What do you know about your family history?

Family History

In 1998, I published a compilation of stories about my grandparents, and ten aunts and uncles on my father's side of the family. The project took me ten years to complete and could not have been done without the careful and painstaking penning of memories by my cousins, Monteen Council Hayman, Omie Gilreath Baker, Patricia Daharsh, Vivian Gant, Kathryn Council Buckingham and Mary, her daughter. My mother's memories shared with me over the years were vital to this book as were my father's stories of his youth.

Two of my Council cousins Monteen Council Hayman and Charlie Council

In this book, we tell the family history of Tom and Sallie Council who lived in Wakulla County, Florida and raised their kids on a farm. Life was hard, but like most of the people in that community, they enjoyed family gatherings and accepted the work that kept them housed and fed. They hunted deer and other wild animals for meat and grew vegetables in gardens. They were self-sufficient in the late 1800s and early 1900s. To buy other necessities Tom and his sons hauled farm goods to Tallahassee, Florida and sold them to merchants. The trip from the farm was usually an overnight venture by horse and wagon. 

Each of Tom's and Sallie's children have stories, but that of John Henry, the oldest boy, was short. He died when he was only fourteen years old. Still, he has his chapter, and we learn what kind of young man he was.

I wanted the book to include facts of birth, location and death, but also I wanted this book to be entertaining. For the basic facts, I included the genealogy of the family, the complete names, birth dates and place, marriages and divorces, and the children of each of my aunts and uncles. The genealogy was researched for proof, but the stories of the people come from memories and oral accounts passed down through generations.

No family is perfect, no person is perfect, and no life is perfect. Nine of the Council children grew up and married, moved away from home which had become Pelham, Georgia at the turn of the century. Tom Council died and left Sarah a widow with children at home. The older brother, Charlie, became a father figure for the younger siblings and helped his sisters and his younger brother, my father, Coy Lee Council during very hard times.

Both Charlie and his brother Horace took active parts in the first world war.

Family photographs were shared by my cousins and are included throughout the book. I treasure those images and often thumb through the book just to look at them.

I fell in love with this family of hard working, determined and persistent men and women who never gave up. They cared for their families and never stopped even when life knocked them to their knees. I saw what love can do when it seems there is no hope. The children of these ten brothers and sisters grew up with the same values of their parents and grandparents.  I am proud to be a descendant of Tom and Sallie Council, Coy and Lois Council and grateful I grew up with the love of family and appreciation for my ancestors.

The family history book, Profiles and Pedigrees; The Descendants of Thomas Charles Council (1858 - 1911) is a hard back book compiled by Glenda Council Beall in 1998, published by Genealogy Publishing Service, Franklin, NC.

The book can be purchased by contacting me, Glenda Beall, gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com. I am offering discounts. It regularly sells for $35.00 but at this time:  $20.00 plus shipping costs. 

Have you researched your family history or written about your grandparents and their struggles and successes? What do you actually know?

Writing about our lives, our families and ourselves

Today is Sunday already. I slept most of Saturday. I needed the rest from the chronic pain I seem to live with daily now.

But I am working on getting it under control. I have a writing class coming up on April 30, Tuesday at 2:00 PM. This is a memoir class sponsored by ICL, the Institute of Continuing Learning at Young Harris College.

ICL has been around for a number of years and they engage talented instructors in varied subjects that teach classes for adults, most of them retired people who live in our area. I have learned from some excellent teachers there, and I have taught several times as well.

Once an older adult told me, "My grandchildren think I grew up when people traveled in covered wagons, so I decided I needed to write about what my life was like."

I have been told, "I don't know how I can write about seventy years of life. It is just too overwhelming!"

That is why I help my students write about the most important parts of their lives and they can take it one small part at the time. You know the old saying How do you eat an elephant? One bite at the time.

When I wrote my family history book, I decided to write about my grandfather and grandmother and their ten children. I told the stories of each one of them in a few pages, and then I added the genealogy of each of them. They were not rich or famous, but their lives were examples of rural life in the late eighteen hundreds and early twentieth century in north Florida and south Georgia.

My grandfather, Tom Council, was born in 1858, a short while before the Civil War began. His father served in the war and was taken prisoner. They lived in a rural area south of Tallahassee, Florida. Everyone in the family worked in the fields on the farm.

Tom's first child, a girl, was born in 1878 or 1879. His first son, born in 1883, died at the age of 14 from malaria. He is buried at the Council Cemetery in Wakulla County Florida.

The family moved up to south Georgia after John Henry died and the other children had a completely different life. The cotton mills were being built in the south by men from the north. Since there were no child labor laws at the time, all of the children in the family worked in the mill. The girls enjoyed their new life much better than working on the farm. In their teens, they married and began families. 

