depression-era parents didn't make long distance calls unless there was some news to convey that wouldn't wait for a letter. So we didn't talk much on the phone, but they wrote me letters, and I wrote them back. Presumably I exercised some sort of judgment and didn't tell them the stuff they really didn't need to know. But that was it - that's how we kept in touch.
Since Caroline left, we haven't heard much from her, but Sarah gets text messages (they are sisters, and that's how sisters now talk, apparently) and I see the updates to her Facebook friends. The only communication I've gotten that was more than a brief answer to a question by Facebook message was when she wanted me to order a couple of items from Amazon.
And that's okay. She's gone away to college and her parents are no longer supposed to be deeply entangled in the everyday minutiae of her life. We could be in touch almost all the time, but we shouldn't; still, I can see totally how new technology has totally enabled helicopter parenting at a whole new level.
I'm trying hard to not be that parent.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Family Reunion
Last weekend, Tom and Iain and I went to Dallas, North Carolina, for the Rhyne Family Reunion. It was interesting and I'm glad I went - a room full of people at a Lutheran church in Dallas, most of whom I am very distantly related to, but none of whom I've ever met before. There has been an enormous amount of work done over the years by a lot of different people, so it's not so hard for most Rhyne descendants to figure out where they fit into the family tree (although there are way too many Jacob Rhynes, and there is some confusion about which one's which, for a few of them). We put colored dots on our name tags on Saturday, to indicate which branch of the Rhyne family we are from - Iain and I had an orange dots, as a descendants of Johan Philip Rhyne, my great-great-great-great-grandfather. (Some people had multiple dots, since there was lots of intertwining of branches of family trees in the past.) There were photos taken for each group of descendants; Johan Philip had a medium-sized group, but I think for some of them there was no one there at all. There were photos of the oldest person there (age 99) and of the kids who were there.
I lived in North Carolina for three years, during the 1980s. I had no idea, at the time, that if I were to look far enough back, I had ancestors who came there when it was still a British colony. (There are other North Carolina connections too - the Smiths weren't far from Gaston/Lincoln County, and I have wondered if there might be some intertwining in my own family tree.)
I remember, years ago, having breakfast in a hotel dining room with a coworker who told me about her family's reunions. Every year there was a big event attended by the entire extended family. It sounded like fun to me, although I feel like I'm doing well to keep in touch with my cousins by email. My children have said - incorrectly - that "they have no relatives" since their grandparents have all died and neither Tom nor I have surviving siblings, or any nieces or nephews. Before the Rhyne reunion, Sarah asked if we would come home with T-shirts. I said I didn't think so. (For the record, we didn't; it was a no-T-shirt reunion, although I suppose it's not too late to make one if we want one.)
The part that interests me about all this is less how far I can trace things back (the farther back you get, the less you know about the people), but the stories. My grandmother, born in Indian Territory, was the oldest of 6 children; at age 14, she drove the family's second covered wagon into Greer County (now Oklahoma, but I think it was part of Texas then). Her father Joel is said to have been a handsome man with curly black hair and a mustache; he lived with his family in many different places and moved around a lot. Was he always looking for opportunities or getting away from something? A child is buried in Arkansas; the family briefly moved to Oregon, but then they returned to Oklahoma; he died in Texas. He's named after his father's nephew who died at the siege of Port Hudson during the Civil War. There are towns that flourished and then faded away, as agriculture and transportation changed.
When Gaston County was split off from Lincoln County, Dallas became the county seat, and was a thriving town in the mid-nineteenth century. But the railroad didn't go through Dallas (at least according to Wikipedia, the county commissioners refused to appropriate funds to build bridges across the creeks because they thought the trains would awaken people at night and frighten the livestock) and in 1911 the county seat was moved to Gastonia. We visited Moses Rhyne's store, built in 1850, and the old Hoffman hotel, that is now the Gaston County Museum.
There was a guest speaker at the reunion, who talked about her grandmother making quilts, and all the memories that were in those quilts - bits of cloth from clothing she remembered - and how she now makes quilts for her own family, sewing into them names and dates. I wish I had done a better job of capturing somehow the stories my parents told me, and that I had asked more questions, and that I had written down the answers. But absent that, there are still stories to learn. This time, I do need to write them down.
I lived in North Carolina for three years, during the 1980s. I had no idea, at the time, that if I were to look far enough back, I had ancestors who came there when it was still a British colony. (There are other North Carolina connections too - the Smiths weren't far from Gaston/Lincoln County, and I have wondered if there might be some intertwining in my own family tree.)
