Graduation Day

Norma Jean Hurst

Graduation Day, June 1964 

East Tennessee State University

   

     My mother, Norma Jean Hurst, was THE FIRST MEMBER OF HER FAMILY to graduate from college.  My grandparents each attended school through the eighth grade but because the only high school in Union County was too far from where they lived they weren't able to go.  My grandfather was determined to get an education however, and he attended the local schoolhouse for two more years until his brothers made so much fun of him for being in the eighth grade for three years that he finally stopped going. 

     While serving in the Army during WWII my grandfather was given an IQ test. His score was somewhere in the 130 range. When he returned home he was encouraged by someone in the armed forces to attend college and was told he would do well.  By this time though he was 24 years old, recovering from battle injuries, had a wife and two daughters at home and another child on the way.  I can only speculate at his reasons for not going but it seems he had a lot on his plate. His three daughters all went to college though.  All three. And his five grandchildren - we have earned five undergraduate degrees and five post-graduate degrees.  There are many factors that have contributed to the five of us succeeding in college but I think that being raised in households where going to college was expected and encouraged by mothers who were raised in a household where attending college was a real possibility contributed significantly to all of our success.     

On the Front Porch: May 1971

Wendy Jean with her Aunt Jean, her Uncle John

and her new cousin, Julie

On the Front Porch, May 1971

     One of the many ideas I keep tossing around is compiling a photo book of pictures taken on the front porch of Grandma and Gran's house.  The earliest front porch photos I have show the original builders and owners of the home (The Sam P. Smith Family) and the last ones I have show all of  us gathered on the porch the week that Grandma died in August of 2008.  Birthdays, graduations, homecomings, departures - I lived a lot of it and I am still amazed at how many life events revolved around that porch.  

    This is the first photo of me on my grandparents front porch.  I was about eleven days old.  My cousin, Wendy, who was two and half at the time, was in for a big adjustment.  She had been the only child and grandchild in Tennessee up until that point and had therefore been the focus of her grandparents' and mother's and aunt and uncle's attention. And now?  Well, now she was going to have to share.

What Could Have Been

Hurst Mansion

Purdy, Tennessee

     This house was the home of Col. Fielding Hurst, a man who made himself notorious during the Civil War (and a person whose story is a topic for another day).  It is located in Purdy, Tennessee. Today, Purdy is a rural unincorporated community 3.5 miles northeast of Selmer in McNairy County. A failed railroad development in the 1850s kept the community rural and without industries or major business ventures the town of Purdy disappeared in the years following the Civil War. Fielding Hurst (who is my great uncle to the sixth power) had to give up his beloved home because of war debts.  The home changed hands many times in the following years and was finally willed to McNairy County in 1993 in the hopes that it would be preserved.  It sits now in a state of disrepair and ruin.  It has been vandalized many times.  The county does not have the means to restore or maintain this house and its future looks grim. 

    I have had a few people ask me why more wasn't done to preserve my grandparents house.  I can say that several of us thought about it but the economic realities were overwhelming.  Maintaining the house and the land was a full-time job for my grandparents and later for my aunts and uncles.  When it came down to making a decision about what to do with the property selling it to the county so that a much-needed school could be built was the best solution - although is was not the easiest.  What I know is that not one of us would want to see the house falling down and vandalized.  I like to think that my grandfather in particular would have liked the idea of a school being built on the property.  He was a man who valued education.

Drawing of Paulette Elementary

Groundbreaking Scheduled for April 1st, 2010

Saved by Grace or by Works

Cleo Malone Hurst being Baptized

on what I'm hoping was a warm day in 1942

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father,

and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

                                                                                  - Matthew 28:19

     I have ecuminical family roots. My mother's parents were Baptist (Grandma) and Undeclared Independent (Gran).  My father's parents were Roman Catholic (they were also "Northern" but that's too much of a digression to deal with right now). My mother was raised in the Baptist church then baptized as a Presbyterian in her early twenties before finally becoming Catholic on Easter Sunday 1988. My mother's sisters grew up and became Lutherans and Methodists and my cousin, David, is a Methodist minister. We are a multi-denominational family and as a result I feel at home at just about any kind of religious service from Mass to a Tent Revival.  Although Grandma and I had many discussions about faith we never really talked about "religion" - Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Undeclared Believer - just different avenues to the same end. My oldest child, Owen, summed up my family's approach to religion pretty well when he attended Vacation Bible School at a local Methodist Church last summer.  After his first day at VBS he was so excited to tell me that "the Methodists use the same Bible that we [Catholics] do!" 

