Our Walnuts Are Witch-free!

I have heard that in the town of Benevento, Italian witches once danced beneath old Walnut trees with abandon.

Black Walnuts, Juglans nigra, are named after Jupiter, the most powerful of Roman gods. They were also associated with Jupiter's wife, Juno, the goddess of marriage and childbirth. Walnuts were thrown at weddings in ancient Rome. The Roman gods ate Walnuts with gusto while mere mortals were expected to live off acorns and Chestnuts. Oddly, in Romania, a bride would tuck one walnut into her bodice for each year she wished to remain childless. Juno, evidently, was a pretty wise and accommodating goddess.

In the Middle Ages, Walnuts were thought to have even stronger powers. Fevers? Evil eye? Epileptic fits? No problem for Walnuts.

Walnuts hanging in the kitchen bring abundance. In China, good-luck crickets were carried in carved Walnut shells.

Care to dream of a future spouse? Sleep beneath a Walnut tree. Take care, though, Walnuts took a dangerous turn when their habit of staining things a indelible black and their bitter qualities were noted. The same tree that would grant your future-beloved dreams now threatened to kill you in your sleep should you dare drowse beneath it.

Walnut trees were said to draw lightning. A branch could protect you and a tree in the yard would guarantee that a bolt wouldn't toast your homestead.

Walnut trees release a substance, Juglone, that inhibits other plants from growing in their spread. Evidently, Privet is immune. We carried truck loads from beneath our Black Walnuts when we finally laid waste to it before we moved to the farm.

We have many Black Walnuts doting our pasture and skirting our woodland. They seem pretty accommodating. They are happy to hold up our birdfeeders and shelter scores of birds waiting their turn for a sunflower seed snack. They throw a few nuts to the one squirrel we seem to have in the pasture. He carries them to a fencepost to gnaw on until his chin and chest are black with the juice from the hulls.

Last year I spent a long day cleaning the nuts from their awful, bitter, tough hull. For all my work I had about 50 black nuts and was honestly so fed up with the process that I didn't even bother cracking the nuts and picking out the meager meat. K's Dad loves Walnut ice cream. Luckily, he can buy it at the grocer's. Have you tried a Black Walnut? After all of the work, you're left with an almost inedible crumble of dry bitterness.

In any case, our leafy Walnuts shade a corner of our pasture. In Winter, they form a line of dark scribbles, like Japanese calligraphy across a gray sky. They leaf out late. I scratch their bark obsessively, making sure they made it through the winter. In late Spring, they send out tentative leaflets. In Summer, they are cloaked in droopy, green glory. In the evening, after the sun has set, the trees exude a strange perfume. Woody, green, pleasantly bitter. And then, in late Summer, they yellow and drop leaflets one by one. We will soon miss them outside our wavy glass window, their nude, darkly furrowed bark scowling through Autumn's first cool nights.

No, our Walnuts know no witches. That we know of, at least. And our farmhouse still stands, after 170 years of lightning storms, protected by their curving limbs. And we sleep pretty well beneath them. With or without our nightly Walnut snack.

Mary Jane Gets Gypped

Of all of the Housworth family history, this portrait haunts me the most.

Mary Jane Prather, a local girl from a large, prominent family in the Klondike area, married John Milton Housworth in 1861. They moved into our farmhouse which was a gift from John's father and mother, Michael and Lucy.

I spend a lot of time imaging their life here. It was not an easy but it must have been a rewarding one for so young a couple. John would have spent his days tilling the fields and tending crops if he wasn't working a "public job" at the quarry across the road. Mary Jane would have carried water or tended the cows and pigs and chickens. Long evenings would find her sewing and mending. Certainly, she cooked over the embers in the kitchen fireplace for every meal.

They must have been so happy in their new home, just down the dirt and gravel road from their parents' homes. A newly married couple in their own farmhouse.

Shortly. they found they were pregnant. That news would have been both welcomed and feared. Childbirth was a dangerous time for both mother and baby. And when she realized she was carrying twins, she must have felt both panic and pride.

Only one child would survive. A girl. Alma. The very picture of her mother. Striking and square-faced with a determined gaze. Apparently she had her father's blue eyes. She must have been the light in this old farmhouse.

As we understand, the other twin was a boy. And while the story is that the child was buried in a nearby slave cemetery, unnamed, I feel certain that Mary Jane must have whispered his name and kissed his small forehead before he was taken from her.

So John and Mary Jane and Alma would share the peace and quiet of the farm. All the while in the shadow of the Civil War. John enlisted in 1862. He joined Philip's Legion. A cavalryman in Troop F. The years away from the family and his farm would have seemed unbearable at times. For everyone.

