I took a drive this morning to "visit" with my great-grandparents -- Green Berry and Mahala Davis Agan -- at the Buckner Cemetery in Lafayette County, Arkansas. I hadn't been there in over 30 years and it felt like a good time. I didn't know God had a purpose for me in mind.
Green Berry was a Hardshell Baptist Preacher/pulpwooder. He married many of the couples who later moved to Minden when the L & A Railroad came in 1923 and also his share of formerly underage couples from Louisiana who found themselves suddenly of age across the state line in Arkansas. Since he died before my father was born I never knew him. (Sobering dose of personal mortality this morning I realized that of my four great-grandfathers the longest surviving made it to 58, not good news for a 52-year-old.) He survives for me mainly in two sets of circumstances.
The first is his picture. We inherited an image of Green Berry taken about 1900. It is an oval image of a stern-looking man with an impressive handlebar mustache. The picture is stored in a closet and it so frightened one of my nephews that he refused to even sleep in the room where it was stored. Somehow I think that might make the hyper-Calvinist in Green Berry happy.
The second is my mother's story about the "preacher's chair." Today, I have inherited that chair and it sits in my living room. It seems it was a prized possession of Green Berry's that I guess he used in his churches. Any way, the first family occasion my mother visited as the fiance of my daddy led to a funny story. I think it was a Christmas celebration, but I'm not certain. Any way, Momma came into the living room at my grandparents house and the entire room was filled with relatives. No one -- not even Daddy -- made a move to give her a place to sit. She spied an empty chair and quickly walked over and sat down. The expressions of all in the room let her know she had made some awful violation of protocol, as she looked from face to face, someone finally said, "that's the preacher's chair." Momma replied, "oh, when he comes back I'll let him sit here." The answer came back, "He died in 1915" (This would have been in 1947). Momma said: "Oh, then I guess he's not coming." I can't help but think of that every time some one sits in the chair or particularly when one of my cats climbs up there for a nap.
This has been a week to test my faith and frankly, I'm still looking for answers, but God had a way of sending me a message through that old Hardshell preacher.
Here is a picture I snapped of the front of Green Berry's tombstone. (Excuse the iPhone quality of the pictures.
As you can tell, the inscription is barely readable, even in person. However, here is the reverse side of the same stone.
While it's tough to read in the iPhone image, the inscription is of the "I have fought the good fight" passage from 2 Timothy 4.
Well, what was God's message for me, delivered through the tombstone. The front side, giving Green Berry's life details, the earthly things have almost disappeared less than a century after his death. However, his faith, described by the inscription, endures and is still strong and visible.
Now, the logical side of me knows that the stones in the cemetery are on an incline and the fronts face to the north. Thus exposing the front side to the brunt of the weather for the past 95 years and its eroding effects. But somewhere inside I do believe that God intended that message for Green Berry's great-grandchild today, at a time he needed to be reminded of the power of faith.
To end on a lighter note. I also motored over to Magnolia and snapped an image of my grandmother Agan's parents in the City Cemetery. Here's that shot:
What's funny you may ask? Well, this stone is for David Green Emerson and his wife. It never hit me until today with TWO great-grandfathers having Green as a given name, perhaps I'd better start considering the possibility of some Jewish heritage.
Funny story about the chair. I wander what the family was thinking about her and what she must have thought about them. I had a thought about the direction the tombstone was facing. North? I had heard that people were buried facing east in the direction Jesus would return. Those considered to be witches and evil were buried facing the other way. Guess that blows that out of the water. Maybe there is some truth to it, but not in all cases. If I can pray for you or you need to just talk, let me know. But I will pray for you anyways. I enjoyed the article.
ReplyDeleteFirst, Darrell, thanks for the offer of prayer and a listening ear. I may well call on you.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have always understood the graves facing the east was the standard. I will confess that my description of facing north is rough reckoning. Even though I had the GPS in my van, this idea didn't hit me until I was back on Highway 79 headed home. The north idea came because I was on what would be the south side of Highway 82 and the grave stones faced toward Highway 82. I'll check my GPS next time, and perhaps look at a map to confirm my rough guess as east-west highways clearly don't always run east-west.
John, I've never been up to Buckner Cemetery to see our people, I think I'll do that soon. I have two questions prompted by this inspiring post.
ReplyDeleteCan you email me a copy of your Green Berry photo? If I've ever seen one it was so long ago I don't remember, and certainly before before I had digital copies of anything.
Do you know the the origin of the name "Green Berry"? I run into it on occasion, most recently in Jefferson, TX, a couple of weeks ago, but have never found an origin.
Hope you had a good 4th!
Chris
Chris, I'm not sure my scanner is big enough to get the picture, but I will get it scanned and will be more than happy to send it to you.
ReplyDeleteI've checked before about that name Green Berry and all I've ever come up with is the idea that it originated in Medieval England. It shows up a lot in families coming out of Georgia, my brother-in-law had an ancestor named Green Berry Jameson that died at the Alamo that also had Georgia roots. However, the idea that an English name, was adopted by the Scotch-Irish (I call them the Kudzu people in my American History classes because they were transplanted to the U.S. and grew to cover the entire South) and passed on through generations, considering the antipathy our Scotch-Irish ancestors felt toward England just doesn't seem right. I'd more likely think it had some sort of start in Ireland. I need to explore it some more.
Went back up yesterday with my sister and we had a little bit of a problem with one of our ancestors through my paternal grandmother -- so not in your family line. The Rev. James Madison Emerson and his wife Esther Todd Emerson are buried at the Christie's Chapel Methodist Church, that he pastored, outside of Emerson. Both Suzanne and I remembered going years ago and seeing the tall tombstones. I went a few weeks back and couldn't find them. Discovered yesterday through Find-A-Grave that those old tombstones had been replaced sometime in the last 15 to 20 years by newer flat stones. Really bothered me at first, thought they'd decided to up and move to another cemetery.
Almost forgot, my project this afternoon has been to see if I can find a grave for Green Berry's father, William. William married for either the third or fourth time in March of 1880 at age 56. He appears in that year's Census in Hempstead County. By the 1900 Census, neither he nor his wife appear in the Census. None of the Family Trees I've ever seen give a place of burial, or really a death date for him, hope I can turn up some clues.
ReplyDeleteThanks, John. I've noticed a trend Green Berry's coming out of 19C Georgia too. The one I ran across in Jefferson recently and another in Arkansas.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness they didn't move the cemetery. Let me know how the William Agan hunt goes.
I was speculating on Abraham Agan's Waterloo experience just recently.
Chris