I remember, years ago, having breakfast in a hotel dining room with a coworker who told me about her family's reunions. Every year there was a big event attended by the entire extended family. It sounded like fun to me, although I feel like I'm doing well to keep in touch with my cousins by email. My children have said - incorrectly - that "they have no relatives" since their grandparents have all died and neither Tom nor I have surviving siblings, or any nieces or nephews. Before the Rhyne reunion, Sarah asked if we would come home with T-shirts. I said I didn't think so. (For the record, we didn't; it was a no-T-shirt reunion, although I suppose it's not too late to make one if we want one.)
The part that interests me about all this is less how far I can trace things back (the farther back you get, the less you know about the people), but the stories. My grandmother, born in Indian Territory, was the oldest of 6 children; at age 14, she drove the family's second covered wagon into Greer County (now Oklahoma, but I think it was part of Texas then). Her father Joel is said to have been a handsome man with curly black hair and a mustache; he lived with his family in many different places and moved around a lot. Was he always looking for opportunities or getting away from something? A child is buried in Arkansas; the family briefly moved to Oregon, but then they returned to Oklahoma; he died in Texas. He's named after his father's nephew who died at the siege of Port Hudson during the Civil War. There are towns that flourished and then faded away, as agriculture and transportation changed.
When Gaston County was split off from Lincoln County, Dallas became the county seat, and was a thriving town in the mid-nineteenth century. But the railroad didn't go through Dallas (at least according to Wikipedia, the county commissioners refused to appropriate funds to build bridges across the creeks because they thought the trains would awaken people at night and frighten the livestock) and in 1911 the county seat was moved to Gastonia. We visited Moses Rhyne's store, built in 1850, and the old Hoffman hotel, that is now the Gaston County Museum.
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| The former Hoffman hotel, now the Gaston County Museum |
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| The Moses Rhyne store, now an antique shop |
There was a guest speaker at the reunion, who talked about her grandmother making quilts, and all the memories that were in those quilts - bits of cloth from clothing she remembered - and how she now makes quilts for her own family, sewing into them names and dates. I wish I had done a better job of capturing somehow the stories my parents told me, and that I had asked more questions, and that I had written down the answers. But absent that, there are still stories to learn. This time, I do need to write them down.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
A Second Chance for Books
When Sarah got back from Dresden week before last, she said she really wanted some ethnic food. Tom had planned to make egg rolls for her the evening she got home, but with the delays in her flight out of Philadelphia, she didn't make it home til late; so Tom got some frozen ones and once they were cooked in the deep fat fryer they were apparently passable. Then I think it was the next evening we went to The Cottage for dinner. The Cottage is an Ethiopian restaurant in a former Burger King at East Rock Springs and Piedmont, and is one of Sarah's favorite restaurants. I am not sure what Sarah ate in Germany, but apparently not Chinese or Ethiopian food.
While we were at the Cottage, I noticed it - in the corner of the parking lot, behind the taxis, was a green bin from Better World Books. I'd seen one or two of these bins in other locations around Atlanta but had never figured out exactly what Better World Books was and how my book donation would support literacy and make a Better World. But that weekend I'd spent a little time on Rhyne family history - my maternal grandmother is a Rhyne - and come across a reference to book about early German settlers in Pennsylvania that apparently included information about my Rhine/Rein/Reinau ancestors. I found a copy on line, and one of the places that had it for sale was Better World Books. So I ordered it, and in the process learned about Better World Books and those green bins that are around Atlanta.
It's a business that keeps books out of landfills and sells them to people who want them, and partners with groups supporting literacy efforts worldwide. As someone whose heart ached when I saw books in the dumpster in front of our house (for the record, the only ones *I* put there were guidebooks that were so out of date as to be useless but not so out of date as to be interesting), I am so glad to be able to feel good about purging the shelves of old college Required Reading and some of the quasi-academic books I've accumulated over the years but I know I will never read again (if I ever read them in the first place). We've taken many boxes of books to Goodwill but I have no idea if Goodwill actually has a model that can help these books make their way to someone who wants them.
But Better World Books does, and earlier this week I dropped off a few books in the green bin behind the Cottage. I'm cleaning out my office, anticipating a move to a new, smaller office, and we still have stuff piled up all over the place at home. At least now I know something I can do with books and feel good about it.
