In The Surrey With The Fringe On Top!

What comes to mind when you hear the word, "surrey?"
Having grown up in a home filled with LP albums of 1950's musicals, I immediately think of the song,  The Surrey With The Fringe On Top, by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II.
What a great show with so many songs that draw you in to sing along! Honestly, that must be how so many children learned to spell 

O K L A H O M A !

O K…(no pun intended!) let's get back to the state of 

A L A B A M A ! 

and to our "time capsule" article written by Lora "Tee" Antoinette Weaver Ragsdale. 

Last week we began with a piece about the store in Lineville, and today we are going to look at what Tee wrote about their home life after her family moved from Lineville to Talladega. You will see how the surrey ties in to our post. 

When the family moved to Talladega in December, 1897, there were five children. We came in a surrey, and I will never forget seeing my first train. I was so frightened, I cried. Our first house faced Coffee Street on the lot where Heritage Hall and the library now stand. 

Picture from the internet

The first Sunday we were in Talladega our Father with Cabot and Kiser went to the First Baptist Church, and the family has been going regularly ever since. We did not know anything else but to get up on Sunday morning and dress for Sunday school and church. Father was the Church Treasurer for many years. 

When we moved to Talladega, it was a town of about five thousand. There were no paved streets or sidewalks in the residential area. The business section was on the square as it is today…

We lived in the house of Coffee Street for three years. then our parents bought a house at 305 Oak Street from Cecil Browne, a lawyer, for $2000. 

How happy we children were to have a house with a bathroom. The toilet had a long chain to flush the water. We had a cistern for drinking water and were not allowed to drink water from the faucet. 

The first day after we had moved into our new home, Father came home for noontime dinner and saw his four oldest children playing on top of the roof. We had gained access to the roof  through the trunk room and had climbed a ladder that was hidden in a small closet which led to the attic. From there, a ladder led to the outside entrance. The flat top had an iron grillwork around it. Our father went into the house and asked Mother if she knew where the children were. "In the yard, I suppose," she said. Papa answered, "No, they are not. They are on top of the house! We'll have to sell the house; the children are going to get killed."Well, they didn't sell the house, and I'm sure we were careful not to get caught on top of the roof again. 

Imagine seeing 4 children on top of this house! 

I hope you have enjoyed the second look into Tee's time capsule article. 

There is more to come in the next few weeks. 

Love,

Mariellan

Time Capsule

Welcome to this week's "Weaver Wednesday" on this beautiful October day!

Our past few posts have been about our family's stores on the square in Talladega, Alabama. This week, let's go a bit farther back in time and rediscover Grandfather Weaver's first store. Our family is so fortunate  that Lora Antoinette Weaver Ragsdale wrote a paper on her family's history in Talladega to be included in a time capsule for the Talladega County Historical Society. She wrote a long and descriptive narrative that we can look at over the course of our year ahead on Family Trails. Today, I will share what Lora wrote about her father when he started his first store in Lineville, Alabama. I will begin after she described her parents' farmhouse: 

After our father managed to get his farm under control, he opened a country store. In order to keep up his stock, he would go about 20 miles to market in Talladega in his wagon with the bow frame cover. 

 A few days before leaving, he would let it be known in the community so his customers could bring in different kinds of produce to be sold:  chickens, eggs, beeswax, sheep skins, potatoes, honey, onions, corn, and many other items. 

He would bring back staple items that could not be grown on the farm, such as sugar, salt, lard, and flour. he would also buy lamps and kerosene oil.

In those days eggs were not graded; an egg was an egg-pullet, hen, guinea, duck, or goose. Father would pack these in a large wooden box. In the bottom of the box he would put a layer of cotton seed, then a layer of eggs and continue layering cotton seed and eggs until he had as many as 500 eggs. Kiser, who would go with him to market, said that not one was ever broken. 

This is all that Lora wrote about the store in Lineville. We will continue in the weeks to come to look into her article that was placed in the time capsule. She described their family's home life, store life, and farm life.

We are the fortunate ones that are able to read this without waiting on the time capsule to be opened. 

Love,

Mariellan

A Photo Stroll Through Some of the Weaver Family Stores

Dear Family Trails readers,

Our family history is filled with stories of shop-keeping, and this week's "Weaver Wednesday" edition is a "photo stroll" through a small part of that history. In past posts, I have tried to honor the Weaver businesses in 50 Years in the Mercantile Business on August 26, 2015, and Uncle Dewey, on June 24, 2015,  and Cousins and Cookbooks, on November 12, 2014, and Shop Local, September 3, 2015.

 I am thankful to my cousins for submitting pictures that I could use for this post. 

An article submitted in 1960 to the Daily Home newspaper

A photo from the internet of a dry goods store in the turn of the 20th century, similar to
C. S. Weaver and Sons

Kiser Weaver in front of Wood-Weaver Shoes 

A sign from the Weaver-Ragsdale store

Dewey Weaver at the Weaver-Ragsdale Store

Kiser Weaver in C. S. Weaver and Sons

A framed page from the Daily Home newspaper advertising  the closing of  Weaver-Ragsdale 

The sign in  the window of Wood-Weaver Shoes 

Talladega Square 

Talladega Square

The soda fountain in The Owl Drugstore

The restored soda fountain today

Our family's cookbook, Seasoned With Love, contains family stories throughout. Here are 2 of these stories that tell about days of the stores:

William Malone remembers Grandfather telling him that pennies were not used in Talladega when he opened for business in 1897. They were introduced later by Mr. Goldberg of "Goldberg and Lewis Department Store."

