Albert’s small
garden gave him much pleasure and satisfaction. He loved to give free
vegetables to neighbors who marveled at Pop’s green thumb. One day Pop brought
home several packets of new seeds. Some of them were labelled “hybrid seeds”.
When we asked our father what hybrid meant, he seemed to take unusual pleasure
as he explained the nature of hereditary traits. He referenced Gregor Mendel’s
experiments with pea plants one hundred years prior. He told us that if two
plants with different traits are bred, the offspring plants will have what is
known as hybrid vigor – a better chance of survival. This vigor is bestowed on
the offspring because each parent plant contributes one of the two genes needed
to produce each of the characteristics(traits) we see in plants and animals. Many illnesses or genetic defects are traits
which only manifest if both parents carry the defect. So hybrids have a better
chance in nature. Pop never missed a chance to proclaim the virtues of
diversity. He went on to boast that he
chose our mother because she was so different from him, and thus his children
would be blessed with this hybrid vigor. Ha! We were so gullible in those days.
Albert’s boast was
so much hooey. He wanted us to believe that his attachment to Mom was a
rational act—that she was his logical match. I don’t believe it. It wasn’t
philosophy. It was chemistry and electro-magnetism. From the moment they met,
they were completely out of control and they behaved just as the toy magnets we
played with as kids. The opposite forces would strongly attract and irrepressibly
spin and gravitate- North to South.
The Southern
roots of Lillian Dawn Hodges ran deep. Her people were farmers who first
settled in Virginia. Her 5th great-grandfather, Thomas Hodges,
arrived in Virginia in 1700 when he was 17 years old. He grew hops in Kent, England, and started a
hops garden in Goochland, Virginia.
Goochland was originally
part of Henrico County. When it was formally established in 1728, the governor,
William Gooch, vainly named the county after himself. This is where Thomas
Hodges met his future bride, Christian Woodson. They would marry in 1701. Christian,
like many Woodsons, would pass down the family lore regarding the first
Woodsons in Virginia. Christian’s great-grandfather, Dr. John Woodson, came to
Jamestown, Virginia, with his new wife, Sarah Isabella Winston, in 1619, one
year before the pilgrims arrived in Plymouth.
John Woodson,
my 9th great-grandfather, was born in 1586 in Dorset, England. He
worshiped with the Church of England, but he fell in love with a Quaker, Sarah
Winston, from Devon, England. John’s love for Sarah was overpowering. Rather
than have her abandon her faith, he renounced his inheritance and his position.
They were married in Devonshire. Having
studied at St John’s college at Oxford, he was a trained physician. The new
governor to the Virginia Colony, Sir George Yardley, offered him the position
of surgeon to his soldiers. John and Sarah Woodson boarded the ship, “George”
which set sail from England on January 29, 1619, and arrived at Jamestown three
months later.
There were 100
passengers aboard The George, which included soldiers to protect the colonists
from Indian attacks and 60 unmarried women. Before this time, there were only
male colonists, totaling six hundred in April 1619. The women sought the
promise of life and family in the new world. The men who came to greet the ship
would pay for their brides at the going rate of 120 pounds of tobacco, the price
of passage. John Woodson didn’t pay for his voyage or his bride. In fact, he
and his wife were each granted 100 acres of free land in Virginia as incentive
to colonize America. The Woodsons chose 200 acres 30 miles upstream on the
James River. The area was called the Flowerdew Hundred.
The colonists
lived in constant dread of Indian uprisings. There had never been any real
peace or confidence between the two races since the great massacre of 1622 when
the Powhatan Indians attacked the colonists, killing 347 settlers. The Woodsons
survived that attack. The English used the uprising as a reason to further
drive out the Indians. Another attack was organized by Chief Opechancanough on April 18, 1644.
John was away
from the home, attending patients when the Indians attacked. Col Thomas Ligon
was visiting the home of Sarah and her two children, John Jr., 10 and Robert, 8.
Some versions of the story portray Ligon as the shoemaker, there to measure the
family’s feet. When the war party neared the house, Sarah bolted the door and
handed Ligon the seven-foot musket rifle that hung on the wall. Sarah quickly
hid the two boys- John under a washtub and Robert under the floor in the potato
hole.
