Author: Scott Williams
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Plant to Prosper
Photo: My grandfather Guy Lovelace holding my Uncle Bill. Seated is my Uncle Bobbly and my mother. My grandmother Virginia Lovelace is seated in the rocking chair. It’s planting time here in Midtown Memphis. My farm measures about 9 feet by 3 feet, and last weekend Alex, Olivia and I filled it with zinnia and…
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Fight for Bell’s Mill
Photo: Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth by Dennis Malone Carter (1827-1881), 1854, Oil on Canvas With the loss of the Union Avenue Methodist Church building to CVS fresh in my mind, I have been researching another historic site that people tried to save but lost: Bell’s Mill in Randolph County, North Carolina. Bell’s…
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The Rubble of the Union Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church
What Memphis Lost at Union and Cooper In 1924, the congregation at Union Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, South, installed an M.P. Möller pipe organ inside its new sanctuary at 2117 Union Ave. The instrument had 1,457 pipes, enough to fill that corner of Union and Cooper with the sound of hymns, weddings, funerals and Sunday…
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Stitching keeps church neat amid Providence landmarks
This article, published in the Jackson Sun on Friday, Aug. 12, 1983, includes my grandmother, Elizabeth Castellaw Williams. By BETTYE ANDERSONJackson Sun reporter Jane Carr, Doris Naomi “Nonie” Warren, and Elizabeth Williams, far right, work on a cross-stitch quilt to raise money for Providence United Methodist Church. The women, including the pastor’s wife, Faye Howard,…
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Solomon Normon Brantley’s Tennessee Civil War Questionnaire
Photo: Soldiers and spectators watching the Battle of Nashville between the forces of Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood and Union Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, Nashville, Tennessee, Dec. 15, 1864. Photograph attributed to J.F. Coonley. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints Collection. The Tennessee Civil War Veterans…
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Solomon Norman Brantley, Sincerely Yours in Peace
Photo: My third great-grandfather, Henry Day Brantley, (1845-1918) The country is currently marking the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the The Civil War. A few nights ago, I was flipping through channels and stumbled across Ken Burns’ documentary “The Civil War” on PBS. It caught my attention because I recently discovered Solomon Norman Brantley’s…
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Mary Kerr Dougan and the Women Who Held the Line
Image inspired by “Fanning’s Atrocity: Murder of an American Planter,” an undated black-and-white lithograph from Cassell’s History of the United States, published by Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c. 1900. Depicted is David Fanning’s March 1782 raid in Randolph County, North Carolina, and the shooting of Patriot officer John Bryan after Fanning ordered Bryan’s house set…
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Davy Crockett at SWSW
I had some really good times while at SXSW last week talking about Elvis.com. One of the best happened because on my way to the airport to return to Tennessee, I couldn’t resist stopping at the Texas State Capitol. I was hundreds of miles from home and did not expect to run into anyone from…
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The Cemetery at Providence
I had just read on my BlackBerry that a couple of escaped convicts were being chased by police through Madison County, Tennessee. The news caught my attention because I had just been researching my grandfather’s maternal line, the Williamsons, who settled in Madison County near the Haywood County line and helped shape the rural community…
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Photos from Cobb Family Cemetery
Whenever I find photographs of the ancestors I have been researching, it feels as if a small window opens and gives me a glimpse of what they looked like at a particular moment in the past. A distant cousin, Joyce Cobb Maness, who was kind enough to spend time talking with me on the phone…