Back in Time, Part Two

We were just talking about Henry R. Tolbert and Mary (or Margaret) Ann Amanda Mott....

Here are Henry's parents.

I’ll start with a couple of interesting stories about the Tolberts. But before I do, you might glance here to figure out who’s who:

After the Civil War, Julia Elizabeth Tolbert (the daughter of Jack H. and Molly) married James F. “Jim” Mott. Jim had a sister named Mary (or Margaret) Amanda, who married Julia’s brother Henry (both, above). This, of course, made their children double first cousins.

My mother Cecil(e) Tolbert Alawine knew Julia Mott, who died in 1932, a couple of years before my mother married. Mother recalled to me that Julia (her great-great-aunt) told her stories about a time near the end of the Civil War, of being afraid when William Tecumseh Sherman was marching through parts of eastern Mississippi. Julia recalled how the family tried to hide household items by burying them here and there on the farm. She told Mother also that, after the Union army had passed through, the family had to find the places where the things had been interred, of course, and dig them back up. Check out this link for a glance at some research on Sherman’s path. http://www.nchgs.org/html/tracking_sherman_through_newton_county.html

Or, to read a Google online book on the history of Newton County (which includes a chapter or two on the march), click on this link. http://www.nchgs.org/History_of_Newton_County_Mississippi_1834-1894_by_A_J_Brown.pdf
 

I find it fascinating that my own mother knew someone who’d lived through the Civil War. She said her Great-aunt Julia had lots of things to tell.

And not all family history is pleasant.

Mother was born in 1916. Shortly after her second birthday, her mother Lillian Luke died of tuberculosis, leaving behind Mother and her brother Herman. Mother spent a lot of her youth at her Tolbert grandparents’ house and came to regard Ellie Mae and Nellie Grace (the youngest two daughters of Charles and Eliza) as sisters. They were, of course, actually her aunts, but were only a handful of years older than she. 

Passing so much time in the Tolbert household, she knew Julia Mott. And here’s the “rest of the story."

It seems that at some point after the war, but before or around about 1890, Jim and Henry decided to buy a crib (or “cradle”) and scythe. This was apparently a joint purchase; it was to be used for cutting oats, Mother said.

I never really believed oats were grown much in Mississippi, but here’s proof I was wrong. https://mississippigenealogy.com/history/history_of_agriculture.htm  
  
A quarrel developed over who was the primary owner of this cradle and scythe.

I pause here to remind you of how on a small farm a person would have had to use these tools. This must’ve been very hard work. For interesting background information on these devices, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_cradle. 

At any rate, the quarrel was so serious that the brothers-in-law stopped speaking to each other. I don’t know who ended up with the tools, but Mother said that Jim refused to allow Julia to visit or talk to her brother, or, for that matter, to anyone in the Tolbert family. Mother remembered her great-aunt telling her that this situation continued for as many as forty years, until Jim died; and only then could Julia have conversation again with her brother.

On another note, here’s what’s represented as an early photo of John “Jack” H. Tolbert.

Comparing it with the one I KNOW to be of an older Jack, I’d say it’s likely the same person. There are a few things that haven’t changed so much—the shape of the left side of his face, the structure of his nose, the way the hair goes over the forehead.

The “stub” records here show Jack’s Civil War service. Jack, whose name changes through time from “Talbot” to “Talbert” to “Tolbert,” was married to Hester G. “Molly” Davidson (or Davison, as some show it).

Back in 1978, when Mother and I visited her Aunt Lou Tolbert Munn in House, MS, Lou reminisced quite a bit and said that Molly had a really thick accent. I wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, at the time.

But on the 1880 census is a wonderful thing: People were asked where their parents had been born.

Now, here again a problem can arise. Either the census-taker could have been in a hurry, or maybe somebody just didn’t think it was his business where they came from. So you have blank columns out beside Julia’s name where the place of birth of Jack and Molly should’ve been written.

However, Molly, over in Neshoba County, reported that her mother had been born in North Carolina and her father in Ireland. That would account for what Lou Munn called her “thick accent!”

1880 Neshoba County MS

 
I’d like to go farther back with Molly, but at this time I haven’t. My imagination goes a little crazy with me sometimes; I know portraits were slow procedures at that time, and people HAD to maintain a solemn expression--but I see no joy in her face. She’d lost a child or two. Her young daughter Margaret lost her husband and raised her own children in Jack and Molly’s house after he died. Molly’s son and daughter were estranged from each other for many years. And so on.

The house where Henry R. and Amanda Mott Tolbert lived for a time in Edinburg MS was still standing in 1982. I photographed it during a visit there with my parents one summer. It was where the portraits of Henry, Amanda, Jack and Molly were hanging.

I wonder how long it stood after that summer—or if, by some chance, it’s still there. I hope someone knows. If you do, please tell me!

Ælfwine