Ligon steadied
the rifle on the window ledge and started shooting. Meanwhile, Sarah saw her husband riding toward
the house, guns ready. But the Indians saw him too. He took an arrow in the
chest. Sarah had to turn away as the tomahawks approached her husband. Just then Sarah heard Indians on the roof, so
she prepared for their arrival by the chimney. She scalded the first one with
boiling water, and she used the fire spit to bludgeon the second one. By now, Ligon
had killed six Indians and the rest retreated. The two boys could now come out
of hiding. From that day, they would be called “Tub” and “Potato Hole”. The family would identify their clan as
either “Potato Hole” Woodson or “Wash Tub” Woodson. The old Woodson rifle is on display today at
the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia.
Christian’s
father was John Woodson III. She was a proud “Wash Tub” Woodson. She and Thomas
Hodges had ten children together. The second, Welcome William Hodges, born in
1706 also had ten children. His seventh child, born in 1752, was named
Bartholomew. Bartholomew is the Hodges who brought the clan to North
Carolina.
While digging
up the family tree, I discovered that some famous people are also related to
Dr. John and Sarah Woodson. The first lady to our 4th president,
Dolly Madison, is the 2nd great-granddaughter of John Woodson. The
outlaws, Frank and Jesse Woodson James, are the 6th great-grandsons,
and the tennis champion Bobby Riggs is the 9th great-grandson of
John Woodson.
In 1785 Bartholomew Hodges, in pursuit of fertile land, migrated to the
Appalachian Mountain region of North Carolina. In 1805, Bart built a log cabin
on his farm near the banks of the Fisher River in Surry County. The historical
house still stands in Dobson today. It’s
a 11/2 story two-room house with two dry stacked stone chimneys and a metal
roof. There’s a porch on the front of the house. Weathered gray slats cover the
house from top to bottom. The descendants of Bartholomew Hodges were born in
that house and relatives have lived there for 160 years. When I first visited
this old house, my great grandmother was living there. My brothers and I
thought the out-house was the coolest and creepiest thing. I was glad we didn’t
visit so long that would require me to use it for anything serious. The house
still stands. Our cousins have proudly fixed it up and filled it will antique
furniture. They open it for visitors and family reunions.
Bart already
had eight children when he moved from Virginia. Two more children were born in
the house he built by the river. The eldest son, Drury, would live to be 100
and have 18 children and 108 grandchildren. Some of Drury’s grandsons would
join the Confederate army to fight against the North in the American Civil War.
At the age of 23, Drury and his family joined the local Primitive Baptist Church.
The Hodges had been Protestants since leaving England in 1711, and it is likely
they fled religious persecution like many of the early colonists. The Primitive Baptists are similar to Southern
Baptists in that they practice believer (adult) baptism by immersion. They
practice the Lord’s Supper or communion, and they believe in the divine
inspiration and authority of the Bible. They have no musical instruments in
their church services. Primitive Baptists are also known as “Foot Washing
Baptists” because they perform a foot washing ceremony to commemorate Jesus’s
washing the feet of his disciples, which teaches humility and service to
others.
You can find
many Primitive Baptist Churches along the rural highways of the southern
states. They are small white wooden churches, which are usually built next to a
river to facilitate the baptism ceremony. It’s been said that it takes two
ministers to perform a baptism. One minister to do the dunking and the other to
hold on to the believer to make sure they are not swept away by the raging
river.
From then
onward, the children and grandchildren would be some flavor of Baptist
including Lillian’s grandfather, Nathan Silas, the grandson of Drury Hodges. Known
as Nathe, he was born in 1864 in the house that his great-great-grandfather,
Bartholomew, built in the town of Dobson, North Carolina. Besides being a
Baptist like his father, Nathe was a farmer. A more accurate description would
be that he was a subsistence farmer- growing just enough to feed his family
with very little left over to barter or sell in local markets. Nathe fell in
love with the girl next door, Mary Elizabeth Nations. My brothers and I called her Grandma Hodges.
She was our great grandmother.
Mary Nations had
just turned 17 when she married Lillian’s grandfather on January 2, 1890. The
farmer’s daughter lived on the farm adjacent to the Hodges’ Farm. She was a
short, lean beauty. She had long straight hair. Having worked aside her mother,
she learned all the skills she would need to manage the women’s work on a farm.
