In Her Words

My mother always had so many stories to tell of her life that I have decided to include some of her stories here as some of my blog entries (hopefully pictures added later). After much prompting from me and my sister, we convinced her to put her thoughts and stories in writing. So at the young age of 81, she wrote her first story. Although they are somewhat long, I believe they give a glimpse of our past. Hope you enjoy them.

CONFEDERATE WOMEN OF TENNESSEE

By Veronica West

INTRODUCTION:

This essay will have no quotations and no research was done. Its story will not be found in any history book. It comes from fond memories of my childhood and my entire life. It will also be my first attempt at writing for some sixty years. Here's a brief reason why. My high school English teacher (whom I adored) required very little composition or grammar work. He was a great enthusiast of beautiful American and English literature and we were saturated with it. Consequently, as a freshman at Vanderbilt at age sixteen, I was in for a rude awakening. My English composition teacher seemed an ogre to me. As I climbed the old, gray, dingy stairs to that classroom, I felt I was going to the gas chamber. Every paper I submitted to him was returned with so many red ink corrections, such as split infinitives, dangling participles, and punctuation marks. It was impossible for me to correct. Any desire to put my thoughts on paper were so squelched, that I ceased to even try. When you're young, there are so many wonders to be explored, so many worlds to conquer, who wants to spend happy, excited moments putting on paper your cherished thoughts? So now, after all these years, I find myself attempting it, and I'm positive you will find many of those same errors in my ramblings. ~

Now I take the liberty to write about Confederate women, namely my maternal grandmother, Hartie Ellen Stewart Eatherly; my great aunt Pamela Stewart Carney, Hartie's sister; and Pandora Eatherly Nicholson, her sister-in-law. The story will be mostly about my grandmother, fondly known as "Miss Hartie", and called by me "Mammie", as were her wishes.

Since I do not have the facts in sequence in Mammie's life from the time her husband died until my life began, my story will be from my thoughts and life with her. Her strong qualities and personality traits which I knew, I'm sure, are the same traits which helped her through the war.

Hartie Ellen Stewart was born in 1843 in Cheatham County in a rural area known as Chapmansboro. She married Benjamin Hamilton Eatherly, my Confederate ancestor. He enlisted while quite young in Co. E, 18th Regiment, Tennessee Infantry. She died at age 87. Ben (as she had always called him) had died at age 55. They had two children, Andrew who died shortly after birth, and my mother, Pauline. My mother adored her father and his love was returned to her. Hartie and Ben lived on a sixty acre farm in a log house. The logs were 12 inch solid poplar, daubed with pitch. The house had a hand-hewn stone chimney. It seems Aunt Pam and Uncle Jenner came to live with her until the war was over. Many years later I was fortunate enough to see this original homeplace. My husband, daughters, and I drove to this place over a very rocky route, part of which was just a dried up river bed. Oh! what a quiet, beautiful, isolated spot situated on a hillside, surrounded by beautiful trees and a small family cemetery plot. We later went back in a larger truck and, with the aid of several workmen, brought the logs of the house to our home in Nashville. We also brought three huge mantels that were still standing. All this effort was in order to someday build our dream home. Unfortunately, once they were dismantled, they deteriorated before we saved enough money to build. We sold them for the paltry sum of $100.

I should like to interject a very sad story here: This dear grandmother and her Confederate husband were buried in this graveyard. We had cleaned it up, planted flowers, and painted the wrought iron fence that surrounded it. Shortly after this, my beloved husband died, and due to the fact that access to this property was so difficult, I never got to revisit that beloved spot again. Each time the property changed hands I had been kept informed. There was always a clause in the deed protecting that spot with stipulation that each owner keep the cemetery cut, cleaned, and given care. Along the way, someone failed to comply. A cousin of mine with an interest in all the property as it was near his ancestors' farm had flown his National Guard plane quite low one Sunday. Upon his return, he called me to tell the shocking news-- The cemetery, graves, fences, flowers, trees, everything had been bulldozed--leveled--nothing but flat soil. When I began to inquire, and found the last owner, he was planning to subdivide the property and sell to few of his close friends who had their own planes and wanted to build their own landing strip. I contacted three attorneys and was told that judges tend to throw out such cases due to the statute of limitations expiring. Since no one had been down to investigate, or even take flowers in all those years, there would be no recourse. Needless to say I have cried copious tears over this. I only tell this here, to save others this kind of heartbreak.

(A footnote: after my mother died, her grandaughter went to the very spot and found the cemetery to be fully preserved and quite tended by the owner who had indeed bought the land. The relative who had flown over earlier had evidently been mistaken as to the location of the cemetery. Unfortunately my mother was never aware of this.

Paula Ponath - her daughter)

After the war, Mammie had acquired more land from adjoining farms. She owned and took complete control of these farms for her entire life. However, shortly after Ben's death, Mammie, Aunt Pam, Uncle Jenner, and my ten year old mother left the farms and moved to the County seat, Ashland City.

