A Little Collection of Americana

It took yet another trip over the weekend before I could achieve my Fourth of July goal. The bonus was that there were three additional pieces to add to my new Southern Potteries collection when I returned to the antique shop on the day it finally was open.

If strike one was forgetting to check the shop on the evening when we were first in town and strike two came when I drove back on the Fourth of July—a twenty minute drive to the north of my home—then I’m certainly glad that my third trip was a charm and not my chance to strike out.

The prize was the platter and serving bowl I had spied while in town on another errand last week—two pieces of Blue Ridge china made at the company where my grand aunt Chevis Davis Chitwood Kyte once worked as a decorator in Erwin, Tennessee.

The unexpected bonus was the discovery of a serving piece and salt and pepper shakers in an entirely different pattern, also a design of Southern Potteries, Inc.

While collecting pieces of Blue Ridge China may be all the rage in some circles, that is not why I succumbed to the notion of becoming a collector. My purpose is not to learn everything there is to know about the many unique patterns which sprang from this creative enclave—and believe me, there are some who are well versed in every permutation—but simply to have and to hold a piece of my own family’s heritage. When I look at these faded pieces with their crackled glaze, I see not the product lines of a commercial entity, but the handiwork of someone just like my aunt, working where she used to work, doing what she used to do, day in and day out in her own hometown.

If genealogy as a concept could ever become converted to something tangible, this is it. Getting my hands on those pieces of china is like reaching out to touch someone in my family whom I never had the chance to know.

As American as Apple Pie

While you may be busy today, occupying yourself with picnics in the park—or barbecues in the backyard—I am fervently hoping to add one unusual item to my holiday to-do list: visit an antique shop.

Yes, I know there are traditions more American than that, made to fill up this national day of celebration. Come to think of it, unlike some people I know, I find antiquing is not even my cup of tea. Or, ahem, grande caramel frappucino. But for this holiday weekend, I am going to add that one item to the list.

I have a specific reason for this task: I’m hoping, in some small way, to commemorate an ancestor I’ve never met, personally, whose life has lived on in the childhood stories I remember from my mother: my grand aunt, Chevis Davis Chitwood Kyte.

My daughter has long been trying to talk me into driving to a town to the north of us, to browse through the antique stores downtown. It was just the other day that I finally agreed to join her. I had something specific I needed to find. We were on a mission, and she knew just the place to accommodate my hope to quickly accomplish that goal.

But you can’t just rush into an antique shop, grab your selected item, slap some money on the counter and run out the door. There is an ambience to the place that must be respected, a protocol to heed. Life inside the doors of an antique shop must move at the proper pace.

While I was following my daughter—the one more experienced in such antique-shop decorum—I tried to feign interest in the, well, junk (don’t kill me yet—I promise this will be a worthwhile divertissement) cluttering the aisles and closing in on me from the walls. I couldn’t help but notice two out-of-place pieces of pottery on a humble wooden stand.

I picked one up to have a closer look.

And then, turned it over, just in case.

If you have been journeying with me through the research on my family tree that I have been journaling all along here, perhaps you recall the story of my grand aunt Chevis. It was she whose rather painful life experiences ended in an early death from cancer. These life experiences, I’m hoping, were somehow assuaged by the beauty Chevis created at her job at the pottery company in her hometown Erwin, Tennessee. You may recall the post I wrote about that same Southern Potteries company.

I never had inherited any pottery from that cheerful collection of now-renowned folksy artwork—believe me, after my own aunt passed away last November, I looked carefully through all her collectibles, hoping there was a piece to commemorate our common relative. The style of the artwork, however, was imprinted in my mind’s eye. One never knows, ya know?

Fast forward to that moment when I—stranger in an antique shop, trying not to look to my left or my right, fixed solely on the task I had come to accomplish, spending not one penny more—walked past those two items. They were marked with the right name, but something was wrong. There was a smear on the wording. The familiar logo wasn’t included. But the style…the style seemed right.

