Storytellersunplugged

By David Niall Wilson

“Those who hope to read about family greatness and fortune can stop reading right here. The only thing illustrious about our family is a long tradition of being ordinary folk - mostly good, loving, substantial people through whom God=s purpose here on earth has been and is being fulfilled.”
Laun C. Smith, Jr.

That is how the book “The Smith Family, A Genealogical Narrative The W. H. Smith Family of Luthersburg, PA” – which was written by a cousin of mine from the notes and research begun by his father, my grandfather’s brother, Laun C. Smith Sr., begins. (How’s that for a convoluted sentence?)

This book is the story of the branch of my family tree that leads back through my grandfather, Merle Cornelius Smith, who I still contend to be the most intriguing, fine-charactered human being who ever walked the planet. It’s been one of my obsessions to follow the history of his life for many years now and recently I’ve made some serious strides in the right direction. He served in every major battle in World War I – was shot, mustard gassed, chased Santa Anna in Mexico and served a short stint as a chemist, another with the FBI – played his guitar in the trenches and was known fondly as “Duck” because of his very short legs. There is so much more, but it’s the research I want to talk about – the discovery of our past. During that research, I’ve rediscovered a world of ideas, characters, stories and detail that I find both fascinating and rewarding as a writer.

I’m talking about genealogy, of course, tracing one’s roots. All sides of my family trace back into the earliest, most remote days of our nation. I can trace the Smiths and Taylors back to a lieutenant in George Washington’s army and beyond to the time the Huguenots were driven from France. My family peopled Illinois and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. They wore such a variety of odd names I can’t begin to list them, and they carried on trades from soldier to baseball player, from Itinerant Ministers to harness shop owners. They spoke with Native Americans and cooked flapjacks for them. They built log cabins and carried the mail. They married and moved, lived and loved, and if you follow the records carefully enough you can piece their lives together into a rich tapestry of faces and fascinating little worlds.

This isn’t my first bout with ancestral tracing, though, and as much as I am enjoying learning about my family, I want to tell the story of how I came to be “hunting bunting,” a quest that has now spanned years (and has likely come close to a dead end).

One thing about being odd – it causes a sort of vortex in the lives of those around you, sucking the oddities that they encounter into your world. A case in point is the gravestone of Bunting Miles, a laborer in old Virginia. I don’t begin to understand how he became separated from the stone, but I know when his life – and my life – became connected.

My friend Richard Rowand, author, editor, and all around great guy (who now runs probably the best and most widely read recipe newsletter on the net - each of which contains a nugget of wisdom or a story from Richard and his partner Tim – Recipe Du Jour - came over to a house I had just bought in Norfolk with a house-warming gift. Most people bring fruit baskets, or pillows – maybe something to be used around the place. Richard brought a tombstone.

His neighbor had a load of fill dirt dropped in his front yard. When he went to spread it, he discovered he’d gotten more than he’d bargained for. In the middle of that topsoil was a standard, one hump tombstone, which he promptly took to his neighbor, Richard, who was “weird” and would appreciate it. Richard DID appreciate it, but eventually his wife laid down the law and insisted he get rid of the marker, so he did the natural thing – he brought it to an even weirder person to appreciate.

Since that time I’ve learned a lot about Census reports, civic records, old newspapers and the types of things you can dig out of the reference sections of libraries. I’ve learned how helpful people can be, and how hard-headed they can be in the face of a challenge. I’ve also learned a lot about life in other times – the price of things, the way of things, the names of things and of people. I’ve gained an appreciation of just how different a day in 1910 was from a day today, and it has leaked into my fiction. I will balk at most research (though I can be coerced) but history has never felt like research to me. It’s more like meeting people through words and pictures, much as we do when we read something well written.

So, now Bunting Miles 1854 – 1892, who was a laborer in Tanner’s Creek (which is now part of Norfolk) Virginia at the time of the 1880 census, who married Lucy and had two sons, Walter Miles and William – which is as far as I’ve gotten (with a lot of help) has found a home in my living room. Every year we put lilies next to his gravestone, which rests in the corner behind the concert grand piano. My 2 ½ year old daughter says that a man named “Hat Coat” lives behind the piano, and has reported seeing him and an old woman (she calls her grandma, though she’s never met anyone’s grandma) sitting on the porch, or standing in the room. I like to think she really sees something, and that Bunting is content with us. I will continue my search for his descendants, and I hope one day I’ll meet them, return Bunting’s stone to a family grave site, and be able to visit him in the arms of his family…but if not, he is more than welcome here.

And I owe him characters, proper language, an understanding of times and places that would be long lost if it weren’t for the records…the words…that someone put down on paper so long ago. I’m a bit ashamed that the reason I know so little of his life is that he was black. Not ashamed for myself, I don’t believe in that guilt-by-association sort of mentality. I feel ashamed of the people we so often are, blind to the beauty of the differences in others and arrogant in our own imagined superiority. It is a wonder that his name was recorded in 1880. Previous Census reports would only have stated the number of blacks on a property without even differentiating men from women.

I love history, and I hate when I feel it slipping away…

I hope you’ll forgive me this little diversion. It does relate to writing, though not as directly as many of my past posts…it flavors character and setting, memory and legend. If you haven’t taken the time to follow the road your family wandered down to reach where you are today, give it a chance…read a little, search some of the past and don’t be surprised when you find that – as distant and as odd as it can prove, you are right at home.

Now, I’m off to find SOMETHING to prove or disprove the status of “bigamist” my Great Uncle attributes to one Jacob Smith of Pennsylvania, an Itinerant Lutheran Minister who figures prominently in my lineage, and about whom bad things are whispered in all branches of the family, but with no fact to back it….perhaps he was a raconteur? He married a woman named Rowles, but family rumor has it she left him when she found he was married. My suspicion is that he converted to Mormonism and was just a “bigamist by association” and ostracized. I’d love to be the one who proves it and exonerates him. Maybe he’ll stop in with Bunting and send a thank you through Katie some dark night.

ONWARD!

DNW