To emphasize Mammie's love of education, this story comes to mind. My mother had finished the local schools, which would have been the equivalent of eighth grade. Three of the most prominent families in the county were sending their daughters away to a finishing school, old Buford College for young ladies. I've heard it quoted many times, "If old man Ben Doubleday was sending his daughter there, she would certainly send her daughter, Pauline." So with Mammie's determination, my mother entered this popular finishing school. She boarded the one local train in Ashland City, took the ride to Van Blarkom in West Nashville, took a street car into the city of Nashville to the transfer station, and boarded the electric trolley for the last leg of her trip to the College. My mother, Pauline, majored in Art, and graduated in 1908. She later married my father, Dudley Jones Shivers, who had been a student at the old Nashville Bible College, later to be David Lipscomb College. My grandmother had been violently opposed to this marriage for two reasons---church affiliation and political party. However, as time went by, each respected the other highly, and this tie became even stronger after my birth. I was the apple of my Mammie's eye, and I remained so all her life.

I was born in 1911 in the home owned by my grandmother and shared with my parents. Mammie seemed always to be the matriarch. She ran the home and took the lead in all decision making. My mother taught art in the local high school, and all my early training came through the efforts of Mammie. She explained to me that she only went through the 10th grade, because she had to stop to help her ten brothers and sisters in the fields. She taught me to read, spell, and "figger", as she called arithmetic. Consequently, I started to school in the third grade. Mammie continuously quoted to me from Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac". These phrases ring in my ears: "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."; and "A penny saved is a penny earned." She was such a frugal lady! I had to learn verbatim all the wonderful, fanciful experiences in Robert Louis Stevenson, the Mother Goose rhymes, countless Bible verses, and my Sunday School cards. We worked on books of the Bible, the disciples' names, and the Ten Commandments. I think Ecclesiastes and Proverbs must have been two of her favorite books because she was always quoting them; "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days."; "Wisdom is better than weapons of war."; "A good name is better than precious ointment."; "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches."; "Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked when it cometh."; "Hear ye children, the instruction of a father; he healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds."; "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth."; and countless others. I've been told that when I was three, I could recite"The Night Before Christmas" without any coaching. She taught me the names of birds, flowers, trees, and animals.

I followed every step she made, and she must have made many in her cooking, cleaning, sewing, crocheting, gardening, hoeing, planting, watering,--(all but the plowing), quilting, hog killing, soap making, caring for the geese and chickens. She stopped one day to tell me about the cows and goats that she had tended on the farms, and about the sorghum and cider mills, the corn and tobacco fields. It seems Mammie had some sharecroppers and a few slaves. It was apparent to me that my grandmother hated many of the men who mistreated their slaves. She told me stories of Mose, Dolphin, Suke and Mose's wife, Aunt Beck (Rebecca, I imagine?) Aunt Beck had loved and cherished a blue milk-glass sugar bowl owned by my grandmother, who, in turn, gave it to her. In my lifetime, one of Aunt Beck's grandchildren washed and ironed my parents' personal things. She gave the bowl back to me, and I have it and cherish it yet.

As Mammie worked and played with me, many stories would unfold. One story was about the day she made two of the men who helped her lead their last two cows into the woods to hide them. She had been told the Yankees were near. She was a very short, little lady, but she always stood so erect, so proud, so dignified, that I can visualize anyone being afraid of her. There were always rifles and pistols in our home. I suspect she had no fear of using them.

Even though she was lacking in formal education, she was eager to keep abreast of current events and new inventions. In her later years she often begged me to go to the airport to take a short trip around the city, since these trips were offered on Sunday afternoons. I was the coward, so we never made it. My father often said, "No one can ever hope to read the evening newspaper until Miss Hartie has digested every word." She seemed obsessed with English royalty. I do believe she had every article and book ever published on Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She shared these pictures and stories with me.

In thinking and daydreaming of my grandmother one thing always puzzled me. She had worked so hard in her early life before I knew her, it seemed she must have been the stronger of the pair. Ben seemed to have been in the background. She seemed reluctant to speak of him. She must have had more pride, ambition, and education. In the only photograph I have of them as a family unit, Hartie is seated very erect in a chair on the lawn in front of their log home. She is dressed in a black satin dress with large leg-o-mutton sleeves. She and Aunt Pam were the leading seamstresses, or fashion designers in the county. I still own many of the old Delineator magazines and dress patterns, some of my mother's college dresses, camisoles, petticoats, skirts, dressing-sacques, pinafores, and baby clothes. In this picture, Mammie had a plumed hat lying loosely across her lap. My mother was seated on the grass at her feet in a beautiful lacy white dress, with her china-headed doll across her lap. In contrast, Ben was standing behind or rather to the side of Hartie's arm with clothes hanging loosely. He was a little slouched, quite thin, with the popular straw hat of the day. (Boy in back is probably adopted/foster son Harry Province. Picture taken around 1896)

I never dared mention my thoughts to Mammie, for fear that her deep love for Ben had devastated her at his early death; or, that maybe he had been a loner, weak in character, tired and exhausted from his days spent in prison during the war. (I have documentation of that.) I always felt that she and Aunt Pam had taken the lead in all things. Uncle Jenner never went to the war. He was probably too old and in poor health.