While we were at the Cottage, I noticed it - in the corner of the parking lot, behind the taxis, was a green bin from Better World Books. I'd seen one or two of these bins in other locations around Atlanta but had never figured out exactly what Better World Books was and how my book donation would support literacy and make a Better World. But that weekend I'd spent a little time on Rhyne family history - my maternal grandmother is a Rhyne - and come across a reference to book about early German settlers in Pennsylvania that apparently included information about my Rhine/Rein/Reinau ancestors. I found a copy on line, and one of the places that had it for sale was Better World Books. So I ordered it, and in the process learned about Better World Books and those green bins that are around Atlanta.
It's a business that keeps books out of landfills and sells them to people who want them, and partners with groups supporting literacy efforts worldwide. As someone whose heart ached when I saw books in the dumpster in front of our house (for the record, the only ones *I* put there were guidebooks that were so out of date as to be useless but not so out of date as to be interesting), I am so glad to be able to feel good about purging the shelves of old college Required Reading and some of the quasi-academic books I've accumulated over the years but I know I will never read again (if I ever read them in the first place). We've taken many boxes of books to Goodwill but I have no idea if Goodwill actually has a model that can help these books make their way to someone who wants them.
But Better World Books does, and earlier this week I dropped off a few books in the green bin behind the Cottage. I'm cleaning out my office, anticipating a move to a new, smaller office, and we still have stuff piled up all over the place at home. At least now I know something I can do with books and feel good about it.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
House of Cards
Last week, the team appointed by the state released the report summarizing the investigation of cheating in the Atlanta Public Schools. I didn't read the whole thing (it's three volumes, and hundreds of pages), but I stayed up late the other night and read enough of it. The evidence is overwhelming. In some schools, there were organized, systematic efforts to change test scores. Hundreds of people were involved, many confessed, some invoked their 5th amendment rights. In the implicated schools, the too-good-to-be-true test results disappeared with the 2010 Criterion-Referenced Compentency Test (CRCT), which was administered with outside monitoring.
Beverly Hall, the then-superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools, said she didn't know. And she was shocked - shocked - to learn that there was cheating going on in the schools. She accumulated awards and bonuses and national-level recognition for her work in Atlanta, but when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution began to report on test score increases that simply were Too Good To Be True, the result was denial and a failure of leadership. Finally, belatedly, she says she's responsible, now that it's too late to say anything else, but she says she didn't know, she really didn't.
But she should have. She should have been curious enough to have a couple of her central office staff (I think she has more than a few people who worked for her in headquarters) go to the implicated schools, where impossible gains were made in scores, and see what exactly had been done in the classrooms that had produced these miracles. See what kind of work the students were doing, listen to them in class, review their writing and classroom work. It wouldn't have been hard, but apparently no one did it. They didn't do it because they didn't want to know.
I told Tom the other evening that it reminded me of the crumbling of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Knowledgeable outsiders who looked carefully at Madoff's investment strategy and reported returns knew it didn't add up, and some of them reported their suspicions to the Securities and Exhange Commission. Some of the investors themselves probably had suspicions, but at long as the money kept coming, they didn't really want to know.
And what happened at the Atlanta Public Schools was like a Ponzi scheme. Once you start cheating, you can't stop, because the goals for the next year just get racheted up. So every year more kids have to do better on the exams, more teachers and staff have to get pulled in. More children denied extra help that they needed and families misled about how their children were doing in school. And now that it's all come tumbling down, more careers ruined.
The report documents a massive failure of leadership of the Atlanta Public Schools. Beverly Hall says she didn't know. But she should have, and she could have, if she had bothered to investigate the initial allegations that the AJC reported.
Beverly Hall, the then-superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools, said she didn't know. And she was shocked - shocked - to learn that there was cheating going on in the schools. She accumulated awards and bonuses and national-level recognition for her work in Atlanta, but when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution began to report on test score increases that simply were Too Good To Be True, the result was denial and a failure of leadership. Finally, belatedly, she says she's responsible, now that it's too late to say anything else, but she says she didn't know, she really didn't.
But she should have. She should have been curious enough to have a couple of her central office staff (I think she has more than a few people who worked for her in headquarters) go to the implicated schools, where impossible gains were made in scores, and see what exactly had been done in the classrooms that had produced these miracles. See what kind of work the students were doing, listen to them in class, review their writing and classroom work. It wouldn't have been hard, but apparently no one did it. They didn't do it because they didn't want to know.