His travels must have brought him through Lithonia in the fall of 1863. In the very early spring, Mary Jane found she was pregnant. Twins again. Her husband away and Union troops moving towards Atlanta like an wildfire, huge and unstoppable.

At least the family was close by, to help with the farm and with Alma. Pregnant with twins in the long, hot summer of 1864. The battles of Atlanta began in July and the month of August brought constant bombardment of the city. Even here, 18 miles away, the unending thump and boom of so many cannonballs and so much gunfire would have been unsettling. And then the blue wave of so many foraging Union soldiers ransacking, looting and pillaging. Confederate soldiers anxiously gathering anything and everything, either for their use or to keep from Yankee hands. Often both troops in a single day.

It would have been perfect terror. Pandemonium. A constant parade of soldiers. Conflicting messages about the movement of Yankee forces. Families fleeing. Barns burned. Animals slaughtered or stolen. At some point, bushels of dried corn on our farm were carried into the attic and poured between the wallboards for safekeeping. Valuables were hidden in mattresses. Surely the family would have huddled here, peering from our front window for soldiers. Yankee and Rebel officers would have knocked on our 2-paneled front door, demanding food or shelter or to look for contraband or to gather up family belongings and cart them away. Because they could.

Imagine being in a warzone. Perhaps it's brought to mind from foreign news stories in the paper or on-line. Now picture your very home in the center of it. Terrifying.

On August 4, 1864, with the constant circus of War around her, Mary Jane gave birth to twins. Again, a boy and girl. Again, a child lost. The boy, John James William Housworth, was named for his father and for Mary Jane's two brothers who were lost to the War. There are conflicting stories regarding the baby that died, perhaps she was buried next to Alma's twin in the slave cemetery.

And having suffered through the tumultuous War around her, after maintaining the farm without her beloved, after suffering the loss of her brothers and the tremendous weight of all of the impending change that the War promised, after birthing a son and losing a daughter, Mary Jane died on the same day her surviving son was born.

We have been told by the Housworths that Mary Jane's father built her casket. It would have been loaded in an open wagon. They took her to a beautiful church over in Covington. Her family had belonged there years before. While they passed many other suitable burial sites to get there, we wonder if they weren't looking for someplace away from the marauding troops and constant thumping of the War. The other story of the small newborn? She was placed in her mother's arms in the casket for burial.

In any case, the funeral wagon was stopped by Union forces. Many locals buried their valuables wherever they could so it is not surprising that the troops stopped the family and opened the coffin to look for contraband. Perhaps the family took one last glimpse of the dark-haired Mary Jane and, perhaps, her little baby before the lid was sealed again forever. As a final insult, the troops took the good horse hauling the wagon and traded it for their own battle-weary one before freeing them to the sad task of burying poor Mary Jane in her quiet resting place.

Atlanta would surrender to the constant harassment of Union bombardment in just three more weeks. And Sherman would leave the city on his March to the Sea in early November, passing our farmhouse, now occupied by Mary Jane's stunned and suffering sister, Lou, whose own fiancé had already been killed. Lou's brother, Sam, along with Alma and John J. W. "Buddy", the new baby, remained with her on the farm with, probably, a rag-tag group of displaced siblings.

Mary Jane's childhood and early adulthood were spent within a few miles of our house. Her early married life must have disappeared as quickly as morning fog. The last few months of her life were spent in an uncomfortable pregnancy and the constant fear for her husband serving so far away. And without her husband, she would both give birth and lose another baby before dying just a short time following. I can't help but wonder how things might have changed if she had lived to enjoy her children and the farm as long as she deserved to enjoy them.

Instead, Mary Jane was another casualty of a terrible time. John Milton would return to a changed South, a changed family and a changed history. Changes that were inevitable and, in many cases were long overdue. I can't help but feel that Mary Jane was gypped of so much love and the promise of a quiet life of tender happiness in our little farmhouse.

Lucky dog[s]!

Farm dogs like:

Grass grazing
Stick eating
Frog sniffing
Bird chasing
House wrestling
Dirt snuffling
Chicken following
Hair shedding
Ball catching
Bed napping
Alarm barking
Rabbit pursuing
Caretaker ignoring
Fence patrolling
Grounds exploring
Treat snacking
Guest licking
Rope tugging
Rain absorbing
Country loving
Fireside gazing
Food begging
Sun bathing
Supper inhaling
Nighttime snuggling

A Mighty Small Nest for an Awful Lot of Birds!

Think your house is too small? We have little idea how families used to live.

