Front row: Jess Williams (my father’s brother), Bobby Williams (my father), Whit Smith, Billy Castellaw
Second row: Frank Reid, Bobby Castellaw, Joe Christmas, J. C. Castellaw
Back row: Lyle Reid /
I received some great photos this week from one of my Haywood County cousins, Roland Reid.
I love it when I get photos like this. It is about as close to traveling back in time as we can get. These photos include members from several branches of my family tree, including the Reid, Williamson, Williams, Watridge and Castellaw families.
The photo above is a great photo of my father and his brother with several of their cousins.
I am not certain of the exact location, but the photo was taken somewhere in the Holly Grove or Providence community of Haywood County around 1946.
I have written before about how my ancestor Beverly M. Williamson (1813-1877) donated the land for Providence Methodist Church and Cemetery. Years later, my grandmother, Elizabeth Castellaw Williams (1915-1998), helped raise money for that church by sewing.
Download a larger version of this image.
The photo above shows many members of that church in 1942.
The young man in the foreground is Lyle Reid. To Lyle’s right is his brother Frank Reid. The girl leaning against the doorway on the far right is Jessie Mae Reid Castellaw (1913-2006), who married Edward Levi Castellaw (1921-1997). Next to her is Pauline Reid, who married Basil Snider.
Directly behind the two young Reid boys are their parents, William Thomas “Willie” Reid (1887-1982) and Jo Stella Williamson Reid (1896-1993). He is wearing the striped tie. She is wearing the hat.
When I was a young boy, more than 30 years after this photo was taken, Jo Reid lived across the road from my grandparents. She joined my grandmother and me many times on fishing trips to ponds around Haywood County.
At the time, I just knew her as Jo Reid. I did not fully understand the family connection until I began working on genealogy. Jo was the aunt of my grandfather, Jesse Lloyd “Bo” Williams (1910-2008). Jo’s sister, Janie Elizabeth Williamson Williams (1887-1914), was Daddy Bo’s mother. Janie died when he was only 4 years old.
Front row, left to right: Pauline Reid Snider and Jessie Mae Reid Castellaw.
Back row, left to right: Joseph Roland Reid, Frank Reid, Noel Reid, Lyle Reid, Terry Reid and Russell Reid.
Another photo, taken at Pin Oak Lake in 1992, shows the eight children of Willie and Jo Williamson Reid.
When I first started looking for information about that side of the family, I found a photocopy of an old newsletter in the Reese J. Moses-Scallions Genealogy Room at the Elma Ross Public Library in Brownsville. It was an incredible find because it helped me add Janie and Jo’s father, Joseph “Joe” Williamson, and their grandfather, Beverly M. Williamson, to my family tree. It also helped connect this branch of the family to the Dougan and Scoby families, two well-documented Revolutionary War-era families I have written about before.
| PROVIDENCE PIONEER OCTOBER, 1980 YESTER-YEAR “September 22, 1912” Jo Stella Williamson was sweet sixteen, going on seventeen and in love with William Thomas Reid, better known as Willie, a very handsome young gentleman. It was on a Sunday afternoon, Autumn was in the air at Providence and the farmers had been busy harvesting their crops all week. Willie farmed and worked as hard as any one, but this one day farming wasn’t on his mind. He had arranged to pick Miss Jo up in his buggy. Jo had been looking forward to this date for many days, so when Willie drove up she was eager and ready to be on their way. This was no ordinary buggy ride but a ride that would change the rest of their lives. The buggy headed off on down the winding dirt road to John Williamson’s Store. John Williamson was the local Justice of the Peace. Willie and Jo were pronounced man and wife as they remained seated in the buggy. A simple wedding ceremony was quite common then and seems to have “tied the knot” better than the ones we have today. Willie and Jo are celebrating their 68th Anniversary this year. They first set-up house-keeping at Providence, on the Lower Brownsville Road in a house located where Mrs. [Mannie?] Joyner’s house is today. Their home is now in the Holly Grove community and they are the proud parents of eight children, all of them are grown and have families of their own now, with fifteen grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. William Thomas Reid was a farmer and carpenter, a good supporter and loving father to his large family. Willie has always been a good attender at Providence Church; as a matter of fact, he is our oldest living member on roll. Born February 11, 1887, in Lauderdale County, he surrendered his life to Jesus at an early age and rededicated on August 7, 1913 with the Rev. E. J. W. Peters, the presiding minister. Willie has been a good supporter of Providence Church nearly all of his 93 years. Jo was the youngest of five sisters. She was born April 18, 1896 in her families log house on the “Old Williamson home place,” which was to be her home for most of her childhood. Jo remembers the whip-poor-wills and hoot-owls that sent out their music over the hills and hollows at night and the little creek that ran down below their house. Their home was very comfortable and since it was built on a hill-top had access to the cool summer breezes. Jo attended the Providence Church which was a short distance from her home and in August of 1912, a month before she was to be married, she became a member of the church with the Rev. E. J. W. Peters as the presiding pastor. She not only gave her life to Jesus Christ that night, but also became a member of a church that was a heritage in the Williamson family. Jo’s grandfather, Beverly M. Williamson was born August [illegible], 1813, in the state of Virginia. I assume that Beverly was the first Williamson that homesteaded this land at Providence, since the Chickasaw owned nearly all West Tennessee until 1818, when they ceded their land to the federal government. It was between 1800 and 1860 that West Tennessee developed into a cotton-growing region that used Negro slaves for labor. No one knows when Beverly moved to Providence, but we do know that he married Eleanor Harriett Dougan on July 31, 1838 in Franklin County, Tennessee. She was the daughter of the Rev. Robert Dougan, a Methodist minister, and Evelyn Scoby Dougan. |
That is why I love getting old photographs from relatives. A photo can bring back a face, confirm a relationship or send you down a trail you did not even know existed.
If you happen to be hanging off a branch of my family tree and have any old photos, please email me a copy. I would love to share them here on the blog and help put more names with faces.
For more of my genealogy research, visit rscottwilliams.info.
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