I told Tom the other evening that it reminded me of the crumbling of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Knowledgeable outsiders who looked carefully at Madoff's investment strategy and reported returns knew it didn't add up, and some of them reported their suspicions to the Securities and Exhange Commission. Some of the investors themselves probably had suspicions, but at long as the money kept coming, they didn't really want to know.
And what happened at the Atlanta Public Schools was like a Ponzi scheme. Once you start cheating, you can't stop, because the goals for the next year just get racheted up. So every year more kids have to do better on the exams, more teachers and staff have to get pulled in. More children denied extra help that they needed and families misled about how their children were doing in school. And now that it's all come tumbling down, more careers ruined.
The report documents a massive failure of leadership of the Atlanta Public Schools. Beverly Hall says she didn't know. But she should have, and she could have, if she had bothered to investigate the initial allegations that the AJC reported.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Homecoming
On Saturday, the two kids who had been gone both came home. Iain was back from Boy Scout camp. He'd had a lot of the adventures you'd expect boys to have at camp,and a few that were a surprise; for example, I was a little surprised that he came home with a zombie survival (spoof) merit badge. He said it cooled off at night and wasn't too hot in the daytime, and the food was bad but he ate it all anyway. Lots of merit badge work at camp, besides the zombie survival one; he has a couple of requirements left to do for his Citizenship in the Nation merit badge.
Saturday was also the day that Sarah was due back from Dresden, where she'd been for 7 weeks staying with her friend Mimi and attending school there. Thanks to email and Facebook, we felt like we'd kept in pretty close touch with her even though we didn't talk to her on the phone while she was gone. From the sound of it she'd had many adventures, including attending a four day Mexican/Bavarian wedding celebration. But on Saturday she was coming home, which entailed flying from Dresden to Frankfort, from Frankfort to Philadelphia, and then Philadelphia to Atlanta. The flight out of Philadelphia was delayed for several hours, so she didn't get back til late. But U.S. Airways did a good job with the automated flight notifications, and her plane finally arrived a little after 9 p.m. She got back with overweight baggage and lots of stories, and plans for visiting again. She said that while she was gone, she'd had two dreams that were in German; one of them was actually in French and German, but she didn't understand the French.
The Rhyne family reunion is in North Carolina next month, so I spent some time over the weekend learning about the Rhynes. Thanks to lots of work by other people, there's a lot known about the Rhynes, who emigrated from Durlach, near present-day Karlsruhe, Germany (they may have moved to that area from around Zurich, but that's not completely clear - the first records of the family in Durlach date from 1707). In 1738, my 6th great-grandfather Hans Martin Reinau and his family emigrated to the colony of Pennsylvania. They arrived in Philadelphia in October on a ship called the Snow Fox. In Philadelphia, immigration officials kept good records, so unlike other points of entry during the colonial era, there's good documentation of who arrived when. My 5th great-grandfather, Jacob Rein, was 12 years old when his family came to Pennsylvania.
So I was thinking about that on Saturday, while Sarah was making her way home. Jacob Rein was Iain's age, when he came here to the country that became the United States. His family had boarded a ship in Amsterdam, crossed the Atlantic, and settled in York County, Pennsylvania. Jacob married there, and then he and his family moved to what's now Gaston County, North Carolina, in the 1760s. Although he did not serve in the military during the Revolutionary War, he signed the petition to nominate the Lincoln County, North Carolina, militia officers in 1779 and provided material aid to the revolutionary cause, including furnishing supplies and provisions.
It doesn't take so long to make the trip, now, even though I'm sure on Saturday it felt like forever for Sarah. Jacob was born in Germany, but died an American, in a new country that he played a small part in helping to create.
A lot of things - like travel and communications - are easier now than they were then, but that doesn't mean we all get a free ride on the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. Our country needs informed and engaged citizens who will constructively participate in civil society and public discourse. Every day, not just on the 4th of July.
Saturday was also the day that Sarah was due back from Dresden, where she'd been for 7 weeks staying with her friend Mimi and attending school there. Thanks to email and Facebook, we felt like we'd kept in pretty close touch with her even though we didn't talk to her on the phone while she was gone. From the sound of it she'd had many adventures, including attending a four day Mexican/Bavarian wedding celebration. But on Saturday she was coming home, which entailed flying from Dresden to Frankfort, from Frankfort to Philadelphia, and then Philadelphia to Atlanta. The flight out of Philadelphia was delayed for several hours, so she didn't get back til late. But U.S. Airways did a good job with the automated flight notifications, and her plane finally arrived a little after 9 p.m. She got back with overweight baggage and lots of stories, and plans for visiting again. She said that while she was gone, she'd had two dreams that were in German; one of them was actually in French and German, but she didn't understand the French.
