Another great picture that leaves me wondering how it came about.  I have no idea where the goat & cart came from. Was there some wandering photographer that went from house to house offering to take photos?  I'll never know.

Pictured from left to right are my mother, Jean Graham Barnett; with her sister, Ruth Swain Barnett; and her brother, Allen Scott Barnett in 1923.  I think this was taken in the yard of their home on Florida Avenue in Richmond, Virginia.

My mother was born in January 1923, so she is less than a year old in this picture.  Ruth would have been about 4 years old and Scott would have been about 5 years old.  Their older sister (technically half-sister), Eleanor Moorman Royal, is not pictured but would have been about 14 years old.

Both of these pictures are of Ida Virginia Willson Fultz. She was my great-grandmother.  I didn't know her, but my family members who did know her called her Grandma Ida.

The picture on the left was probably taken around 1900.  I'm guessing the date because I also have a similar one of her husband, and he died in 1903.  The picture on the right was taken on the front porch of her home, Cherry Grove, probably in the late 1940s.  She was born in 1855 in Knoxville, Tennessee, and died in 1949 in Rockbridge County, Virginia.  She is buried in Fairfield Cemetery. 

I have heard that she remembered Union soldiers coming through Rockbridge County during the Civil War and camping near her parents' home.  That would be the farm known as Mulberry Grove that is on Sterrett Road (which was called Brownsburg Road when I was a kid). 

There are also several rocking chairs that are smaller and without arms that everyone says were Grandma Ida's rockers.  Apparently, she knitted and/or crocheted and chairs with arms interfered with her progress, so she preferred no arms.

This is Mom standing by a Pontiac.  This picture appeared in the September 30, 1959, issue of The Lexington Gazette. Here is a copy of the newspaper with the picture. 

I remember when this was published, even though I was only 7 at the time.  I'm not sure how she was chosen for this.  But she was certainly photogenic.  It was about this time that people were telling her she looked like Jackie Kennedy.  Oh, and she had four children at this point!

This is another great-grandmother, Annie Lettie Swain Van Pelt.  She was my mother's mother's mother.  Mom called her Ma, as opposed to her other Grandmother, who was Grandma Barnett.

Annie Swain was born in Richmond, Virginia, the middle child of the seven children born to Matthew and Jane Catherine Dicken Swain. Annie married Archibald Douglas Van Pelt in 1884 and they had 6 children.  When Annie died in 1937, my mother would have been almost 15 years old. 

Archibald Douglas Van Pelt was from Harrisonburg, Virginia.  He was the son of James and Sarah Van Pelt.  I don't know much about his family.   Archibald was a Confederate soldier during the Civil War.  He was taken a prisoner at the Battle of Gettysburg.  He was transferred a couple of times before he was paroled and allowed to return home.

The 1870 Census says that he was a barkeeper.  My mother said that Archibald worked in Talcott, West Virginia, on the Big Bend Tunnel through the mountain.  That means he would have worked with the legendary John Henry.  Annie & Archibald's son, Guilford, was born in Talcott.  But the other children were born in Richmond.  Mom said that her grandmother would return to Richmond to have her children where the medical facilities were better.  No doubt she preferred being located closer to family, as well. 

The 1902 Richmond City directory lists Archibald D. Van Pelt as a bricklayer living at 16 E. Marshall St.  That's the address that I remember my mom mentioning many times. 

Archibald & Annie are buried together in Oakwood cemetery in Richmond.

This is the Fairfield, Virginia, baseball team in 1916.  Those pictured are:

Front row : Lee Robertson, Bill Sale, John Alexander, & Tuck Green.
Second row: Gerland Eakin, J. T. Sale, Bill Weeks, Nelson Smith, & Wallace Dunlap.
Back row: Massey Smith, Less Lynn, & Joe Topping.

This is one of the best pictures I have of my grandfather, John Alexander.  He was 32 years old in this picture, and he was married with one son at this point.  He died about 7 years later in 1923.  

Family legend says that John was a very good baseball player and had an opportunity to tryout for the Washington Senators. But his mother wanted him to stay home and help with the farm.  So he honored his mother's wishes. That's about all I know about him. 

I don't know anything about the other team members, but some of the names are familiar and are probably prevalent in Rockbridge County even now.

This is John Graham Barnett, Jr., my mother's father and my grandfather.  He was born near Clarksville, Virginia, and later moved to Richmond.  He worked for Richmond Dairy in the building that has the giant milk bottle on the corner. (It's condominiums now).  He died in 1949, so I never knew him.  He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Richmond.

My mother says that he took care of his mother and sister for as long as she could remember. He even had a house built for them to live in that was next door to his house .  Mom also said that he would take her fishing and would do other things outdoors.  He had a goldfish pond in the side yard (I remember that).  And they had box turtles. 

If anyone reading this remembers him, I would be interested in what they know about him.

This is Robert Tate Wilson.  It's a bad copy, but the only copy I have of this photo.  As I mentioned yesterday, Barbara Roberts identified the photo of Eliza Jane Ingles.  Then she told me she had a copy of a photo of Eliza Jane's husband and  this is what she sent me. So this is my great-great grandfather.

Both Eliza Jane and Robert Tate were born in Virginia and they were married in Rockbridge County in 1843.  But they moved tp Knoxville, Tennessee, for a few years and  then moved back. 