I can be a tightwad when it comes to spending money unintentionally. Besides, I’m a researcher. So, what did I do? Resist the urge to buy—and promise myself I’d research the identifying stamp further when I got home.

Last night, it just so happened that we were joining friends for an early Fourth of July concert in the park in that very same town to the north. Afterwards, we planned to wander the downtown area, which on Thursday evenings is converted to a farmer’s market and street faire. I promised myself I’d take a detour into that antique shop, in the hopes that those two Southern Potteries pieces were still there. After all, these two are my piece of America. My roots are intertwined in the history of that company.

Of course, I got caught up in the moment, and forgot my mission for the evening. But I’m already determined to make another trip. Part of me is hoping the two items are still there, and that I can still buy them at the reasonable asking price. The other part of me is nagging, “But why are they so cheap?”

That’s the part of me that I will be telling, “Shut up.”

A Flower-Filled Remembrance

Flowers were not only part of Chevis Davis Chitwood Kyte’s daily routine—hand-painted on dishware for her employer, Southern Potteries—but they made a significant statement at her last public remembrance.

After her passing on November 15, 1942, the Johnson City Press ran her obituary in preparation for her funeral. Unlike any such obituaries I’ve known from life up north, this Tennessee notice included the name of every single person involved in the program. That, for those of you who have never seen such a custom published in a southern newspaper, included the following count:

• Six active pallbearers
• Twenty eight honorary pallbearers
• Forty three flower bearers

Flower bearers?

For a northerner unfamiliar with any such custom, reading that list seemed overwhelming to me. I felt like the entire town had come together to bid Chevis a final goodbye. It made me wonder what was so special as to merit such attention for a funeral.

Then I realized that, perhaps, this was a regional tradition I was unfamiliar with. I’ve since seen other such mentions in Tennessee obituaries—though, admittedly, not to such lengths. A quick perusal of the terms “funeral” and “flower bearers” yielded several pages of search results online, so the tradition is apparently still alive in many circles.

Since I feel fairly safe to assume that nearly all those whose names were published on that list are no longer with us, I’ll print the announcement in its entirety so you can share my amazement. (I’m generous that way.)

If you happen to be of a similar southern persuasion, please feel free to educate me—and the rest of the readers here who might be of like northern handicap—by filling in the blanks on this custom: how does it work? Does it signify anything special? Is it just an honorary listing—or do these people take a specific role in the ceremony?

            ERWIN—Nov. 16.—Mrs. Chevis Kyte, 48, died at her home on Catawba street at 3:30 Sunday morning, after she had been in declining health for the past year.

            Surviving are one daughter, Mrs. Emma Lee Engle; a son, H. M. Chitwood; her mother, Mrs. Cassie Davis, all of Erwin; two sisters, Mrs. Mabel Martin of Newark, N. J., and Mrs. Lummie Moore of Tela, Honduras; one brother, Jack Davis of Columbus, Ohio, and two grandchildren.

            Funeral services will be held at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Church of Christ, of which she was a member. The Rev. Lonnie E. Dever, church pastor, assisted by the Rev. F. Roderick Dail, will officiate. Burial will be in Evergreen cemetery.

            Active pallbearers: Carl McInturff, Guy Robbins, Roy Tucker, Herbert Toney, Fred D. Booth and Luther Hurd.

            Honorary pallbearers: Ross Jones, Bert Wilson, R. O. Bailey, Dave Hartsell, Harry Campbell, Grant Martin, C. W. Davis, J. B. Engle, Ernest Stallard, Jim Turner, Bill Tucker, J. Q. Jones, Arh Beckelheimer, R. L. Hensley, L. C. Roberts, T. H. Peters, W. W. Ryburn, Sam Brown, S. B. Stallard, O. L. Harvey, M. P. Blankenship, Charles H. Ervin, E. E. Clouse, Claude Jones, Will Burnett, W. W. Erwin, R. T. Bailey, Claude Gouge.