And : 

The owner of the store from whom Grandfather rented felt sorry for him because he had so many children to feed and clothe. She would come into his store each month before the rent was due and buy more groceries and dry goods than she could possibly use in order to take some of his rent in trade. 

Save your pennies! 

Love, 

Mariellan

Old Virginia Houses Along the James

Dear Family Trails readers,

This week let's look at the book, "Old Virginia Houses Along the James" by Emmie Ferguson Farrar. Published in 1957, this book documents "...the narrow strip of land bordering the James River, from Richmond to the Capes and Yorktown…" and is filled with beautiful black and white photography by Harry Bagby. The book jacket continues to read: " …both historically and architecturally, this is one of the most significant areas of the Old Dominion. In this setting are the lovely old houses represented in this second volume* of Mrs. Farrar's series. Her charmingly descriptive text and the 160 superb photographic studies record the very essence of these houses as well as the histories and legends of the families who built them."

In the book Mrs. Farrar describes the home of Thomas Rolfe, the only son of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Two other homes included were the birthplaces of two of our American presidents, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler. She wrote about George Washington meeting his future bride, Martha Dandridge Custis, at a beautiful James River home. 

And…for us, page 156 in this book holds key facts about our family ancestor, Richard Pace. His land grant of 600 acres in the Virginia colony from King James I was named "Pace"s Paines" and later became "Mount Pleasant." Emmie Ferguson Farrar's book helped our family begin the search for our roots when she published the story of Isabella and Richard Pace. For more about the Paces, see the previous posts, "We're Coming to America" and "HOW DID WE EVER GET HERE?"

If you are interested in finding this book, there are several copies available on Amazon
through third party sellers at reasonable prices.  

*The first volume in this series is called, "Old Virginia Houses: The Mobjack Bay Country," also available on Amazon.

Do you have an interesting book that has helped you did deeper into your family lore? If so, I would love to hear about it. "Weaver Wednesdays" may lead us into "Thumb Through a Book Thursdays."
Happy reading!
Love,
Mariellan

Nina Lucretia Weaver Dodge

Good evening, Family Trails readers. As readers of this family blog, I am just curious…are you descendants of Nettie and C.S. Weaver?… Are you friends of the Weaver family?…. Or just interested in the ramblings of a family in search of its roots? Whatever your reason is for checking in this week, I am glad that you are here. This is a welcoming spot for anyone who finds our family or any of the topics in this blog interesting. If you have been reading along for the past year, you are familiar with the Weaver family…the family that we call the "roots" of this Family Trails blog.  We definitely dig deeper and beyond the story of Nettie and Charles Sisson Weaver, but for this week, let us meet and remember their ninth child, Nina Lucretia Weaver Weaver Dodge. Nina was the ninth of ten children. She is the smaller girl standing to the right of her mother in this picture below.

 As you have read before, I think this picture is stunning! Just think of it… a mother and father with their 10 children, dressed in their summer finest for an outdoor photograph in front of their house…the oldest sons looking very dashing, the oldest daughters very fashionable, the younger children so precious in their sailor tops and heirloom dresses. 

This photograph looks similar to photos taken of passengers on the Titanic or the members of Tzar Nicholas' family, the last royals of the Russian Empire…the clothing styles, the arrangements of the children, the sepia tones, the expressions on their faces. This is all enough to make one pause and think…this was a very remarkable time in history, and yet …this is our history. This photograph was taken of Our family in Talladgea, Alabama, the fastest growing city in Alabama at the time. The family members in this photograph are Our parents, Our grandparents, Our great-grandparents…

When we stop to think like this, it was not that long ago. 

In this picture,  four year old Nina is standing next to her mother, looking to her right. 

Nina is standing in this picture in the green dress. 

Aunt Nina was a school teacher at the now Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind. She was a good cook too! Any time her family and friends came to visit, she and her sister, Lora, baked home-made treats to serve their company. Nina continued as a teacher to her extended family long after her retirement from school. She indulged her extended family with educational gifts at Christmas and on birthdays. 

We have written about Clairmont Springs many times in our family blog. When I think about Clairmont Springs, I, of course,  think about Aunt Nina. She loved going to Clairmont. She and Tee received so much joy having children spend time there. Nina and Tee drove us all down narrow country roads to find wild blackberries, then they baked deep-dish blackberry cobblers for us. Nina and Tee took us to neighboring farms to meet the farmers and their wives. We helped milk a cow, and we watched as the farmer's wife strained the warm milk before she churned it. The farmer allowed us to gather eggs from his chickens and his quails. Aunt Nina and Tee knew that learning how other people lived was part of having a good education. 

Then back to Clairmont Springs for swimming and catching frogs...These ladies never got tired!

Family Trials is honored to remember Nina Lucretia Weaver Dodge during her birthday month of September. 

Love,

Mariellan