The house we left behind was under 1,000 square feet. The closets were nearly impossible. Originally a one bathroom with two bedrooms [three if you counted the make-shift, converted-closet that 3 or 4 boys shared], we wondered how on earth a family of nine managed to live in our Decatur bungalow.

True, we have a bit more elbow room out here in the country. The rooms are large. And our new closet? Heaven! But it wasn't always to spacious.

Our little farmhouse [a cabin, really] housed several generations of the Housworth family. But families were, for many, far different than our modern-day experience of what a nuclear family is today. Aunts, uncles, in-laws, nieces or nephews moved around according to who might have room or food or any other resource that afforded some measure of comfort.

The second generation of Housworths that occupied our home consisted of Ed, son of John Milton and Lou Housworth, and his wife, Lula, who lived here with their seven children. Ed's older sister, Alma, lived here for most of her life. Maude, a niece, also lived here as did Barbara, a relative or friend [I'm unsure which... time to call our Housworths-on-retainer, Marvin and Alton. for some clarification]. There were others, too. Family members were passed around like borrowed lawn mowers.

So our 1,200 square foot farmhouse sheltered eleven people for most of it's middle history. Keep in mind, there was no indoor bath or water until 1988. People slept everywhere! The living room housed two beds. Our bedroom would have slept three or more. The guestroom was home to four boys. And Ed and Lula shared a bed in what is now our bathroom. No doubt they slept well when they could! The other room was the kitchen. It would have acted as the only real "family room" and I wish we could walk in to find them all squeezed in there around a farm table near the wood-burning stove, laughing and sharing stories. The back porch, now enclosed and acting as our pantry and "dog room", held buckets of spring water where all would bathe. Imagine!

And no closets. None.

So we wouldn't complain about space now, even if we needed to. The house would have seemed empty to them. And while we appreciate the space, the peace and quiet that it affords us in embarrassing luxury, what I wouldn't give to share that table until we were tired of stories and retired to our own corner of a crowded room, no doubt laughing and giggling and talking long after we should have fallen asleep in the dark country evening. Each room full-to-bursting with family. And a love and familial intimacy that few of us will know and even fewer would want to know because we have come to expect and appreciate and need our space.

I wouldn't trade it for the biggest house in Atlanta.

Finely-feathered now but a bedroom in the past!

Rearranging Things

Armed with some historical information and a bucket of romantic ideas, I thought I had the fabric of this old place all figured out. The documentation said Abraham Housworth built our house in 1843. And, apparently, that's true enough. But using my imaginary moving wagon to arrange their furniture for them, well, that's jumping the gun. We'll never know if he and his family even lived here.

And, sure, his brother Michael bought it from him in 1852. But Michael and his family lived up the road. Did a hired hand live here? A few of his father's slaves? Again, a mystery. So deciding for him which room the kids slept in? A little presumptuous on my part.

I suppose that in-filling these historical facts with my own stuffing hasn't hurt a thing. It hardly matters now to anyone but us and a handful of Housworth families members who might like to keep things straight. Sometimes the cold, hard truths can be even better than my sandcastles, though. Or at least more interesting.

We've been so lucky to have the best encyclopedias about our house that anyone could hope to have. The Housworths have been so kind and generous with ancestry information, family photos, and, unbelievably, recordings of family members recollecting their own lives in the house and in the area. Really fascinating stuff. It's like opening a trunk in the attic and finding a glowing stash of golden coins.

Listening to these people, with their own voices, telling us how it really was [or at least how they remembered it to be] has shaken the little snowglobe I had filled so carefully.

This was a happy home, excepting all of that death and destruction during the War. Overlooking the losses of babies and spouses. Forgetting about hard economic times and failed crops. I mean fundamentally this was a happy family. A family that held itself together through love and necessity through all of those messy things I just glossed over. And I suppose that's what a neatly summed-up history is -  a neat, shiny coat of gloss that hides the real depth beneath it.

The fact that the house was never painted had less to do with my own story, that they had steadfastly refused to change the character of the place, and more to do, probably, with the fact that this was a hard-scrabble life and there was no money to fancy the place up. Things stayed the same because they had to. Seven children and no running water? That's not a choice anyone makes. That's a choice that's been thrust upon you.

It's not to say that they didn't grow up around inconveniences and hard times, like a tree grows up around a stone. They did. And probably enjoyed it a great deal of the time. It's that you really can't make things up because that's how you wanted things to be.

So armed now with a lot more information, I'll try to find some room for a few more of these awesome family pictures. And, while I'm at it, I'll rearrange a few of my preconceived notions.