            Flower bearers: Mesdames Fannie Fox, Pauline Morgan, Dolly Six, George Maddox, Charles Hicks, Ola Swingle, Florence Updike, George Dishman, C. W. Davis, Ross Jones, R. O. Bailey, Dave Hartsell, W. H. Allen, Guy Fritz, Harry Campbell, Grant Martin, Ernest Stallard, Jim Turner, John Suggs, J. B. Engle, W. R. Cox, O. L. Harvey, Guy Robbins, Carl McInturff, Arch Beckelheimer, Sam Brown, Ed Clouse, Annie Tinker, Claude Jones, B. W. Head, J. C. Rule, L. C. Roberts, Lee Johnson, Roberta Keesecker, Nannie Ray, W. M. Erwin, W. W. Ryburn, Cassie Smith, T. H. Peters, Claude Gouge, Sara K. Gentry and Misses Maude Tucker and Mary Johnson.

Receiving Pain - Revealing Beauty

Although it is an inspiring theme, the concept “Beauty from Ashes” does not exactly represent the outcome of Chevis Davis Chitwood Kyte’s short life.

But it has a kernel of truth in it.

When hearing that phrase, you may be tempted to relate it to the Phoenix, the mythical bird arising from its own ashes. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any such happy ending to Chevis’ own life.

However, despite the pain Chevis experienced in her life, ironically, the job she had to obtain to support herself and her two remaining children after her divorce paid her to create beauty and bring it into the lives of her customers.

As last Tuesday’s post showed, Chevis died of cancer on November 15, 1942. If you were sharp enough to notice it in her death certificate—as reader Wendy of Jollett Etc. had mentioned—you saw Chevis worked as a decorator for a pottery company.

The specific pottery company Chevis was employed by gives an interesting perspective on her own life. I first discovered the connection while taking my time, wandering through her entry on the 1940 census record. There, I discovered one of those recording flukes—apparently the census enumerator didn’t exactly follow directions there—that allowed me to discover the specific name of the company where Chevis worked.

It was a name that has become well known in some circles.

While Chevis’ home town—Erwin, Tennessee—was mainly a railroad town, there was one offshoot from the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway that provided a divertissement from that form of employment: their subsidiary, Southern Potteries, Incorporated.

By the time Chevis needed to seek employment there, she had joined the ranks of approximately three hundred other local workers who had all been specially trained in the freehand painting process that gave the colorful products their competitive edge. By then, the company had assumed its better known Blue Ridge name and emblem, and was seeing its distinctive wares marketed in showrooms in major U.S. cities.

The whimsical dishes, no one piece exactly the same as another, became so popular that—long after Chevis’ passing—the company grew to employ over one thousand local area residents, all working in some phase of the production process to create and deliver those hand-painted wares.

With changing market conditions negatively impacting sales, the Erwin plant eventually closed in 1957, but by the 1980s, collectors revived interest in the Blue Ridge pieces, and examples of the cheerful folk-art style work can now be found on several websites.

I can’t help thinking about Chevis when I see these delightful patterns. Bold and colorful, they seem so carefree—an emblem of a lifestyle so many of us wish we could enjoy. And yet, truth be told, the life Chevis lived was anything but carefree and bright. I often wonder if her work became the creative outlet she used to assuage the pain she surely bore, or to provide a therapeutic haven from the many reminders of her life’s troubles.

God knows she surely needed it.

All photographs above courtesy Brian Stansberry - Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License; further information provided via Wikipedia files for the Blue Ridge stamp here, the single plate here, and the two plates here.

Remembering Another Daughter

Could it be? A life without upheavals, dreadful illnesses, or unforeseen tragedies?

With only official documents to rely upon in piecing together the life and times of my grand-aunt, Chevis Davis Chitwood Kyte, by the time of her youngest child’s birth, I found little to indicate anything like the problems she had encountered in past family relationships.

I’d like to exclaim, “Thankfully!” but I have no way of knowing that for certain.

However, here’s what I know about this child who would have been my mother’s fourth-oldest cousin.

