The WEAVER LIBRARY at First Baptist Church, Talladega, Alabama

Welcome, Family Trails readers to a visit to the Weaver Library. By looking at this picture above,  a family member might feel as if he or she just pulled up a chair in the sitting room on Cherry Street in "Tee's House." Yes, this little setting is right out of Tee's house… the secretary, the lamp, the chair, even the floral prints… but it now is the entrance to the Weaver Library at the First Baptist Church in Talladega, Alabama. 

My sister, Rebecca, and I visited the Weaver Library again this past weekend when we attended the April in Talladega Tour of Homes. Rebecca had a very special addition to make. Among some of the boxes she has been exploring, she found our great-grandmother's Bible. It was a very worn and well-loved black leather-bound Bible with "Mrs. C. S. Weaver" printed on the cover. She and I discussed it and decided that it belonged inside the secretary alongside some other family books. 

If you visit Talladega to reach out to your family roots, visit the Weaver Library and open up the secretary. There you too can thumb through the pages of Nancy Antoinette Haynes Weaver's Bible.

The family cookbook and family photographs inside of the secretary

Family History books and Talladega History books are also inside. 

Our cousin, Lucretia, wrote about how the Weaver Library was created. Here are her words that she wrote for her grandchildren not too long ago. Interspersed in this article are pictures taken this weekend showing the beautiful bookcases filled with books and the furnishings in the library.

Clock above the check-out desk

The Children's Library

Soon after arriving in Talladega in December 1897, my grandparents, Charles Sisson and Nancy Antoinette Weaver, joined the First Baptist Church.  Each of their ten children were members, as were all of the grandchildren.  As adults, many served in leadership roles in the church.

When I realized that 1998 would mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the family's association with the church, I began to think of how we might observe this important part of our heritage.  There was unanimous family agreement that a memorial gift to the church would be an appropriate way of observing this important occasion. In all, thirty-six Weaver family members from five generations had been members.

  

After  months of traveling back and forth from Big Canoe, where I was living at the time, to Talladega, to consider  various projects, it was finally decided that the expansion and renovation of the church library would be of significant value to current and future families of the congregation.  

The minister, the library committee, and church officials were enthusiastic about receiving this new facility from one of its oldest families.

I accepted the responsibility of chairing the committee composed of my uncle, Tenison Weaver, cousin, Robert Weaver and brother, William Malone, along with the minister and Peggy King, librarian.  Pledges of sufficient funds from family members allowed the work to begin; and the church board authorized the facility to be named The Weaver Library.

Forty-five descendents of Charles and Nancy Antoinette Weaver gathered on July 12, 1998 for the dedication, one hundred years after the family began its membership and service to the church.

        The Weaver Library is an ongoing success thanks to Peggy King who heads the Library Staff and some 25 volunteers.  The library serves not only the church members, plus children in its child development center, but is available to community residents.

    Last August when I met some family in Talladega for a mini-reunion, our first visit was to First Baptist Church and the library.  What a joy to find it as beautiful and functional as the day it opened fourteen years before, and to learn of the blessing it has been for so many people.

   We give thanks for the vision and for the dream fulfilled. It is our  hope and prayer that it will continue to touch many lives for years to come. 
                                                          Written and submitted to Family Trails

by 

Lucretia Malone Mount Davenport

               

      

Many thanks to our "Aunt Lucretia" for sharing her written account of how the library began. 

As you can see by looking  on the shelves that they are full! It is a glorious thing to see this! The children's section is adorable and very child-friendly. There are windows that let in the beautiful light and make the library an inviting place for church members, children's preschool classes, and the community of Talladega. There are chairs and tables and rocking chairs for stopping to select a book. There is even a huge fluffy dog pillow for the children to lounge on.

All of us in the Weaver family also want to give our warmest and heartfelt thanks to Peggy King for her 30 years of service as the librarian. Peggy has been devoted to this project since the beginning. Peggy and I chatted on the phone for a good long time, and I could tell she has a strong desire to see that the Weaver Library continues WELL. I asked her what the needs are to keep the library active for future generations. She explained to me that any money that is donated into the Weaver fund through gifts is saved and used for technical purposes and for furnishings.  I then asked her how she saw the future of this special library and how anyone interested could help. Her reply was the concern that fewer books are being checked out, most likely due to the popularity of "ebooks." She foresees this library needing to make an investment in this not-so-new mode of reading in order to keep up with other libraries in the surrounding area.

Bronze plaque at the entrance 

Can I just put in a personal plug here? Making donations in honor and in memory of our dear family members would be an awesome way to let the First Baptist Church know that we feel strongly about its continued success. I for one will admit that I have not been a faithful giver to our library since the needs and struggles that I actually see in my own hometown every day tug at my heartstrings, and therefore my pursestrings. But visiting the church where my Grandmother "Bo" took me every summer to Bible school, where my great-grandparents worshipped, and my mother was baptized, where I attended every family funeral since I was old enough to sit in a pew quietly…this has opened my eyes to the legacy that Lucretia made happen. When you are outside of the library and you hear these sweet and noisy preschoolers, you cannot help but hope that they have all the resources they need that our family library can provide. 

Drawing of  the church hung above Tee's chair at the Weaver Library

Happy "Weaver Wednesday" to you all as the blessed Easter season continues! I hope you enjoyed our visit back to our library. Stay tuned for more blogs each week…. I have an idea where this blog is headed now that the weather is so beautiful. How about if we talk about family reunions? Billy and I have heard frogs outside for 5 days. (We have also heard the fox! …poor frogs!) But hearing frogs on a hot and humid night can conjure up only one tremendous family tradition memory to me……can anyone guess what that might me? 

"Cut and Paste" and the Weaver Library

Good morning,  Family Trails readers. If you have been on the trail from the beginning, do you remember one of the first posts about how this all got started?

