Family at Shiloh Cemetary

Shiloh Methodist Church, Tattnall County, Georgia, USA

While looking for my friend Madeline's obituary in my archives I stumbled on the snip below of my grandfathers grave in Georgia. He and many members of our family are buried at this small church, still standing, still people using the cemetery. My Dad's family lived in the home you saw last month on the edge of the railroad tracks in Manassas, GA .

The Shiloh Church is just a few minutes drive from the home he was raised in.

I found my way to the sight of Historic Rural Churches. I spent a lot of time browsing and found below info on that sight. I could spend days just looking at the churches from the past.

Shiloh Methodist is the second oldest church in Tattnall County, the oldest being Mt. Carmel, a meeting house of peeled pine logs eighteen feet by twenty feet erected in 1808. While the exact organization date of Shiloh is uncertain, according to a local county history, it occurred either in 1810 or 1812. this info is from Historic Rustic Churches and is in Reidsville, Georgia. this is HRCGA dedicated  https://www.hrcga.org/church/shiloh-methodist/   (info above and photo from link provided)

Snips of my great grandfathers headstone, he was my dad's, dad and the is the LINK to My Paternal Grandparents and some of the McCall's buried there. So much info there to go from link to link.

I am posting this to store the links for myself. In the link below I found death certificates, obituaries and much information that I never knew. 

If you go to https://www.findagrave.com/ you might find information on your family also. I intend to research more and add to this for my own info storage.

Photos from links above. let me know if you find any of your family churches and graves that you never knew were there.

Mommy and Daddy, Final Friday Feature With YAM

 

My Dad in his retirement mobile home, Savannah GA, 1995 

While cleaning out the cabinets, I found this book and the photo

It is The Pastors Manual, James Randolph Hobbs, D.D., L.I.D. Copyright 1934

Broadman Press, Nashville, Tennessee

Daddy bought this manual in 1953, in the used bookstore at Clear Creek Mountain Preachers School. The sticker says $1.50. I remember that the cost was a lot. He earned his high school diploma at the same time as his Batchelor's Degree in Theology. He worked part time in the campus grocery store.

 His pay at the time was $30.00 a week. And a huge $30.00 a month from the church he pastored.

He was Our Appalachian Mountain Preacher.

This small book contains poems, marriage ceremonies, funerals, every single thing a pastor would need to know how to do. The page below, says Order of Service for Organizing a Baptist Church.

I do hope Dr. Hobbs did not take offense as I giggled my way through the pages Titled.

It's Public Worship... the giggling was the thought that this was written in 1934 and if the author could see the ORDER of Service now, he would be shocked, TO.The.Core!

The book even gives advice on the Deportment of the minister at the funeral. 

Should he walk in front of the casket, or walk behind it, or stand at the front and not walk in.

No wonder he spent hours in his study each time there was a funeral or a wedding.

When I opened it to the bookmark, I found the above Bookmark of his mother, my grandmother, always called Mommie by all the grand kids. it was her Obituary from 1959. It has a wealth of information about her family that I did not know. I was 15 when she died and lived 1000 miles away. I had no idea she had living sisters that I had never met or even knew existed.

The photo was taken sometime during WWII. My dad, dark pants, and his 4 of his 6 siblings, left to right, Edwin McCall, Marine. Robert McCall, Helen McCall, Charles McCall, my dad and Uncle Jack, Army. Uncle Julian , the missing brother in the photo, took the photo and Carolyn died at birth.

Below is Mommie, on the steps of the family home in Manassas, Ga.

It was a bitter and hard life for all of them. My grandfather had a stroke and was in a wheelchair for most of their childhood, Mommie and my Daddy, the oldest Male, born in 1913, ran the store, the boys gave her fits with no man to control them. 

The War Between the States, also called The Civil War, ended in 1865. My Dad's Grandfather died at Shiloh. You might say I was raised in Dixie and no one in my family ever forgot The War. When I was 17, I dated a boy from Connecticut and my grandmother, not this grandmother, but my mothers mother down here in Florida, had a hissy fit. That is Southern Talk for very upset.

In 1985 I married a Yankee from Pennsylvania. My grandmothers were deceased, or it might have killed them both.

