"So, what's your story?"
Until recently, I had given little thought to the larger story of my family before my own birth. As a child, I had a large extended family on my dad’s side that often gathered at my paternal grandparents’ house on Sundays. Many of the conversations there involved my uncles’ service during WWII or the older members of my family’s lives during the Great Depression. On my mom’s side of the family, there were annual family reunions with similar stories including an “ancient” one about one of my great-uncle’s service in WWI. With all of the collective oral tradition from both sides of my family, my impression as a child was that human history had begun somewhere around 1918. Though my childhood played out largely in the 1950’s through the 1970’s in South Carolina, I recall virtually no discussion in my presence of current events involving the Vietnam War, assassinations, Watergate or the Civil Rights Movement. I do remember adult conversation stopping or taking a sudden turn when I would join the grownups gathered on my grandparents’ porch. It was a different time. Children were not privy to much adult conversation.
Fairly early in life I was aware that my mom’s family was from “here”, but dad’s people were from “there”. Here was Rock Hill, South Carolina. There was a rural community in North Carolina called Peachland. During the 1930’s my paternal grandparents and their seven children had moved from “there” to “here” after losing their family farm in the midst of the Depression. After that, except for an occasional visit to see two maiden great aunts in Peachland, I knew nothing of my dad’s other family in North Carolina. When we did visit Great Aunt Hennie and Minnie, I got a history lesson of a different sort. The two old women lived in a wooden farmhouse without electricity or running water. On our visits I was immersed in a pre-twentieth century world of kerosene lamps, a wood stove, a hand-drawn well on the back porch and mules in the barn across the road. Their few concessions to modernity were a hand-cranked Victrola and a hand-cranked Model T automobile in a shed by the house. Their home told me that there had been a world once older than my WWI veteran on mom’s side of the family.
In our own home, there was little to speak of the past. Dad’s mementoes in a cedar chest of his time in the Navy in WWII, an old family Bible with fifteen dollars of Confederate money inside and a piece or two of antique furniture of unknown origin were the old things and off limits to children. Later in life when people started taking about being Irish, German or Italian in origin, I just became quiet and listened. I had nothing to contribute to the conversation. A little booklet I read once in the family Bible mentioned Scotland, but I knew nothing beyond the word. My maternal grandmother was a Kelly, so I assumed we were part Irish. My own name Gulledge sounds rather guttural so I thought the name might be German. On trips as an adult to England and Germany, I looked for the Gulledge name, but without success. If I had been asked how we had gotten to South Carolina, I would have guessed through Charleston since there is a port there. So in essence until about the age of fifty five, like many Americans, I was a historical orphan. As far as I know, so was every other living member of my family on both sides. My people came to this country once upon a time from somewhere. All of my ancestors prior to my grandparents were nameless and faceless. For a long time, all of that was o.k. For whatever reason about eight years ago, it suddenly wasn’t o.k. anymore. My dad warned me not to “mess around” in stuff like the past. Others joined him. What were they hiding? What did they fear? When I defied them all and my own misgivings, what did I find? This blog is a partial answer to those questions.
Questions to ponder:
(1) Who is the oldest living member of your extended family with intact memory? What stories have you heard from her/him ?
(2) What is the oldest family artifact in your home? The oldest surviving family artifact in any of your extended family's homes? What are the stories associated with these objects?
(3) Who is your earliest known ancestor on either side of your family ? Where did your ancestors come from? If you don't know, what could you do to learn more? Are you willing ?