The Rhyne family reunion is in North Carolina next month, so I spent some time over the weekend learning about the Rhynes. Thanks to lots of work by other people, there's a lot known about the Rhynes, who emigrated from Durlach, near present-day Karlsruhe, Germany (they may have moved to that area from around Zurich, but that's not completely clear - the first records of the family in Durlach date from 1707). In 1738, my 6th great-grandfather Hans Martin Reinau and his family emigrated to the colony of Pennsylvania. They arrived in Philadelphia in October on a ship called the Snow Fox. In Philadelphia, immigration officials kept good records, so unlike other points of entry during the colonial era, there's good documentation of who arrived when. My 5th great-grandfather, Jacob Rein, was 12 years old when his family came to Pennsylvania.
So I was thinking about that on Saturday, while Sarah was making her way home. Jacob Rein was Iain's age, when he came here to the country that became the United States. His family had boarded a ship in Amsterdam, crossed the Atlantic, and settled in York County, Pennsylvania. Jacob married there, and then he and his family moved to what's now Gaston County, North Carolina, in the 1760s. Although he did not serve in the military during the Revolutionary War, he signed the petition to nominate the Lincoln County, North Carolina, militia officers in 1779 and provided material aid to the revolutionary cause, including furnishing supplies and provisions.
It doesn't take so long to make the trip, now, even though I'm sure on Saturday it felt like forever for Sarah. Jacob was born in Germany, but died an American, in a new country that he played a small part in helping to create.
A lot of things - like travel and communications - are easier now than they were then, but that doesn't mean we all get a free ride on the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. Our country needs informed and engaged citizens who will constructively participate in civil society and public discourse. Every day, not just on the 4th of July.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
More Family History: A Death in Texas
We are cleaning out a storage unit (I don't want to say how long we've had it) and one of the things Tom found was a history of the Smith family written in 1990. It had been written by someone I didn't know, Eddy Smith, from Texas. From reading what's in it about my family, it is clear that my mother had been interviewed by Mr. Smith, so I am assuming that when she was contacted she ordered a copy for me. I haven't done much work to track down the Smiths - my mother's mother was a Smith - because I was very intimidated by trying to sort through all the George Smiths to identify the one who is my great-great-grandfather. So I was delighted to find the book on the dining room table when I got back into town week before last.
The George Smith who was my great-great-grandfather was born in Rutherford County, North Carolina, but later moved to Spartanburg County, South Carolina. He married at age 33 to Atha Adaline Liles, a widow with six children. Atha also had been born in Rutherford County and moved to Spartanburg. One of George's brothers married one of George's step-daughters. According to Eddy Smith, "Nancy Ann Blackwell Greenway's grandchildren remembered that their grandmother often told them that her step-father, George W. Smith, insisted that his sons get a formal education. The daughters and step-daughters did not receive education because George W. thought it unnecessary."
But Eddy Smith also included in his history a photocopy of George Smith's will. George and Atha had four children, three boys (one of whom was my great-grandfather, Jones Foster Smith) and one girl. According to his will,
...I will that my beloved wife Adaline Smith have the use and control of my Estate both Personal and Real during her natural life or widowhood, that she educate my children Rudicil Lafayette Smith, William Washington Smith, Geneva Smith and Jones Foster Smith as well as she reasonably can, and as soon as practicable after each of them arrives to the age of twenty-one years, that she furnish each a horse, bridle, and saddle at [graduation?] and in case each child should not receive the same amount of schooling that the one or ones following short of an equal amount of schooling with the others have enough money or property to make up for said deficiency of schooling ...
Perhaps George felt differently about educating his step-daughters and his daughter.
I don't know how much education any of them got. George died in 1877, and sometime after that all four of his children made their way to Texas. My mother told me that her grandfather Jones Foster Smith had gone to Texas to establish himself so he could get married, but when he returned to South Carolina he found his fiancé had married someone else. So he married her younger sister, Mary Green. Jones's sister Geneva married Mary's brother Lewis Green.