In the 1920s, Florida began booming with growth and drew most of the family members to the Tampa area. All of my father's brothers and sisters ended up down there. I still have many cousins in the Sunshine State.

I was so fortunate that my mother and my cousins told me their stories. I had to edit most of them and tried to include only the most interesting parts for my readers. 

Now I am working on writing about my brothers and sisters and my parents. Each one of them has a story that is unique and interesting. I hope I do them justice.

My mission in teaching is to help my students create interesting nonfiction narratives while including the facts in their lives or the lives of their family members. We can only do our best to tell the truth as we know it and remember it because no two people will remember exactly the same things. 

I look forward to my classes, hearing the stories written by my students and helping them create the best narrative they can. We write short pieces that I use to teach the basics in writing. 

My classes are listed on www.glendacouncilbeall.com under Studio Classes and Off site Classes. I am so pleased when students write to me and tell me how much they enjoy our time together.

How Do You Want to be Remembered - Re-visited

A couple of years ago I wrote an article - How Do You Want to be Remembered? - which is one of the most often read page on this blog. Every single day it is in the top three page views.

Can there be that many people wanting to read how someone wants to be remembered? At the time I posted that article, the thought hung heavy over me. I wondered about my legacy.

Looking back to when I was young, I wanted to be a woman with great talent and ability. I wanted people, certain ones in particular, to recognize me as someone special. But I have never felt that I was someone of special qualities, someone who would be remembered for years and years to come. That's why I wanted to write a book. People have always respected books - at least I have. I would often pick up a book in the library and read about the author. I marveled that this person who had been dead for a century or more was still leaving his imprint on the world by the words he had written in the book.

When I decided to write a family history book back in the eighties, I didn't think then of my lasting legacy so much as I did the people I documented in that book, Profiles and Pedigrees, Tom C. Council and his Descendents. My beloved aunts and uncles where passing on and their stories I'd heard all my life would soon be forgotten, I thought. I dedicated the ten years I cared for my mother to collecting those stories for a book. My cousins were happy to help me with research and photographs. The book was well received by family. Even the youngest ones mentioned have asked for their own copy and want to know if I will continue with the next generations.

I didn't have the technology we have today, no Ancestry.com and no access to records on the Internet. But I did have the benefit of oral history passed down to me. My book is a family history with genealogy listings, not a memoir or a biography. Because the stories of Aunt Oleo's house being flooded, and another home being burned to the ground, and her husband being shot by his brother-in-law, were part of the fiber of the family's oral history, I can't swear that every word is true. But my story gives the essence of who Oleo Council was, her perseverance and tenacity during a lifetime that rivaled Job's for patience.

My story of my parents was the story told to me by my mother and father, my sisters and brothers, cousins and from my own experience growing up in a large family. I have always had a curiosity. I asked questions.  I want to continue that story now with the family history including the lives of my siblings. Somehow, I hope that writing their stories and having them printed on paper in a hard cover book, will keep them alive in the minds of the next several generations.

How would they like to be remembered? I don't know for sure. I think I will find that as I write about them. Just as I learn about myself from writing, I will learn how I remember them and how I want them to be remembered.

Reunion News and John Henry's story

Horace Council, son of Thomas C. Council

Today I heard from Beverly C., secretary for the John C. Council family reunion. She said the gathering this year was wonderful. It rained just the day before and settled the dust. "the reunion is a lot of fun, especially now that we have the family presentations, cake walk, auction and always lots of good food. This year we had smoked mullet, fried mullet, mullet gizzards, red and white roe and all kinds of good covered dishes and desserts."
Not being from that area where fishing has always been a mainstay, I'm not sure I knew fish had gizzards. I need to look into that a bit more.

I was touched when she told me she has the large tri-fold display board I made last year for the Tom Council family presentation, and she put it out for everyone to see this year. She plans to display it every year. I worked hard on that project and I'm proud of it. Thanks, Beverly.

Thomas Charles Council and Sarah Brock Council had ten children. They were: Mae, Maude,Charlie, Oleo,John Henry,Horace, Hortense, Lillian, Annie, and Coy. John Henry died of malaria when he was only fourteen years old. His parents, especially his mother, were devastated, and so were his brothers and sisters. Before the family left the area and moved to Pelham Georgia about 1910, Charlie and Horace built a small wall around their brother's grave in the Council Family cemetery in Wakulla County. They used small sea shells, maybe oyster shells, which today are still there, or they were the last time I visited that cemetery, showing the love of these boys for their older brother.

John Henry was the only one of Tom and Sarah's family buried in that cemetery, but many years later, when Horace died, his family placed a stone, marked with his name, near John Henry's grave.