Carrie Terrell McCall 

1886-1959

Joining Final Friday Feature with Yam

Gary and Pat, 1957

There were 6  of these small books, each with 12 photos in it. Two were the photos you saw yesterday of myself and my brother as children. The others were of  

this beautiful lady, my mother's sister, Pat. She was 9 years old when I was born in 1944 and was more like a sister to me than my aunt.

 

Gary was a few weeks old in these photos. The Odd thing is, most of the books they were in, were developed here in Bradenton, just a few blocks from the house we live in now. 

The odd thing is, the photos of us were taken in Kentucky. Here were taken here. The 1954 photos of us were developed here, the 1957 developed in Somerset, Kentucky.

No idea how that happened. We were never here in those 5 years we lived up there.

I will never know. 

On the 29th of September, I texted my cousin Gary, see below with his daughter, Stephanie. He replied quickly and said these photos are 70 years old today. It turned to be his Birthday and he was out with family for his birthday.

Gary was happy to be 70. All of us cousins, always celebrate when we reach age 64 and each year past that, because my grandmother, my mother and my aunt all died at age 63.

We are all well past 63 except for Gary's youngest sister, who is about to turn 60 on Dec 4th, 2023.

you met Shari and Bonnie in all my Cousins Posts. They are Gary's sisters.

Below Bonnie, Shari, and Sandra, ME the MadSnapper...  there were 6 of us, and Gary's brother died in 2020. My brother is the 6th, the one who mailed these photots to me. He does NOT allow photos of him on line.  This is the end of the photos that were mailed to me.... but wait there are more stories

1980 Chevy C-10

 

The group of photos my brother's wife mailed to me, took most of my weekend. After going through the box of old photos, I spent all morning Saturday, taking out all my albums and organizing, moving them into the bookcase under our TV and organizing the cabinet they were in... I found many photos in the albums I had forgotten we had.

We are all of us Truck People, in 1988, The black and white blazer at the back belonged to my 21 years old son Dan. The El Camino truck belonged to my son David, 23-year-old. the step side above was Bobs, but I loved it so much we sold my 78 grand Prix to David, because his El Camino Died Dead on the interstate and I took the Silver Truck naming it the Silver Bullet, due to the fact it had a 401 chevy big block and 4 in the floor transmission.

 Bob bought yet another truck, 1978 GMC Jimmy named James. the tires had 36 inch lifters and I had to rappel up and down to get in it. But I was 43 then. Now there is no way to get me up in it. We sold the 64 Cadilac and bought a mattress, then bought the 78 Corvette in 1987 to lie in the garage he kept the old Cadillac in. None of us at that time had ever owned a new car...

I may or may not have gotten in a drag race with teens driving a 72 Chevy while shopping for groceries and may or may not have raced a man in a truck while driving the Corvette.  We all love speed.

Bob and I got our first ever new truck in 2004, for my 61st Birthday, that still sits in our garage

it still looks like New since it has lived its life inside a garage. And I let bob have it when I bought who knows what. the above truck, bob was driving over the sunshine skyway going to work, and a pelican dove into the windshield, and ended up in his lap, he drove on to work, his clothing and glass in his hair and beard, worked all day, had the insurance come out and put in a new windshield to drive home and I had to brush his hair to get the glass out. 

I think it was because the pelican thought it was blue sky, it was so high and reflected the sky in it.

2004 GMC Serria, 8 cylinder 354 engines. All of the above trucks were fast and gas guzzlers and now i realize we contributed to the climate change that is suffocating us with heat.

Now son Daniel and his wife have twin trucks, 2016 Dodge Ram Trucks. and i drive an Ugly 2007 Kia Sorento SUV. UGH..

The Plain Jane Child 1957

 

I was 13 in these photos, it was 1957 and we lived in Sloans Valley Kentucky My Brother, David was 9. The Christmas tree was the first and only tree we cut down. Our backyard of the Church Parsonage we lived in, was full of Christmas trees. We insisted on the biggest one we could carry in the house.

The kitchen Is me, doing who knows what. The water that came out of the faucets was rainwater caught in a cistern. that was under the back porch. I was abused and made to walk two houses over to haul drinking water from a neighbor well... The basement under the kitchen had a huge tin tub that we heated water and filled for our EVERY SATURDAY night baths. During the snow season we dragged the tub into that kitchen and bathed by the stove.