According to Eddy Smith, Geneva and Lewis had one child in South Carolina before they left for Texas around 1891. They settled eventually in Hunt County, Texas, where they had a large farm. They also had a store on the farm, where their neighbors bought supplies, and they had "the only phone in the community in the early years. Whenever death messages were received, the Green family members were sent to deliver them to neighbors." They built more houses on the farm as their children grew up and married, and most of their children (perhaps all but one of them) stayed in Hunt County, and bought property of their own.
Eddy Smith's book has many interesting stories about Geneva and Lewis's children. Their oldest child left for Oklahoma when he turned 18. According to Eddy Smith, he ran off with the wife of his uncle. One of their children "was pretty much a drifter" who ended up killing a police officer in Kansas City in 1937. He'd been drinking, and when a police officer tried to escort him from the saloon, he took the policeman's gun and killed him. He fled, but mistook the bathroom door for the back door. "He was standing on the toilet seat when the police broke in and emptied their guns into the doors of the toilets and shot both of his legs full of bullets." He died two weeks later.
One of Geneva and Lewis's daughters lost her husband and two young sons to influenza in 1919. She remarried and had seven more children. One of them died in 1930 at age 4 of tetanus.
But those story that most caught my imagination, on reading Eddy Smith's book, was that of Geneva and Lewis's son George, who was shot and killed on September 15, 1918, by Hubert Cotten. According to Eddy Smith, "The real story may never be known or told as everyone involved is deceased. I have only heard stories and no one can supply exact details." Hubert and his brother Ira were tried for murder or manslaughter multiple times in the years that followed; Ira was eventually acquitted, in 1921, but I'm not sure about Hubert. The newspaper headlines from Greenville, Texas, indicate he went on trial for the fourth time in 1921, right around the same time that Ira was tried the last time.
I found the court opinions that overturned the convictions of Ira and Hubert in 1920, and there was a little detail there about what had happened - or at least what the survivors said had happened. George and his brother Tom got into a confrontation with Hubert and Ira one evening, after church. Hubert had a gun, and he shot George and killed him. It is not clear whether or not the Greens were armed; Tom said they weren't, but Hubert said both George and Tom had clubs. Hubert said he thought George had a gun (but he had already said he thought he had a club - would he really have had both a gun and a club?). He shot him, and when Tom came toward him after he started shooting, he shot him too. George was 27 years old when he died; he left a wife and an infant son. His brother Tom survived; he died in 1969, at age 77.
The first convictions were overturned in 1920 because of improper instructions that were given to the jury. I don't know what happened at the later trials, and whether or not Hubert ever served time for George's death. If he did, it's not reflected in the Greenville, Texas, newspapers that have been indexed so far.
I've used Ancestry.com for several years to find information about my family, but you don't have to be related to people to look for information about them. (Of course you can't find too much unless they are really old or dead.) So I looked up both Hubert and Ira Cotten. Hubert - who was 18 when he killed George - married and had three children, and died in 1982. There's a charming photograph of him as a toddler, and another photo of him as an old man; I can visualize him at church or at Lions Club or Rotary, just like my father and his friends. Ira was 20, in 1918 when George Green died; he also married and had children. He died in 1981.
All three of the survivors - Tom, Ira, and Hubert - appear to have stayed in Hunt County for the rest of their lives. According to the 1920 appeals court decision, there were bad feelings between the Greens and the Cottens before the September evening that left George Green dead on the ground. There must have been a cafe on Main Street, where the older men met for coffee. Did Tom talk to them? What did they say to each other? Nowdays, something bad happens, people move on to a new place and leave this history behind. But they were attached to the land, and there they stayed.
The George Smith who was my great-great-grandfather was born in Rutherford County, North Carolina, but later moved to Spartanburg County, South Carolina. He married at age 33 to Atha Adaline Liles, a widow with six children. Atha also had been born in Rutherford County and moved to Spartanburg. One of George's brothers married one of George's step-daughters. According to Eddy Smith, "Nancy Ann Blackwell Greenway's grandchildren remembered that their grandmother often told them that her step-father, George W. Smith, insisted that his sons get a formal education. The daughters and step-daughters did not receive education because George W. thought it unnecessary."