Luther and Chevis Kyte’s youngest daughter was born March 2, 1919, in Erwin, Tennessee. They named the girl Emma Lee.

You would think searching for records for a name as simple as this would be fairly straightforward. But that’s not the way it’s been. Besides the spelling struggle between Kite and Kyte—Kyte winning by the time of the 1940 census—and that of Chevis’ own unusual name, there was the additional issue of the baby’s name: Emma Lee sounds exactly like the more widely used Emily.

But starting off with a listing as a son? The 1920 census was no help with this unexpected entry. Thankfully, relying on the names of others known to be in the household—mainly Chevis’ son from her first marriage to H. M. Chitwood—guided me to the right records.

I assure you, the infant listed in that 1920 census as “Ema Lee” was in no way a son.

With the arrival of the 1930 census, the child was now properly listed as a female, but with the rigid adherence to listing first names for given names, the household showed father as Franklin—settling, at least for that year what his preferred name was for that initial “F”—and mother as Mary, Chevis’ actual first name.

The baby? Now eleven years of age, she was listed as Emily. Can’t really fault anyone for that spelling guess.

With the 1940 census taken in Unicoi County, Tennessee, on April 16, I was curious to see how the household would be listed. Not because of the couple’s divorce, or even in question of how the surname would be spelled—it was Kyte that year—but because by now, Emma Lee had turned twenty one years of age.

Despite the discovery that FamilySearch.org indexers had decided to read Emma Lee’s mother’s name as “Cherie” instead of the correct Chevis, thanks once again for being able to search by her son’s Chitwood surname, I was able to locate the correct entry. There, as if nothing had changed, her daughter Emma Lee was still listed in the household.

With no circled “X” listed at this address to indicate who had provided the household’s information to the census taker, I suspect the neighbors were deputized to provide the gossip gospel truth, so help them, God.

They got it wrong.

Apparently, unbeknownst to those neighbors, Emma Lee had fallen head over heals in love with a part time employee at her mother’s place of work and, two months prior to the date of the 1940 census, she and Clifford J. Engle had visited the county courthouse to make application for their marriage license. On February 11, the Reverend John C. Blalock solemnized the rite of matrimony and pronounced the couple husband and wife.

By the summer of 1941, another generation began as Clifford and Emma Lee welcomed their firstborn son into the fledgling household.

Do I know anything more than this about that individual who would be my second cousin? Not really. Nor do I know much more about his parents. Unless this line is plagued with some of the name-changing and initials-swapping habits of the other Tennesseans in this line, I can assume that Clifford J. Engle was exactly that, and suppose that I’ve found his entry in the 1940 census, likewise listed as single and at his parents’ home. I can also presume that a 1944 World War II enlistment record belonged to him. Other than that, beyond the 1940 census, there aren’t as many governmental documents available online.

As for Emma Lee, the only other information I can glean of her life comes from her obituary. She was eighty five at the time of her passing. She lived and died in that same small town in Tennessee—Erwin—as her mother and maternal grandmother. While nothing was mentioned in the obituary about her husband, the memorial mentioned the thirty six years she had worked as a waitress in both Florida and New Jersey. Perhaps that little detail speaks volumes about how life went for her.

Beside her son and her half-brother, she had no other survivors than several unnamed nieces and nephews, and her life was commemorated through a private memorial service. There wasn’t even any mention of a burial location where she could be remembered.

Sometimes, when I recall my curiosity upon first discovering the Davis family Bible, I wonder if any of these relatives or their descendants had any idea that a blood relation they never knew about would someday be asking questions about them. Who were they? What were they like? What happened to them? Why haven’t I ever met them? My mother and aunt were certainly at a loss as to how to respond to such questions, especially when confronted with them from the mouth of a child. They really didn’t know the answers.

Perhaps families really do drift apart—after all, how many people do you know who are not family historians yet know their second and third cousins? I may be unusual, but I find myself carrying these names around in my heart, wondering where they are, what has become of them. Call it an intangible link, like some kind of ethereal DNA—after all these generations, I still feel the pull of that connection.

