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.