But Eddy Smith also included in his history a photocopy of George Smith's will. George and Atha had four children, three boys (one of whom was my great-grandfather, Jones Foster Smith) and one girl. According to his will,
...I will that my beloved wife Adaline Smith have the use and control of my Estate both Personal and Real during her natural life or widowhood, that she educate my children Rudicil Lafayette Smith, William Washington Smith, Geneva Smith and Jones Foster Smith as well as she reasonably can, and as soon as practicable after each of them arrives to the age of twenty-one years, that she furnish each a horse, bridle, and saddle at [graduation?] and in case each child should not receive the same amount of schooling that the one or ones following short of an equal amount of schooling with the others have enough money or property to make up for said deficiency of schooling ...
Perhaps George felt differently about educating his step-daughters and his daughter.
I don't know how much education any of them got. George died in 1877, and sometime after that all four of his children made their way to Texas. My mother told me that her grandfather Jones Foster Smith had gone to Texas to establish himself so he could get married, but when he returned to South Carolina he found his fiancé had married someone else. So he married her younger sister, Mary Green. Jones's sister Geneva married Mary's brother Lewis Green.
According to Eddy Smith, Geneva and Lewis had one child in South Carolina before they left for Texas around 1891. They settled eventually in Hunt County, Texas, where they had a large farm. They also had a store on the farm, where their neighbors bought supplies, and they had "the only phone in the community in the early years. Whenever death messages were received, the Green family members were sent to deliver them to neighbors." They built more houses on the farm as their children grew up and married, and most of their children (perhaps all but one of them) stayed in Hunt County, and bought property of their own.
Eddy Smith's book has many interesting stories about Geneva and Lewis's children. Their oldest child left for Oklahoma when he turned 18. According to Eddy Smith, he ran off with the wife of his uncle. One of their children "was pretty much a drifter" who ended up killing a police officer in Kansas City in 1937. He'd been drinking, and when a police officer tried to escort him from the saloon, he took the policeman's gun and killed him. He fled, but mistook the bathroom door for the back door. "He was standing on the toilet seat when the police broke in and emptied their guns into the doors of the toilets and shot both of his legs full of bullets." He died two weeks later.
One of Geneva and Lewis's daughters lost her husband and two young sons to influenza in 1919. She remarried and had seven more children. One of them died in 1930 at age 4 of tetanus.
But those story that most caught my imagination, on reading Eddy Smith's book, was that of Geneva and Lewis's son George, who was shot and killed on September 15, 1918, by Hubert Cotten. According to Eddy Smith, "The real story may never be known or told as everyone involved is deceased. I have only heard stories and no one can supply exact details." Hubert and his brother Ira were tried for murder or manslaughter multiple times in the years that followed; Ira was eventually acquitted, in 1921, but I'm not sure about Hubert. The newspaper headlines from Greenville, Texas, indicate he went on trial for the fourth time in 1921, right around the same time that Ira was tried the last time.
I found the court opinions that overturned the convictions of Ira and Hubert in 1920, and there was a little detail there about what had happened - or at least what the survivors said had happened. George and his brother Tom got into a confrontation with Hubert and Ira one evening, after church. Hubert had a gun, and he shot George and killed him. It is not clear whether or not the Greens were armed; Tom said they weren't, but Hubert said both George and Tom had clubs. Hubert said he thought George had a gun (but he had already said he thought he had a club - would he really have had both a gun and a club?). He shot him, and when Tom came toward him after he started shooting, he shot him too. George was 27 years old when he died; he left a wife and an infant son. His brother Tom survived; he died in 1969, at age 77.
The first convictions were overturned in 1920 because of improper instructions that were given to the jury. I don't know what happened at the later trials, and whether or not Hubert ever served time for George's death. If he did, it's not reflected in the Greenville, Texas, newspapers that have been indexed so far.
I've used Ancestry.com for several years to find information about my family, but you don't have to be related to people to look for information about them. (Of course you can't find too much unless they are really old or dead.) So I looked up both Hubert and Ira Cotten. Hubert - who was 18 when he killed George - married and had three children, and died in 1982. There's a charming photograph of him as a toddler, and another photo of him as an old man; I can visualize him at church or at Lions Club or Rotary, just like my father and his friends. Ira was 20, in 1918 when George Green died; he also married and had children. He died in 1981.
All three of the survivors - Tom, Ira, and Hubert - appear to have stayed in Hunt County for the rest of their lives. According to the 1920 appeals court decision, there were bad feelings between the Greens and the Cottens before the September evening that left George Green dead on the ground. There must have been a cafe on Main Street, where the older men met for coffee. Did Tom talk to them? What did they say to each other? Nowdays, something bad happens, people move on to a new place and leave this history behind. But they were attached to the land, and there they stayed.
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