Chasing the Elusive Mr. Kite

Shortly after Mary Chevis Davis Chitwood was abruptly widowed, she found herself saying “I do” to a man from neighboring Carter County, Tennessee. What, exactly, his name was, I can’t say. But I do have quite a paper trail of possibilities.

My starting point for all Davis family research was the family Bible, once kept by my great-grandmother, Martha Cassandra Boothe Davis. She, in turn, had passed it to my grandfather, Jack Davis. That was when I had first copied the data from its register in the center of the thick book. Upon my grandparents’ passing, the book became the possession of my aunt. Upon losing her last November, the Bible found its way to me.

Cassie Davis must not have been a careful record-keeper, as I’ve since found in comparing her notes to official governmental documents. Her notes on her daughter Chevis’ second marriage were particularly unhelpful. At one point, she entered her new son-in-law’s surname as “Kite,” but on another page, wrote it as “Kyte.” To complicate matters, at one point, she simply listed his first name as Jack, though he also went by initials F. L.

Trying to ascertain the truth of the man’s name by wandering out into the world of digitized records bore that scenario out—no, actually added more confusion to it. The 1920 census showed him as Luther F. Kite—other than that pesky detail of a middle initial, the same spelling as shown on the Unicoi County marriage bond, which he signed with that precise spelling, on December 17, 1916.

Yet, the 1930 census presented an entirely different picture. Perhaps it was because the census canvasser for that decade was a stickler for details—after all, they were supposed to list first names first. Chevis showed up in that document, predictably, as Mary C. One can only hope to infer from her husband’s entry as Franklin L. that he, too, preferred to be called by his middle name.

By the time of the 1940 census—a change which I’ll delve into tomorrow—suddenly, both Luther and Chevis had their surname spelling changed to Kyte, perhaps bearing out that alternate spelling version that surfaced in the Davis family Bible.

It might seem to you that I’m being overly demanding in my aggravation over these details. After all, in genealogical research we’ve all encountered entire centuries of records that dealt fast and loose with ye olde spelling. So am I fussy about all this in records of the early 1900s? I don’t think so, of course.

There are a few reasons for this. First, finding some other records showing his name to be not Franklin but Flavious, upon encountering any new documentation, I couldn’t be entirely sure I had located information on the right Mr. Kite. Or, um, Kyte. Then, too, just as I had encountered with this name problem when researching Chevis’ first husband—having the popular surname Chitwood—there were a lot of people with that same last name, at least in the state of Tennessee. How was I to be sure I had the right Flavious/Franklin/Luther Kite/Kyte?

Even at the point of discovering what I thought was his obituary, years later, upon receiving a copy of the newspaper article, I had doubts this was the right man.

Sometimes, you just have to do the best you can in research, up to a point, then close the books on the pursuit with the caveat that you need to revisit the quest at a later time, when more information becomes available to you.

That was what I had to do with my research, years ago, in Chevis’ case—until the 1940 census became available and I discovered some changes that may confirm that I had found the right obituary, after all.

Over So Soon

With one mighty strike, Chevis Davis Chitwood’s husband was felled from his position at the local railroad company. As quickly as he came into Chevis’ life, he went out.

Perhaps it was from grief—or the suddenness of the traumatic news—that Chevis was unable to provide information as basic as her husband’s parents’ names. Each line in the death certificate was filled in with the same word: “unknown.”

I had, from the Davis family Bible, a note that H. M. Chitwood was born in a place called Oakdale, Tennessee. Oakdale was quite a distance from the town of Erwin where the Davis family lived, making me wonder if it was solely on account of his railroad work that Harvey Chitwood was even in town at all.

The date of his birth—at least the version I’ve found in our family Bible—was May 3, 1875. Of course, there are documents out there disputing the record-keeping skills of my great-grandmother, so I’ll have to do some more work to confirm that.