   

The Sam P. Smith Family

Sam P. Smith & his wife, Lucy Ann George Smith

with their children Ida Bell (b. 1874), James Parnick (b. 1875),

Thomas W. (b. 1879), Ethie (b. 1882), Claude (b. 1885)

Barbara (called "Bobbie" & born 1896).*

     In the summer of 1986 my Mother was working on her Master's Thesis in Interior Design at the University of Tennessee. Her chosen topic was a study of her childhood home in the Paulette Community. I went with her one afternoon to meet with Mr. H.C. Hines to get some background information about my grandparents house.  The afternoon we spent with him was one of the most interesting research trips I ever took with my mother.  Mr. Hines was the grandson of Sam P. Smith and the son of Mrs. Ethie Smith Hines. He began the conversation by saying, "So, you want to know about my old homeplace in Union County."  He then talked at length about the house and his grandfather's store and the woods and creeks he spent time playing in when he was a boy. At one point he went and found a sheet of paper and drew a map of the way he remembered things to be.  He graciously gave my mother this family photograph as well as several photographs of the house in it's full gothic splendor. My mother's thesis, entitled "Evolution of a Folk House" was published in the winter of 1987 and she received her Master's Degree that spring. 

* A seventh child, Sallie, was not born at the time this photo was taken.

The Smith-Hurst House of Union County: Beginnings

     "A house is a person's corner of the world, and if looked at intimately, the humblest of dwellings has beauty.  Memories of former dwellings remain in us and with us for all time."

  - from "Old American Homes" by Henry K. Williams

      

    This is the earliest known photograph of  the Smith-Hurst House which was located in Union County, a mountainous region of East Tennessee.    Folklore in the Paulette community tells that Sam P. Smith and his wife, Lucy Ann George Smith, built the house shortly after the Civil War.  The 1875 Tennessee State Gazetteer and Business Directory lists Mr. Smith as postmaster of Paulette as well as the owner of a general store.  It also explains that "the Paulette settlement was located seven miles southwest of Maynardville, the county seat of Union County, and fifteen miles northeast of Knoxville."  By the late 1800s the house was at the center of a growing community that was home to several blacksmiths, a gristmill, a church and a school*.  The house was long known as a stopping place for travelers and according to my great-grandfather, Richard Ross Malone, they would look forward to the stop for miles beforehand.

      A map drawn by Mr. HC Hines, a grandson of Sam P. Smith, shows that the general store was located across the road from the house.  Butter, eggs and other items that needed to be kept cool were stored in the springhouse behind the store.  A barn and tool shed were across the secondary road from the house.  Those outbuildings that contained supplies used in the home (like the smokehouse and woodshed) were placed closer to the house.

* According to "Our Union County Heritage" (Volume 1), Paulette Academy was established in 1888 in the southern part of Union County, on State Highway 33.  The property where the school was located was thought to have been owned by Sam P. Smith.  The continuity of use of this parcel of land that was my grandparents home for so many years astounds me. 

Precious Memories

A family tree that I made in Girl Scouts (Brownies).

It was an invitation to come to a GS Party and

is dated October 16th, 1979.

My mother had it filed in with all of her geneology research.

     Sifting through all if this family memorabelia continues to be an interesting experience. There are some afternoons and evenings that I've become so involved with it that I can't tear myself away.  Finding links on ancestry.com and putting photos and letters together to round out the stories I have been told about things that happened a long time ago.  But there have been some days - many days lately - where I'm overwhelmed by the sadness of it all - by all that is gone and by all that I'm missing. My grandparents, my homeplace, my mother's advice and input.  Memories can make you lonely sometimes.  

     What I am certain of though is that I have some really great stories that I want to tell.  I hear my grandmother's voice in my head talking about her Mother and Daddy and her sister, Marie, and have boxes and boxes of my mother's family research  and I have instant access to historical information that was unimaginable when my mother began her geneology research 30 years ago. I feel an obligation to my grandmother who told me stories and made notes on the backs of calendar pages and scraps of paper about people and places that were important to her.  I feel an obligation to my mother who spent so many years tracking down wills and deeds in county court houses and living rooms and family gatherings.  I feel an obligation to all of those faces looking out at me from the hundreds of photographs I have inherited. I feel an obligation to my children to let them know something about the people who were here before them - ordinary but amazing people who built lives and raised children and had dreams and disappointments of their own.  It's a gift to have this much history at my fingertips.