My great grandmother Victoria

My great grandmother Victoria was my great grandfather Jim's second wife. His first wife and child had died in a fire - as I've been told though I've no other corroboration for this, the fire that is and the deaths. It seems to me to explain, not excuse but explain, how he contributed to the hardness of Victoria's life.
She was the daughter of a school trustee and Jim was not very interested in education. Her father did not like Jim (although it was Jim who year's later went back to Georgia for his funeral). Not long after their marriage, Jim moved the family from Georgia to Arkansas, where his sister and brother-in-law had settled. (I have relatives in Arkansas who'd not know me from Adam or even Lucy of the Olduvai gorge) From what my great uncle tells me, his father was not the most faithful man and at some point, when the family had been in Arkansas for 20 years, Victoria put all the children on a train and headed home to Georgia. She'd missed her father and mother (who'd both died while the family was in Arkansas). She'd missed the green hills. Six months later Jim showed up again and she took him back.
My great uncle has a kind of love/hate feeling toward his father. He adored his mother though. But it was not long after the family returned to Georgia that Victoria succumbed to cancer. She died in 1926.
The top photo is Victoria at about 25 and the bottom one was taken close to her death at 50. Looking from one photo to the other, I'm struck by how hard her life must have been. I can tell she's done a lot of work and suffered a lot since she wore that ornate, lacy hat and her easter dress in that early photograph.
In family systems we talk about how things come down through the generations: how relationships and dynamics are replayed from one family unit to the next. Everyone is effected differently - as we each understand these things with a stronger or weaker sense of self. But I do wonder at how we've all (in our family) been effected by Jim and Victoria down the line.
Perhaps when I go home for the Fourth I can trouble my great uncle for some further remembrance of his mother - or maybe I'll just spend some time with him and let the past rest.

robed up and with my cousin at her ordination

In the top photo I'm posed in all my ministerly glory: robe, stole, and Book of Common Worship with some notes. The bottom photo shows the commission of my cousin, Cheryl's, ordination. I'm behind her. Cheryl is soon to be the as(sis)(cociate)tant Dean of Students. It was a bouyant moment. That was last Sunday week. This last Sunday I preached at her pulpit while she was at the Wise family reunion. This has become our running joke: each year she goes to the Wise reunion and I, a Wise, substitute for her.
Fellowship Presbyterian is located along a country road - the original roadbed still curves through the churchyard and is now the driveway. The old white frame church burned down in the 1950s and now the church building is a brick A-frame with large picture windows. It's a fine example of 60s style.
Behind the church is an extensive graveyard behind a stone wall. In the near corner is a Wise family plot. Imagine my surprise. Alas after the 1890s no Wises died here. Where did they go? Presbyterian Wises are rare in these woods. I figure that when the early Wises left Virginia they were Anglican. But somewhere they descended into frontier Baptists. By the 1900, in my group of Wises, they were the worst "landmark" Baptists (a group of Baptists that believed that education was a tool of the Devil - and therefore clergy needed to be as ignorant or more ignorant than their congregation. Look them up in Ahlstrom's Religious History of the American People). It cheers me up that at least some of my relatives had the sense to be Presbyterian.
Presbyterians are not immune to ridicule though. Walker Percy has a good morsel about them in the Movie Goer. His protagonist, Binx Boling, relates that 5 of his 6 aunts are of the highest Brahmin sensibilities - the 6th is still a Presbyterian.
It's true, to a Presbyterian from Massachusetts, a Presbyterian from Georgia looks just like a Baptist. Our regional penchant for revivalism and agrarianism and general anti-intellectualism is the great leveler. All the differences we perceive about each other fellow southerners are miniscule when viewed from any objective perch. And to us, they're all alike as well. Objectivity only going so far.