I’d like to think the date of Harvey M. Chitwood's death was etched in stone, but apparently, his burial site at Jobe Cemetery has no headstone to mark it. Unlike the family of my husband’s relative who suddenly lost his life in a similar manner, Harvey Chitwood’s wife was not in any position to pursue redress from the as yet unnamed railroad company implicated in her husband’s violent end. With a baby due in a matter of months, the poor widow probably had too many other pressing financial needs to provide any type of permanent memorial for her deceased husband.

Life, of course, does go on, and for Chevis, either time healed all heartbreak, or financial desperation pressed her to seek a union more practical than romantic. Whatever the truth of the matter, on December 17,1916, the former Chevis Davis Chitwood became the new Mrs. F. L. Kite.

Finding the Rest of the Story

It’s a funny thing, trying to initiate a family history search based on interviews with older family members. You may consider history to be a litany of dry facts, but when it comes down to it, everybody has his or her own version of that history.

As I explained a while back, I started my inquiries into my family’s stories at an early age. Because the names were so ear-catching to me as a young child, I pressed, early on, for details on what became of my Davis grand-aunts.

It took a while for me to discern that those history facts came to me, packaged in among the stuff of family prejudices.

My mother’s first, off-hand and nonchalant reply to my incessant inquiries was that, other than Lummie, her aunts had married early—and made poor choices, at that.

I don’t remember the first time I was given the chance to really study the entries in the old Davis family Bible, but I do recall the time I actually took notes of what I read: it was right after graduating college. I still have that page with my frantic handwritten notes—hurrying, just in case someone decided the moment was over and it was time to close the book. (Thankfully, now I also have the original Bible, itself, to confirm what I had once copied.)

One of the points I had noticed, in taking those notes, was that two Davis aunts had been married more than once. Each aunt’s first marriage had not lasted long.

Once again, now that I was older and hopefully my elders would be more forthcoming, I pressed my mother for more information. She maintained that same story: that both Tennessee aunts had just been young and foolish, perhaps in the manner of “backwoods” country people, marrying too early. She also insinuated the notion that, most likely, alcohol was involved, and that the marriages were probably of an abusive nature.

In the case of Chevis Davis, I definitely wanted to know more, but the ability to research the fate of her first marriage was hampered in that—in what I suppose was the fashionable manner of the time—her husband was entered in the family Bible only by his first and middle initials: H. M. Chitwood.

Anyone researching Tennessee roots is likely to confirm to you that there are a lot of Chitwoods out there, just waiting to confuse your research results. Working solely with initials does not help that matter.

By the time of the late 1990s, I was finding my way onto genealogy forums and ListServes, learning about online resources that could help me with my Tennessee research. In those pre-Web 2.0 days of dull, dry text-based online files, it was hard slogging to wade through lines and lines of typewritten names. There were no beautiful graphics on subscription-based sites with handy boxes to fill in and, with a single click, to bring up a wealth of resources. But I learned my way around.

Somewhere in the midst of that search, the proverbial “Some Kind Soul” materialized and helped me hone my search for the H. M. Chitwood I was seeking. Actually, there were several kind souls. Although I saved many of those original emails with the sources, some have undergone understandable changes after all these years. But I will never forget the day I stumbled upon the answer to my question, “What happened to H. M. Chitwood?”

A forum participant gave me a link to access what was—back then—online from, I believe, the Tennessee Archives. It contained a listing, searchable by year and county, by surname of those who had died in that year. Somehow, that linked to a transcription of the death certificate. In some cases, the transcription included more than just the basic names and dates—in rare instances, it included unusual notes included in the death certificate.

That was how I found out what happened to H. M. Chitwood. And the news was so startling, even seeing it listed in courier font typewriter style writing, something visceral leapt out of the sterile screen and grabbed me. I could only imagine the pain of going through such an ordeal—both for husband and for wife.

Another two of those Kind Souls also provided a second resource: a genealogy book with the straightforward title, Unicoi County Tennessee Death Record Abstracts, 1908-1936. Each of these helpful forum members emailed me with the details of that added note of the unusual cause of H. M. Chitwood’s death—and, incidentally, revealed at last what the “H” stood for.