I referred to daughter Rebecca who steers me on the technical side of this project. She helped me design this blog, then talked me through how to put pictures into my writing, how to add labels….basically how to use my computer to reach out and share The Scrapbook. 

So I've been thinking about this lately….why a "50-Something" who graduated from college, raised 3 children, taught preschoolers for a while, and who can take apart a sewing machine to fix it when it doesn't work, CANNOT  use a computer to its fullest capabilities! Why! Why! Why! Oh yeah…just remembered…I finished college in 1981. I bet that's it!

Actually, I do have 3 computer gurus that I turn to frequently to bail me out of Computer Anxiety Disorder (let's call this CAD) almost every week! My 3 children. All grown up, all extremely computer literate, all helpful, although not always completely patient with their CAD-inflicted mother. I would just like to say "Thank you " to all 3 for their guidance in helping me through this new adventure. 

So, why am I rambling on so about this? I do have a great excuse. You see, my cousin, who I call "aunt"  wrote a beautiful account of the history of The Weaver Library at the First Baptist Church in Talladega. She has written about many family stories of her childhood for her grandchildren, and this library history is part of her writing. I have wanted to write in Family Trails about the library, but I did not have all the facts straight in my head. Aunt Lucretia offered me what she wrote, including some great pictures. She sent it to me in an email attachment, and all I have to do is move it into my blog space….(the CAD is flaring up at this point!)

Daughter Rebecca suggested that I click on "Cut and Paste." How many times have my children helped me with "Cut and Paste"?At least one hundred times, and I still cannot remember the steps! Now when I was a little girl, cut and paste was my favorite activity.

 Just give me a pair of scissors and the jar of Elmer's paste, and I could be content for hours. But that was the 1960's…. this is 2015. 

So all this to say…stay tuned in each "Weaver Wednesday" because one week I will have finally  succeeded in posting about the Weaver Library.
I will not give up.
 I will not let this laptop get the best of me.
I am still teachable and willing to learn! 

I am 50-Something….hear me roar!
(Actually I never liked that Helen Reddy song, "I am woman, hear me roar", but I just had to tweak the title and use it here.)

Lora Weaver Ragsdale's secretary at the entrance to the Weaver Library
First Baptist Church
Talladega, Alabama

The Scrapbook

Welcome to our family blog, "Family Trails." 

What?? WE have a family blog??? Well, yes, in a way... it's a start at a family blog.. a place where we can connect and share family history and stories. 

I am new at all of this, and to be quite honest, not sure how I feel about all this lack of privacy that comes with the internet. So as a first note, let me say that for now, I am just using first names of the living family members.  As  we all get accustomed to "blogging", then I may be more specific. But for now...

 Hi, it's Mariellan!

Several years ago, Lucretia sent out an email asking for a family "volunteer" to accept responsibility for a box of scrapbooks she had. As some of you may remember, the box contained some scrapbooks of Charles Sisson Weaver, my great-grandfather and some items of interest from Uncle Rat. (What? We have an Uncle Rat? Yes, more on this later!) Lucretia thought that these should be placed in the Weaver Family Library at The First Baptist Church in Talladega, AL.  So I thought I would be that volunteer! Little did I know the journey that this box of memories would take me on! 

Poor little box! It sat in the hall closet floor for a few years. I would open the closet to find a tote bag or get the vacuum, and there would be the box. Maybe that is why I never wanted to vacuum because I was always reminded that I had one big family project ahead of me! 

So let's fast-forward to the year 2007. Our daughter, Rebecca, had gotten married that July, so when in October, Alice and Bob invited me to come see them in Blowing Rock, NC, I accepted, having all this "free time!" My sister, Rebecca, and our parents, Nancy and Tommy, were also going. 

Rebecca and I rode together, and we packed the scrapbooks in our car. What better time to try to make sense of all this family memorabilia than with four of our family's awesome historians and story-tellers, Mama, Daddy, Bob, and Alice as our captives in a mountain cabin! After sneezing our way into Knoxville-4 hours later, we realized just what we had in store for us during our mountain escape. 

After a few nights of good food and cozy fires, most of the pictures were identified and lots of stories were told to Rebecca and me, surprisingly, for the first time. Rebecca and I stacked and labeled most of this and then immediately tied it into big plastic bags-no, not to throw away! Remember, we ARE Weavers (and DeWines! We don't throw away!) We tied things up so we could ride home without the sneezing and coughing from the dust-filled scrapbooks. 

Fast-forward again...this past Spring 2014, sister Rebecca and I began disassembling the books and sorting all the items. It was obvious while in Blowing Rock that these family treasures could not go into the Weaver library in the condition they were in. Nor should we let them get away from us, just yet. So we sat outside and had a great time tackling this treasure.

No, this had to stay with family! We had unlocked a family treasure chest! We were pirates of a different kind! What would we do with all of these jewels? What did we find? 

Postcards, greeting cards, hand-written letters, newspaper articles, church pledge cards and Sunday bulletins, wedding announcements, obituaries, photographs, telegrams......oh, I could go on. But then, we would have no reason for our family blog. 

  

Every week, I will post something new-or most likely, old! on the blog. It may be something we have all heard a hundred times, or it may be something new, or from a different perspective. Mainly though, I want all of you to have an opportunity to dig into this with me. Daughter, Rebecca, is my mentor, directing me in all things digital, as she is great at this! I'll be learning to scan and post, and soon you all will be reading and enjoying Pace/Haynes/Weaver news. Sister, Rebecca, is my helper in all things to do with family history. And all of you can help by spreading the word to your family about how to follow this blog.  Please feel free to correct me if I have something wrong.  

So, The Family Trail is calling us ...let's get started.

Love, Mariellan