She knew how to sew, knit, and mend clothes. She could preserve and can fruits,
vegetables and meat. She could tend the fire, cook and bake all the food needed
to fuel the men of the farm. Her rough-skinned hands revealed that she was also
used to helping the farmers when it was time for planting or harvesting. Mary’s
father, Wiley Nations, is my mother’s great-grand father. Wiley was a genuine
mountain farmer- long gray beard, dark hat, and toiling behind his plow. He
grew tobacco. Wiley gave his blessing for the union without reservation. He
knew they were a good match. The Nations and the Hodges had been farming neighbors
for many years. Mary Nations was not the first of her clan to marry a Hodges. Wiley’s
mother was Alice Hodges, the niece of Drury Hodges. Wiley’s great-grandfather
was Bartholomew Hodges. Nathe and Mary
were distant cousins, perhaps third or fourth cousins. They were well suited,
and they managed the farm efficiently albeit without mechanization.
Their first
child, Betty Jane, was born December 17, 1890. Sadly, the baby was a weak and
sickly child. She lived only 29 days. Across the river from their home is a
small family cemetery. Little Betty Jane would rest near her grandfather, John B
Hodges. Their second baby girl, Sarah Lou, would arrive on April 14, 1892.
Nathe and Mary suffered with her for 24 days before she too was buried in the
family plot, right next to her sister. It is so difficult to imagine their grief
and sorrow.
What comes to
mind is the Buddhist parable of the mustard seed. While travelling for business
in Thailand, I discovered that a Thai Gideon had left Buddhist scriptures, the
Pali Canon, in my hotel room. I read a very old story about a young Indian
woman named Kisa Gotami. Her one-year old son had just died. She was
heartbroken and completely inconsolable. She could not bear to give him up to
be prepared for burial. She carried her child around the village seeking
medicine that would heal her son. One man suggested that she bring her son to the
Buddha. Surely, he would prepare medicine to restore her son. The Buddha told Kisa
that the cure required a mustard seed that was donated by a family that had not
seen death. Kisa set out to find the mustard seed. At every home she heard of
their personal sorrows and stories of people that live only in our memories.
The people she spoke to told her: “The dead are many. The living are few”. Finally she accepted her loss, buried her
child, and became a disciple of the Buddha.
The farm
demanded Nathan and Mary’s attention, and so they grieved, endured and moved on
with life. One year later Mary had a son; William Jackson Hodges would thrive
to become the pride of his father and the joy of his mother. Mary had another
son, Batie Turner, in 1896 and another, Daniel Thomas (my grandfather), in 1898-
they called him Tom. The fourth son, Robert Lee, was born in 1900. He lived
only 17 months. In that time, especially in the rural South, infant mortality
was a national health focus. Even the census of 1910 asked mothers to record
the number of live births and the number of children still alive.
Another son,
Richard Franklin (Frank), was born in 1901. Then on November 3, 1903, a
daughter, Nonnie Pearl, was born. Mary was so delighted. After so many boys, she
yearned for a girl to sew dresses for as well as to have help with the demanding
amount of women’s work which was needed to feed and clothe a bunch of farm men.
Plus, it would be a blessed reminder of the two daughters she missed and
thought of often. On July 15, 1904,
little Marvin Jasper was born. He gave
them joy for six months before he too was laid to rest in the family cemetery.
Nonnie grew for a few years until she was taken to the Lord at the age of
three. As if Nathe and Mary hadn’t suffered enough, they would soon face their toughest
ordeal of all. Their oldest son, William Jackson, died 8 days after his
fourteenth birthday. They laid him near
his sisters and brothers in the cemetery across the river. With each child Mary buried a piece of her broken heart. The causes of William’s death and the death
of his siblings are unknown to me. There are many possible causes like small
pox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and other infectious diseases. Respiratory ailments
such as pneumonia and tuberculosis afflicted many children at the time. Older
children often died of an infected appendix. These troubles might be easily
prevented or treated today.
Two more boys
would be born to Nathe and Mary, John Henry in 1908 and the last son, destined
to be the baby of the family, Lonzie Vance, was born in 1910. Now the Hodges’ home included Ma & Pa
(Nathe & Mary) and the five boys-Batie (14), Tom(12), Frank(9), John
Henry(2) and the baby, Lonzie. The boys grew to be handsome blue-eyed young
men. They would gradually leave the farm to start out on their own. Eventually,
Mary’s parents, Wiley and Sara Nations, would come to live with Nathe, Mary and
the two youngest boys.