There are only a few things Mammie ever told me about Ben or the war. She rarely ever spoke of him, but I do recall that one time she said she had felt so sorry for Ben. In her last letter from him he had said that the soldiers were starving. They had to pick any "greens" that they might find along their route to boil for food. They were almost barefooted, and they had wrapped their feet in old paper and "toe sacks". He was taken prisoner and was in an exchange, and was on his way home near Murfreesboro when the war ended. She never showed any feelings of pity when I overheard these remarks. Instead, her head went higher and she bristled as she told it. To me she always epitomized royalty.

Our home was small. We were people of very modest means, even though my grandmother still owned the farms. She received very little income from them. She rented them out to sharecroppers. However, our home seemed to be a center of entertainment. It was always filled to overflowing with relatives and friends. There were card parties, banjo pickin', piano playing, and singing. There was never a dull moment. Men came from all over the county seeking "Miss Hartie's" expertise and advice about legal matters: "Should they sell their property or hold on to it?"; "Should they rotate their crops?"; "What political candidate should they support?"; "Which doctor or what medications would she suggest?"; "Could she give them a small loan?"; and I never saw her turn anyone away.

I still have and cherish the huge solid cherry four-poster bed, the cherry dresser, a drop-leaf dining table, a huge walnut corner cupboard, an old pine blanket chest, and walnut sugar chest. I also treasure countless bibelots, a blue milk-glass sugar bowl with a top, a glass "spoon holder" which always sat in the center of the table for odd silver flat pieces, Mammie's wide, gold wedding band, her spectacles, and many daguerrotypes of family members. From the kitchen, I have several old iron cooking utensils, skillets, cornstick pan, flat irons, her butter mold, bread board, and 2 large rolling pins, to name only a few. A most prized item was a long, narrow glove box with a lock and key, which always held my father's pearl handled colt revolver. I was always warned never touch that box. It fascinated me because of the beautiful floral print inserts and the pink satin tufted inside that I got to enjoy for my jewelry case. I have a coverlet that Mammie always explained to me how the wool was sheared from her sheep, carded and curried by hand. They had grown the grasses and had boiled them for different colors to dye the threads. Then they wove the finished product. Mine is green, beige, red, and white. The one's I have seen most often have been black and white. It's so heavy and warm.

As a young child, I can remember quite vividly going with my mother and Mammie to visit my maternal grandfather's sister, Aunt Pannie, as Pandora was called. She lived with Uncle Nat (Nathaniel) in the neighborhood near Mammie's homeplace. We would go to quilting parties. Aunt Pannie had a large family, so there would be about twenty-five or thirty people present. Oh! what a glorious time! All the children went out to a nearby storehouse, which was a playhouse. There were toys and more toys---china-headed dolls with sawdust bodies, cradles, wicker high chairs, iron stoves. There we would enjoy the morning until the huge dinner bell was rung, summoning us to the large dining room at the big house. The men would have assembled from the fields and orchards. Of course, you must remember, this would have been long after the war. However, these were the "survivors", and I hope to show the "comeback" they had made. They seemed to enjoy wealth and opulence in comparison to the total devastation and near-starvation they had experienced.

Aunt Pannie's home always seemed finer than ours. As we ate, I was busy watching the beautiful Bobbin lace curtains touching the pegged floors. The windows were to the floor and slightly open, and the curtains seemed to me to be doing intricate ballet steps as they fluttered with the soft breezes coming across the shady front lawn.

I remember the huge dining room table laden with ham, sausage, fried chicken, fresh vegetables from the garden, huge pitchers of milk and iced tea(no coffee), corn bread, hot biscuits, hoe cakes, fresh fruit pies--cherry, blackberry, apple and peach. Uncle Nat was famous for his peach orchards. After dinner, all work ceased and everyone took a short nap. The children were on pallets on the floor. The men were on the porch in straight split-bottomed chairs. Maybe the ladies would knit or crochet a little, and then nod. About 4:00 P.M., everyone would load up in their horse and buggy, or wagons, and go home with these pleasant memories lingering. I also have many of those quilts that were quilted that day. I have one that I had pieced together at age six. What straight seams and small stitches were required! Why are we so soft today? What has happened to our early discipline?

I'll always miss Mammie. She died within a few months of my graduation from Vanderbilt. What a day that would have been for her! She had promised me a diamond ring when that day came. I do hope in some way through Aunt Pannie, Aunt Pam, and my Mammie that I have shown in my circuitous route the traits that seemed so prevalent in all our Confederate Women Heroes--honesty, integrity, resourcefulness, pride, ambition, love, ingenuity, courtesy, honor, devotion, admiration, respect, reverence, determination, stability, will, and firmness.

When my older daughter entered college in 1964, the dean asked us if we had read Betty Friedan's latest book, The Feminine Mystique. Then this woman expounded for about an hour on Women's Lib. Inwardly, having been raised by Mammie, I was smiling. My grandmother had always been in control. My mother was a college graduate and a teacher in the early nineteen hundreds, and I was a teacher of thirty-five years. Did the dean really think Women's Lib had just been invented? I left with the well known phrase from Ecclesiastes on my brain. "That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun" as in the old Latin expression "nil novi sub sole".