The Story behind the Faces

(NOTE: This post has been updated. 2/16/2019)
Every Alawine descendant needs to be able to recognize this couple. They are Lucretia Wells and Andrew Jackson Alawine. They were my great-grandparents.

I teach language, and when my students are learning the Spanish words for family members, I ask them to describe their aunts and uncles, who their grandparents are/were, if they are lucky enough to have great-grandparents. A few always do have great-grands. We take a moment to acknowledge this as an unusual thing.

Then I illustrate la familia with a PowerPoint of my own family tree. The kids always freak out on hearing that these people above, my great-grandparents, were born in the 1840’s. It’s fun when they start looking at me and wondering, Gee, if those people would be that old today, how old must you be? I explain about generations, large families, how, if you’re at the end of a large family, which was descended from another large family, you end up with two generations instead of only one. This, of course, was the case with me: in the younger group of my own siblings, the daughter of a man (my father Bob) who was in the younger half of his family, too.

I’m not sure when the photo above was made…perhaps around 1870 or so, would be my guess. Some people change pretty drastically as they get older, but to me Andrew and Lucretia (who went by the nickname “Crecie” and for whom Aunt Creacie was named) look very much in 1903 as they did in 1870.

Some people assume that with any couple, one person is serious and the other, merry and humorous: "Opposites attract!" My own father was about 10 years old when Andrew Jackson Alawine and Lucretia Wells Alawine died. He told me that he remembered some things about his grandfather, who was—Daddy said—pretty serious and quiet. Daddy was intimidated by him, somewhat afraid of him; but his grandmother Lucretia, on the other hand, was jolly and pleasant.  

This actually affirms the basic truth of stories told to Alton Alawine by his mother, Sarah (“Sadie”) O’Neal Alawine (married to James T. Alawine, the son of Andrew and Lucretia). Aunt Sadie was in her 90’s herself when she died, and was for Alton a source of much valuable information. Many things Daddy had told me as he got older, and when I was a teenager, I ran past Alton later on, when he and I were feverishly doing genalogical research together; and Aunt Sadie was not only able to confirm the stories but to add some details that Lucretia had told her, herself! Alton—ever the meticulous lawyer—chased down the facts behind the stories as they were verified.

So we have the one about Andrew and Lucretia’s daughter “Rena” (short for “Lorena”), who was shot and killed while still just a child. (That will be in a later post.) And the one about Andrew’s first marriage…again, later!

Tonight I opened my notebooks and re-read some letters from Alton, one of which I’m going to post. Note the return address he typed at the top of the page; that alone made me feel very old, as the letter was written to me just before he retired and moved back to Mississippi. I’m going to share some of it with you all, and you’ll no doubt have questions or comments about the first part (regarding Green Wells and his wife Sally), but, once more, I’ll fill you in on that in another post!

This story is about the Adkinsons: Margaret Jane and John L., pictured here.  

If you don’t know, Margaret Jane was William R. Alawine (Alewine)’s sister. Therefore, she was Andrew’s aunt. [If you need to place all these people in context, I also include a basic family chart Alton typed up in the early 1980’s, I believe.] Alton and I kept up a lively correspondence until he moved back "home", at which point we probably exchanged information and talked less than we had while he was in Washington. Such is the way things go. 

But here's the letter, with the story:  

So times were indeed “rough” after the Civil War, and this story has a gritty edge to it—but I’ve always loved a juicy story, especially if it’s true!

The Wells line was thoroughly researched by Alton, because his side of the family had several intermarriages there. (Through Lucretia, we are all descendants of Isaac Wells, an early Methodist minister of some renown in Mississippi.) 

I want to emphasize right here: I can absolutely vouch for the bottom half of the chart below. The Mercer line has also been documented pretty extensively, not just by Alton and me but also by others, as has the Richards part, because Mercer and Richards descendants are members of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). If anyone is interested in joining that organization, the lines have been traced.

However, the “Alawine” lines back past Elijah have been changed since this early chart Alton typed up. It's handy , so I'm including it. But I'm also putting in, after it, a more recently-done one.

I have deliberately put in the sloppily oversized copy of the first chart so that it'll be clearer to read. Just use the bottom bar to scroll left or right. You'll also notice that, as this chart was put together before 1981 or so--maybe even a couple of years before that--many deaths aren't recorded. I have those in another document, and you may have your own family members' stats saved somewhere, too. They're just not on this page.

Feel free to "Save as Image" to your desktop if you'd like.

Updated Chart

A COUPLE OF NOTES ABOUT PHOTOS IN THIS BLOG:

First, I’m completely going to be honest and tell you all that I have “enhanced” almost every photo I’ve posted.  I wanted the clearest and best ones I could manage, and I used a version of Adobe Photo to enlarge, brighten, make “sharper”, and so on, all the pictures I’ve posted. Some of the photos are really small—a couple of inches square, for instance—and to make them easier to see, I enlarged them considerably.  

Second, I hope relatives are saving them (if Blogspot allows it) to allow wider dissemination of the pictures.