Lillian’s
father, Tom, worked on his father’s farm until he was 20. In 1918, he married 16-year-old Margie Payne
Stantliff. Margie was the tenth child of William Henry Stantliff and Rachel Jane
Faulkner, born in Lambsburg, Virginia. Like Tom, Margie had siblings that died
in infancy. Rachel lost three children for which I have no information. When
Tom and Margie (my grandparents) married, Margie had five brothers and one
sister. Margie’s sister, Loma, married Tom’s cousin, Claude Calloway. Claude’s
mother was Almedia Nations, daughter of Wiley and Sara Nations and Mary Hodges’
sister. The Calloways lived in Round
Peak. Two of Margie’s brothers, Thomas and Eldridge, moved west and claimed
homesteads in Utah and Idaho. Two other
brothers moved to West Virginia to seek work in the coal mines in the 20’s. The
remaining brother, Gollie, had a real estate business in Mount Airy, N.C.
When Tom married
Margie, he was given a few acres of land on his father-in-law’s farm 20 miles
north of Dobson in Fancy Gap, Virginia. Fancy Gap was a small town in the
shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a good farm, but the weather was a
bit harsh compared to North Carolina. Tom would struggle to make ends meet. On
June 9, 1919, just 2 weeks after her 17th birthday, Margie told Tom
to go fetch the midwife. Tom didn’t have to go far. Margie’s mother, Rachel
Faulkner, was a midwife. She came and helped deliver Tom’s first daughter,
Rachel Lorraine. They would call her Lorraine. My Northern ears always heard it
pronounced with a drawl. They would say Aunt “Low Rain”.
Tom was not a happy
farmer. To begin with, he was never as successful as his father, Nathe. However,
the 1920’s were not kind to any farmers in North Carolina. Even before the
Great Depression, over-farming in the Appalachian Valley had depleted all the
nutrients from the soil. In addition, over-production of the two cash crops,
cotton and tobacco, had caused a precipitous drop in prices. After a few years struggling with the farm,
Tom decided he’d have to find another way to feed his growing family. They decided to follow Margie’s brothers, James
Taylor (called Taylor) and Wyatt. He would go to work in the coal mines of West
Virginia. The trip north would take them past Hicksville, VA and over the Blue
Ridge Mountains. The trip was scenic, but the roads were curvy and treacherous.
The gap was usually unpassable for most of the winter while dangerous winds
persist all year round.
They settled in
a tiny town called Hot Coal where Taylor was living. There wasn’t much in this
town. And what there was, a few houses and a company store, was all owned by
the coal company, Winding Gulf. If Tom wanted to buy something in the general
store, he had to use company tokens called coal scrip. The Hodges and the
Stantliff families tried their best, but life was hard in the coal town. In
1924, Taylor’s four-year-old son Odell died. The cause is not recorded.
However, the newspaper reported that they shipped the body back to Virginia so
they could bury their son in the family cemetery next to his brother, Bernard.
Bernard was lost 12 years earlier at the age of six months. The sentiment on
Bernard’s tomb stone reflects the feelings of many who have lost children. On
the stone is carved: “You are not dead to us”.
The cause of little
Bernard’s death was infantile paralysis called poliomyelitis. Parents in those
days dreaded this disease which killed or impaired so many children. Jonas Salk
is credited with the discovery of the polio vaccination which came out in the
1950’s. I vividly remember being marched from the classroom in elementary
school to join the line of children with rolled up sleeves waiting for their
shot of the life-saving medicine.
It was in Hot
Coal that my mother, Lillian, was born on August 12, 1925. She came into the
world with the aid of a stranger because her grandmother, the mid-wife, was 100
miles and one mountain away. Oblivious to her parents’ financial troubles, she
was a happy child. I found a faded old photo of a laughing young girl. On the
back was the inscription: ”Lillian Dawn, the image of life and happiness”.
 |
| "Lillian Dawn - The image of Life and Happiness" |
Tom Hodges and
Margie’s brother, Taylor, agreed on one thing-that West Virginia coal country
was not a good place to raise a family. Not long after Lillian was born both of
them moved their families back to North Carolina. Margie’s other brother,
Wyatt, a foreman in the mines, stayed behind in West Virginia.
To be continued
………
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