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This story is included in my book The Ghost Roads of Fallis Oklahoma, available from Amazon.com in the latter part of July. Click on the link below to check its status, or enter "Wayne Pounds" as author in the Advanced Search module.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001KI3QV6/allbooks?ingress=0&visitId=e70f2672-176b-4b55-84cd-69944a4392bf&store_ref=ap_rdr&ref_=ap_rdr
In 1993, collecting materials for a family history I intended to write, I found myself in the South Boston Library of Halifax County, Virginia. When I eventually wrote the book, I called it The Fate of Bones, a phrase I had found in Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, or “the religion of a doctor.” The book had three sections dealing with Halifax County, the first an unripe narrative of the events of the journey by airplane and rental car, the second a story about meeting a gracious and kindly librarian in South Boston named Julia Carrington, and the third a tale about looking for the family of Aunt Nan Pounds that Mrs. Carrington told me about. She remembered Aunt Nan well, she said, because Aunt Nan had told her fortune when she was young. “Aunt Nana was very old, quiet and neat,“ Mrs. Carrington said, “and she had the most beautiful blue eyes. Now you’re going to hate me for saying this but she was colored. Though they were really light. Some of her family went north and passed."
Aunt Nan
Stone slave quarters, Berry Hill Plantation
This brings home a family history across generations, nay centuries, as these Pounded people cross oceans and deserts ending up (somewhat) in...Japan? Enjoyed reading this, Wayne, not without charmingness.
ReplyDeleteThe mention of nineteenth-century Virginia and incidentally the Trail of Tears on the way to Sooner country, got me to thinking about Edgar Allan Poe. I can now vent something that I've pondered long. Poe is West Point's most famous dropout, and so when he went into the army it was as an enlisted man. But he rose quickly in the ranks and separated as something like a master sergeant. The principal activity of the army in Poe's time was repressing Indians, which around Virginia would have perhaps meant driving them out of their ancestral homes in the South. It's interesting to think of Sergeant Poe and his men lending support to this infamous crime against humanity.
Sorry to be so slow in replying, Dick. I never learned this phase of blogging before. Your remarks about Poe are apt. If Poe contributed to the Trail of Tears, I'm sure Poe scholars have caught it. They know everything about his least squib. Remember Stuart Levine? He was one of that tribe.
DeleteVery nice. I could learn a thing or too from you. I've recently been tasked with writing some bios here in my new hometown of Cleveland for a local cemetery non-profit. I'm struggling with writing a bio of general interest versus a genealogical report that bores most people. Your style is very easy to read and digest while still giving pertinent information. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteNancy Jordan, Cleveland
Hi Slogger. Sorry to be so slow in responding, but I never knew this blog was receiving comments. My advice for you as a writer is to emphasize the narrative. It's the story line that distinguishes between good history and the phone book with its masses of names and numbers.
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