Another of my chores was to take the slop jars/chamber pots, to our outhouse that was down the hill out the side door to the basement. Our house was built into the side of a hill, the front was level with the dirt road, the back was 3rd story basement.  the house was two stories, one pot for downstairs, one for upstairs which is where my brother and I slept.  My grandmother mailed me a beautiful shiny blue silk bathroom in 1957, and while taking the slop jars out to empty them on the first snow of that year, my feet went out from under me, and you can imagine the rest of the story.

The robe was ruined and thrown away. 

The Tables, sofa, lamps were a gift to us from the church because we had lived in campus housing while in Pineville that came furnished. Daddy went to Clear Creek Baptist Preachers School and got his Highschool diploma and then his college diploma.

Why my brother is sawing wood in the living room, I have no idea. We moved back to Savannah GA in Dec 30, 1959  and I graduated from high school in 1962

And in 1963 I was married in this hoop skirt and in 

David

in 1965 and 1967 David, age 3,above and Daniel age 12 months, below came into my life. 

Daniel

My Dad and his first Grandchild, David. this was in the last part of 1966, just before Dan was born in 1967 Feb 22

all photos are part of the photos found in my brothers closet. I thought they were lost

1953-1954 Kentucky Family Firsts

 

David and Sandra, 1953, first climb up a mountain

In 1952, when I was 8 years old, my dad, went to a revival, along the lines of Billy Graham's revivals, at Bull Street Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia. His life and ours changed forever when he walked down the aisle and gave himself to Jesus Christ as his Savior. A few months after that he was asked to be the speaker at a small church and accepted the call to become a minister. 

1954 Rock City North Georgia

We were very poor, living in a converted chicken coop in his sisters back yard. His mother had raised 7 children by herself, running a general store and caring for his dad who had a massive stroke when Daddy was in the 8th grade. His dad was in a wheelchair and had to be cared for, and Daddy being the eldest, quit school to help with the store and his dad. This meant he had to get a GED high school diploma and go through the seminary to become a licensed minister. There were not many seminaries that would accept students without a high school diploma. someone told Daddy about Clear Creek Baptist Preachers School in Pineville, Kentucky. They would let him get his high school diploma while in Seminary training. My grandfather you saw in yesterday's photos died in a car accident at the beginning of 1953 and the insurance check to my mother was 10,000 dollars. A lot of money in 1952. The money she received lasted the entire five years we were in Kentucky with enough to move us back to Savannah, when he was called to pastor a church there. Daddy was pastor of Dewitt Baptist Church, Pineville Kentucky and Sloans Valley Baptist Church, Somerset, Kentucky.

some this story is under the label Appalachian Mountain Preacher.

These Photos are all that is left of our five years living in Kentucky. 

First frozen waterfall 1953

1st Mountain 1953

1953 Balonga and Mayo and white bread sandwiches Picnic on side of a mountain 

1954 Sandra, David, Daddy

Sandra, 1953, roadside Motel cabin. Daddy called them Mirror Courts, because we stayed in one that was named that. we traveled from KY to GA off and on from 1953 to Dec 1959 

SNOW! never seen before 1953.

1954 Rock City NC Sandra and David

Daddy Sandra, David 1954 rock City

First creek with rocks 1953 Daddy, David and Sandra. Daddy made a whirly gig boat and we watched it float away in the small waterfall.

Out of the Frames

 

Albert and Alva Sept 22, 1923 

I removed my maternal Grandparents from the tri-frame and took a photo without the glass, below I did a few edits to sharpen their faces and removed the tear.

this one was taken through the glass, and I liked what the glass reflection did to it, so edited the scratch.

Out of the tri-frame and a few edits. they are a little different so posting both.

Charles and Lucille McCall, Sept 22, 1943

they were married on her 18th Birthday. My grandmother refused to allow her to marry him, and swore he never wood. Daddy got on a train and came from Savannah, GA to Palmetto, Florida and knocked on the door and said we are getting married on her birthday, you can come to the wedding or not.

My grandmother refused to go, but the story is she did show up at the wedding and until the day she died swore it would never work. When they met on the steps of a boarding house, mother was 17 and just graduated from high school. She was in Savannah visiting my grandfather, her father, because he was working there in the CC camps during WWII.

Gonnie, the name I called my grandmother got on the train and dragged mother home. Mother said she sobbed the whole 10-hour train ride. The problem was, she was 17 and daddy was 30. he turned 31 a month after they married. It did work until the day she died in 1990.