Preparing for this post today, I tried to retrace my steps to that old website link, but I cannot find it anymore. I checked Joe Beine’s deathindexes.com site, from where I may have found that original site, but I can’t locate that old record there. I’ve tried Googling it. Perhaps, since it was so outdated in appearance (certainly not in data!), the site has been so revised as to no longer be recognizable.

In its place, I can now find websites with digitized copies of the actual death certificate—that document I would, back then, most likely have had to pay fifteen dollars for, then wait six weeks until my self-addressed, stamped envelope came back to me, hopefully bearing the right person’s certificate.

Now, with a simple click of your mouse, or tap of your finger, you can bring up that gruesome news for yourself: that Harvey M. Chitwood, a railroad employee, was somehow going about his duties when he fell from one car and had his head completely severed from his body, thanks to another passing train.

On September 14, 1914, that sudden event changed everything for newlywed Chevis Davis Chitwood.

Yet, despite the trauma, seven months later, she gave birth to the son who would never be able to see the father he was named after.

While the realization of the cause of the senior H. M. Chitwood’s death was a shock—even after all these years—the lesson that hit home the hardest for me was not empathy for the pain that young family endured nearly one hundred years ago. The lesson I learned was that, sometimes in mining our family resources for details on those relatives who have gone on before, we must take caution to not pick up the prejudices of our elders.

It took me a while to think this one out, but what I realized—and I think this guess is fairly accurate—is that, often, our older family members may be passing down to us the preconceived notions they absorbed from their own elders. Think of it: my mother, who gave me my initial impression of this family, was not even born when this tragedy occurred. How would she have known what happened? Only through her own parents. And—as may have happened in your own family, too—who passes down the stories of family history? Often, it is the mother, telling stories to feed the curiosity of young, inquiring minds. Of course this type of story-telling is going to be sanitized.

In addition, keep in mind some other family dynamics: not all families are in angelic fellowship with each other. In my mother’s case, she was raised by a set of parents who, let’s say, had a rocky relationship at times. If nothing else, her mother was less than approving of some of her in-laws. She may have had an attitude about those in-laws that didn’t turn out well in the translation. If nothing else, we can see that in my mother’s first casual impressions, most likely absorbed from her own disapproving mother, that the man was a ne’er-do-well who abandoned his family.

He left his family, alright—just not in the way anyone one hundred years later would have expected.

  

Naming Names

When you were a kid, going to one of those stores where they sold bicycle “license plates” with boys and girls names printed on them, did you go and search for your own name? Ever discover that they didn’t have yours, and feel crummy that your name was left out?

If your name was Nancy or Diane or Mike or John—something fun, or stylish, or popular—you probably never got the chance to experience that kind of feeling.

Imagine if your name was Chevis. That kind of name might almost make you wish you had two names….

One thing I learned as a Northerner raised by the daughter of a Southerner: in the South, you didn’t just have one name. You were given two. And both of them got used on a regular basis—not just when you were in trouble.

That’s why it was Sarah Martha and not just Sarah.

With that understanding under our belts, it seems puzzling to find that the eldest daughter of Southerners Martha Cassandra and William David Davis was called, simply, Lummie.

Where was her middle name? She almost seemed incomplete without one, as if she weren’t a true Southerner. She had that middle name, of course—it was spelled Bernishie in the family Bible, but I’ve seen it spelled differently in other documents—but it was never used.

The situation with her younger sister seemed to be a hybrid between the Southern style and a naming tradition seen in some European cultures. She had two given names—Mary and Chevis—but both weren’t used in tandem. Like the Irish or the Germans, who may have given a child a first name in honor of some saint but never actually intended to use that name in daily life, this Davis daughter was always called, simply, Chevis. Never Mary.

Admittedly, Chevis is as unusual a name—at least to me—as Lummie. I had no idea what the name Lummie might have been short for until Wendy, a fellow blogger and reader here, provided a viable suggestion. Nor do I have any clue about where a name like Chevis might have come from.

