Ancestral Dirt

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Just after passing through a tunnel of trees called “Black Hollow” (pronounced “Black Halla” here in north Texas), my great uncle Doug announced that we would soon have a “bird’s eye view of Marysville.” I smiled hearing the name of my blog (unknown to my uncle), and also in anticipation of revisiting the grounds of my ancestors. Our journey through the thick wooded area where the swells of the earth dip down for creeks to merge no longer holds the likelihood of robbers like it did decades ago. Carriages, wagons, and ponies were hustled through dusk’s shadows and the low light of the woods in hopes of an uneventful and safe journey as early Marysville settlers scurried home.

These days one can’t really call Marysville a town, despite the mesmerizing turn of wind turbines stretched across the horizon or the cattle grazing around an occasional hidden homestead. Unlike much of the sandy north Texas area where my parents and sisters now live, there are no horse ranches in these parts due to the sticky soil that presents problems in a horse’s hooves.

But the population of the area was first affected in 1942 when the U.S. army decided to take over thousands and thousands of acres of this north Texas area and create a massive, military training ground for troops being prepared for combat in WW II. (Not my navy Dad though, who survived many a battle aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Note his beloved hat in photo below.) Marysville families had no choice but to sell their homes and land for unreasonable sums and relocate. This included my maternal grandmother and grandfather’s families. Hundreds of homesteads were demolished as a large hospital and acres of barracks went up. Somehow the old Davison (my grandfather’s ancestors) home, the school house, Baptist church, and remains of the general store all held their ground, and of course the Marysville cemetery, which feels like the real sacred hub.

The fierce thunderstorms of the morning and early hours of this June afternoon made for sweltering Texas temperatures. My mid-eighties parents struggled through the high grass and uneven terrain of the cemetery, but they were up to the challenge of this visit. My great niece, Megan, proved an incredible sport for an 11 year old with five adults ages 56 to 86. Great Uncle Doug’s enthusiasm for sharing intricate and endless details of our family’s genealogy could test the endurance of even the best among us.
Until the second world war, my grandparents’ families were apparently quite content to be farming corn and cotton in that sticky north Texas dirt. Johana and John Davison had traveled clear from Georgia in the mid 1800’s, and later their son Luddie Pinkney (no kiddin’), a Baptist preacher, married Mattie Francis and soon begot Chester Bernice in 1896, my granddaddy. Luddie must have decided that changing Davison to Davidson would make up for his questionable middle name. Mattie’s parents (one being a Jim Crow, hopefully not a lawmaker) descended from Jane and Steven Crow, who also took westward to Marysville, journeying from Mississippi and South Carolina in the early 1800s.

Meanwhile Joseph Forrest Fletcher roamed in to Marysville from Missouri, while Emma Gertrude Vanderford trickled down from Springfield, Illinois, and the two of them hooked up and viola, Emma Clare, my granny. Come her early twenties with her commendable eighth grade education, Emma Clare was the perfect candidate to become the Marysville school marm, soon catching the eye of my future grand daddy, Chester Bernice, who was working the fields at the time. They married in 1917.

So Marysville holds many of the graves and a lot of memories of my maternal grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents. Whew. Now my parents and sisters are living less than an hour away from this place. See why I called this a sort of sacred hub? I mean, there was some covered wagon traveling that happened for all those people to even make it here from the deep south and the Midwest to Marysville, but the road seemed to finally stop just past Black Hollow. Maybe they all experienced the fear of God amidst those dark forests and chose to shout hallelujah and stake their claims in the fertile soils once making it through the hollow’s ominous shadows and the tricky sands of the Red River.

I don’t know why it fascinates me so to meander through a cemetery holding the gravestones of ancestors. My legs were itchin’ and bugs were sticking in the sweat running down my neck. But I recognized the flowers poking up among the engraved old fashioned names and when I closed my eyes I could tell I was in Texas just by the bird calls. I spent only one lone sabbatical year in this area amidst 42 years I lived in Texas (well, I was born not too far from here, moving away at age 3), but I get a sense of the root of the root of the root of who I am around here. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about wanting to live in this neck of the woods again; I’m planted oh so happily in Colorado. But connecting to a sense of place in one area seems to help me feel more in touch with this blessed earth wherever I am, whether in my garden in Denver, roaming the rocky trails in the San Luis Valley, or walking on the dirt of my ancestors. It’s all home, baby.

(Photos: 3rd is old Davison homestead; 4th is old school house; 5th is my parents Rosalie and Joe, me, sister Pamela, and her granddaughter Megan; 6th is Luddie and Mattie with their children, oldest being my granddaddy; the rest are old family gravestones)