Eliza Jane's parents--William and Betsy Crawford Ingles--had moved from Virginia to Knoxville, Tennessee.  According to Barbara, the Ingles owned a mill there and were very wealthy. One of the censuses, I think 1850, shows Eliza & Robert living in Knoxville next door to her parents.  My great-grandmother, Ida Willson, was born in Knoxville.  But sometime around the Civil War, Eliza & Robert moved back to Rockbridge County to stay.  They are buried in the cemetery at New Providence Presbyterian Church near Brownsburg. 

Barbara also told me that Ida received as a wedding gift the house in which she lived with her husband, Joseph Fultz.

This was a mystery lady for years!  In the late 1990s or early 2000s, I sat down with my Uncle Jim, his son, Jim, and my sister, Cathie, to identify a huge box full of old photos.  My cousin & uncle lived in the house that my grandmother, great-grandmother, great aunts, and great-great aunt lived in.  So the pictures were amassed over a couple of generations. 

For the most part, we could identify people.  But we kept coming across copies of this picture.  There must have been about 10 copies of it.  And no clue as to who she was.  I thought the dress looked like Civil War era, but that was the only clue. 

We circulated the picture to others in the Alexander & Fultz families, but no one identified her. 

There was one branch of my great-grandmother's family that moved west to Texas and some went on to Oregon (I think) before ending up in New Mexico.  I stopped by to see one of them (Nell Callahan) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, many years ago. And I had written another one (Barbara Roberts) who lives in Amarillo, Texas. 

It occurred to me that Barbara might recognize the photo; so several years ago, I sent her a copy.  Lucky for me, Barbara identified her as Eliza Jane Ingles Willson--my great-great grandmother.  This made a lot of sense because her daughter (my great-grandmother Ida Willson Fultz) owned the house that my uncle lived in.

Now I try to document who is in all of my pictures so that 100 years from now, no one will wonder about them as I did this one!

This is a picture of Mom (Jean Graham Barnett) & Dad (John Addison Alexander, a.k.a. Jack) taken for the church directory.  I don't really know the time frame, but I would guess 1980s or 1990s.  This is the story of how my parents met. 

My mother lived in Richmond, Virginia; and when she was about 17, she was spending a lot of time with a sailor who was in his 20s.  My grandmother (Gracie Van Pelt Barnett) did not think too highly of this and must have said something about it to her sister (Jessie Van Pelt Lipscomb).  So Jessie offered to take Jean and her sister Ruth to the Shenandoah Valley to get a change of scenery. 

Jessie's sister-in-law was Bruce Alexander Lipscomb (Bruce was married to Jessie's husband's brother, Wiley).  Bruce had a sister-in-law (her brother's widow) who ran a tourist home in the Shenandoah Valley just outside Fairfield, Virginia.  So Aunt Jessie took Ruth & Jean to the tourist home in Fairfield. 

The owner/operator of the tourist home, which was really a farm house located on Route 11, was Janet Fultz Alexander.  She lived there with her mother, and they ran the tourist home as well as the farm. It was basically an early version of a bed & breakfast.

At some point after my mother arrived at the tourist home, one of Janet's sons came home.  I'm not sure where he had been, but I remember hearing that a bus stopped at the driveway and dropped him off.  He was about the same age as the two young women, and he offered to drive the "city girls" around the county and show them the sights. After they returned to Richmond, Mom & Ruth both wrote letters thanking him for showing them the sights.  That young man was my future Dad, Jack Alexander.

I always thought these events were ironic because my grandmother sent Mom out of town to get her away from one guy & she ended up meeting the one she would marry!

Mom later told me that Dad told her that when he stepped off of  the bus and saw her, he thought she was the prettiest thing he had ever seen.  Years ago, we found a brown lunch bag in my Uncle Jim's attic (a.k.a. the tourist home attic) that contained the two letters from Ruth & Mom.  I still have them.

The bottom line of all this is that the two sides of my family know each other more closely than most  families who did not come from the same community.  Whenever we had weddings or funerals on one side of the family, it was not unusual to see members of the other side of the family attend.  This was largely due to the Aunt Jessie connection.  It seemed like she was everybody's Aunt Jessie! And now you understand why I credit her with my parents meeting each other.

 

Two pictures of 1712 Maple Shade Lane in Richmond, Virginia. This was Aunt Jessie & Uncle Joe's house.  The bottom picture features my brother & sister.  Given the wreath on the window, this was probably taken on a Christmas visit.  I'm guessing that it was about 1965.  This is the only place I remember them living.

Before they lived in Richmond, Aunt Jessie and Uncle Joe lived in Allegheny County, Virginia.  The 1910 Census shows them living there with Joe as head of household.  Also living with them were his father (Joseph M) and his brother (George Wiley).  Jessie & Joe were still in Allegheny County in 1920; but by 1930, they were in Richmond.

In 1920, Joe's brother, Wiley Lipscomb, was also living in Allegheny County with his wife & son. Wiley's wife was Bruce Douglas Alexander and their son was Bruce Alexander Lipscomb. 

Wiley & Joe both worked in Low Moor.  I think they worked for the Iron Company there, but I'm not sure about that.  I just remember hearing that they lived and worked at Low Moor.