Come to think of it, at this point, I don’t yet know what cultural background either of her parents claimed. I have yet to arrive at the juncture between American residents and European emigrants—although family lore claims Wales as the origin of the Davis surname. We’ll see.

But about Chevis: before we proceed, I just have to take this opportunity to disabuse you of any tendency to pronounce Chevis as if it were part of that well-known blended Scotch whiskey named Chivas Regal. It is not. As far as this Davis family pronounced it, the name sounded quite plain. With an accent on the first syllable and a hard “ch” sound like “church,” it was pronounced by everyone in the family I knew pretty straightforward.

When I was a kid, I got to thinking of it all as my mother’s aunts with the weird first names: Lummie and Chevis. I never really knew much about either of them, except that they were supposed to be real tall, and that one of them used to live in Arizona.

Once I started researching these Davis relatives, I found out quite a bit about Lummie, as you’ve already seen.

But Chevis? She was a mystery—and she still is to me, at least through her teen years. My mother had told me that Chevis married young—and, looking it up in the Davis family Bible, I saw that she had married on September 18, 1913. That would put her age as three months shy of her twentieth birthday. Not too young.

But Chevis was one of these family situations, I learned, where what I was told about her didn’t necessarily match up with what really happened to her. I discovered that, for instance, when I stumbled upon the marriage bond for H. M. Chitwood and “Chevis Davis.” Dated the same day as they were married, the record showed quite a different report: February 18, 1914. (Frustratingly, a separate marriage index gives yet another date for their wedding: January 18.)

I had run across this file only recently. Before that, those enigmatic initials had given me fits when I attempted researching the couple. Alternating between searches using “Mary” and “Chevis”—and then guessing all the possible misspellings of such an unusual name—coupling this search with a man’s name given only as initials made for some slow going.

Yet, September 18, January 18 or February 18, I did discover, quite early on, that Chevis was about to face some difficult times.

A Melancholy Homecoming

Anyone who had followed the Davis and Moore family returning in 1952 to Erwin, Tennessee, from Wallace and Lummie’s new retirement residence in Phoenix was joining in a somber gathering. True, it must have been difficult to have lost Wallace Moore in such an abrupt and tragic manner. But a return to the Davis family home town also accentuated the fact that there were more who had gone on before than there were still among the living.

For whatever reason the choice was made, Wallace Moore—and later, his wife, Lummie Davis Moore—planned to return to their roots at the time of their burial. They were buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Erwin, as were many of Lummie’s relatives.

When Lummie returned to Tennessee with the remains of her husband, she was no doubt joined by her daughter and son-in-law, Sarah Martha and Cyril J. McKinnon. Lummie’s next youngest sister, Mabel Martin, likely soon arrived by rail from New Jersey. And Jack Davis, their baby brother from Columbus, Ohio, would have been there too, along with his wife, Ruth.

Their youngest sister, Mary Chevis, would not have been with them, though. She had lost her life to cancer nearly ten years prior, having not even attained the age of fifty. Her husband, H. M. Chitwood, had preceded Chevis by nearly three decades.

And their mother, Martha Cassandra Boothe Davis, though long-lived herself (to eighty eight years of age), had passed away six years prior. Their father, William D. Davis, had been gone for over forty years.

Funerals serve that double reminder of those others who are no longer there to carry that newest loss in the family. I imagine, in the Evergreen Cemetery after Wallace Moore’s burial, family members wandered to spot headstones of those they remembered from times past—perhaps to mourn again and, thankfully, to reminisce.

Though I’ve found enough of a stash of remembrances about Lummie and her family in my aunt’s personal papers, there is nothing I can find on her sister Chevis, and not much more than a newspaper clipping regarding Mabel. Even so, I’d like to add to that limited stash from what I’ve been able to find through my own research. In the next few days, please join me as I review more railroad trivia, tales of workplace hazards turned tragic, missing children and glimpses of girlhood dreams of glamour. Each of these Davis siblings—and their stories—needs to be remembered, if only for a moment.