Many of the early settlers in the Willamette Valley were rural farmers from Kentucky, Missouri and other southeastern States. They migrated to the Willamette Valley, built rough cabins, planted grains and vegetables in river bottom ground, and grazed cattle, sheep and goats in the vast upland grass-covered prairies and savannas.
I have lived in the southeast, northeast and, for the past 35 years, in the Pacific Northwest; an exception to most of my ancestors who migrated little, and lived and died in the same communities as their fathers and mothers. Like the vast root networks and canopies of ancient legacy Oregon oaks in the Willamette farm fields, my family roots extend deep into the rural black belt soils of Alabama. My mother’s father (Papa Dickens) was a peanut farmer in central Alabama. Papa Dickens and Bertha had a small farm near the town of Brundidge (Alabama) where they kept a flock of laying hens in the back yard. He often sat on the front porch wearing his faded coveralls with his sister Neil and they both occasionally directed a stream of tobacco juice to a nearby spittoon. My grandparents would offer their thick feather bed to the Pope children (my sisters, brother and I) visiting from up north (North Carolina and Virginia). Their house smelled of fried chicken and field peas with ham cooking on the stovetop. Grandfather Pope was a newspaper editor and local judge in Marion, a small rural town in south central Alabama. During the Second World War my older sister and mother lived with his family while my father was away fighting in the Pacific. I never met my Grandfather Pope. My mother says he was soft spoken with a warm smile. Apparently (according to family stories), he loved hounds and had dozens in his back yard. After work, he would often “attend to the hounds” which consisted of sitting with them while he sipped some spirits from a bottle normally hidden in the dog pens and away from the disapproving eyes of my grandmother. During campaign years, he would hit the road in his old truck filled with dogs in the back bed and a load of figural pottery jugs filled with libations. The jugs were made by a local potter and contained an image of my grandfather’s face sculpted on the sides of the jug and inscribed with “Irby Pope-The Only Judge”.
He traveled his campaign circuit apparently handing the jugs to prospective voters and occasionally offering a spare hound or two as part of the deal, if needed. My mother says, he loved riding out to remnants of a family farm in the country with a load of dogs and sitting under an old pecan tree, perhaps imbibing a little spirits and watching the dogs frolic in fields. Occasionally a dog would go missing during his visits to the farm, but that was fine, because any strays would be picked up during the next visit.
My great-uncle Abe (my father’s uncle) owned and operated a ramshackled country store in Sprott, Alabama where farmers collected their mail, bought gas, and sipped coca cola on the covered front porch. The store was photographed by the famous New Deal photographer, Walker Evans in 1935 and is considered an iconic image of the rural south during the depression.
My ancestors have wonderful names such as Abram, Claudius, Marcy, Bertha, Jemina, Zeke, Tempie, Mehitabel, Archelus, and Zachariah and a number are buried among the ancient moss cover oaks in the historic Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, Alabama including “Indiana Jones.”
For me, the spring and summer are days of memories. Remembering our mothers and fathers, our war dead and injured, and recalling the last winter days of cold spring rains and winter fog in the Willamette Valley.
One-hundred and fifty year’s ago (April 30th, 1862) last spring, Thomas Evans Irby, a planter, wrote a letter from Wynne’s Mill, Virginia to his wife in Marion, Alabama. “I have been anxious for some time to sit down and write you a long letter, to have a good chat with you dear wife, about your own dear self and the sweet precious children…..the enemy have been shelling our position constantly for nearly four weeks..” He describes how “it is getting to be opinion here that we may not have a general battle” after McClellan’s army made their appearance before their works some three weeks earlier. Lt. Colonel Thomas E. Irby from the 8th Alabama had yearned since arriving in Virginia in spring 1861 to take leave for a month-long visit with his wife living in Marion. His weekly letters described this yearning and his frustration that his leave was postponed because of the protracted absence and illness of his superior, Colonel Winston. Finally on March 28th,1862 while at Harwood’s Mill, Virginia, he was granted leave and departed for Yorktown and then was to journey south to Alabama for a month long visit with his wife after spending over a year in Virginia without seeing her. However, while in Yorktown, he “met with an order all furloughs are revoked and officers of this Department will report to respective posts at once”. His final line from the April 30th letter was “now dearest I must go to bed. Good night, a kiss for all the children and a thousand for yourself, from your own husband.” An after action report of an engagement on May 4th from General Longstreet included “the service and the country have alike sustained a grievous loss in the death of Col. G. T. Ward, commanding the Second Florida, and Lieut. Col. Thomas E. Irby, commanding the Eighth Alabama. Colonel Ward fell almost at the first fire, as he was leading his men most gallantly into action. Colonel Irby fell after his command had been for some time hotly engaged, and not until he had given many proofs of great skill and courage.”
Somewhat like my great-great grandfather, 70 years ago my father composed a series of letters to my mother in Spring 1942. He was also stationed as a Captain in the army in Virginia, while she lived in Alabama. He also wrote of his love and affection for her and shortly left for 3 years of fighting in the South Pacific.
My father survived the Pacific War and lived until 1984. After the war, he did not return to rural Alabama but stayed in the army, moving the family from one military post to another. While my older sister was born in Selma, Alabama, my twin brother and sisters were born in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I was born in the partially bombed out city of Salzburg, Austria where my father was part of an American occupation force. My mother hung diapers from 3 children on improvised clothes-lines in our room (temporary quarters) located in a 18th century Hotel along the Salzach River and cooked dinners between electricity blackouts as the city struggled to repair its power grid. My mother turns 96 in November. When I visit, she tells me little bits of family history that I cherish and recreate into a graphic memory. Her memories stretch back to the days when ancient civil war veterans still sipped coca cola on great-Uncle Abe’s storefront porch and bare-footed farm children pulled penny-candy out of jars on his counter tops.
