Just an Old Made up Mess: A Story About the Wadkins/Watkins Line of North Carolina

By A. M. Wadkins

At the tender age of fifteen, author A. M. Wadkins embarked on a journey that would last her a lifetime. A promise is simple enough on the surface, but in this case, that promise was the driving force that would see a young girl through lifes trials and tribulations. Each day, whether met with happiness or tears, diligence was always the key. It this book, meet the author and learn about the promise she made on a mountaintop in Virginia so long ago. Then travel back through the grains of time with the author asthrough her researchshe meets the people that helped shape the United States. Witness their struggles in defining not only who they would become, but who this country would become. Be there as men are sent off to war to fight for either the North or South. Then continue on through the turning of century, when life seemed golden. Take a walk through history with the people who lived it and get to know the faces that made it possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524568122

A. M. Wadkins

A. M. Wadkins began her family’s genealogical research over twenty years ago and has dedicated a majority of her time researching through online sources, physical locations, and halls of records. Since embarking on this journey, A. M. Wadkins has established and maintained a Wadkins/Watkins family history facebook page (www.facebook.com/wadkinsfamilyhistory), a quarterly newsletter for those doing similar research under the Wadkins/Watkins surname and heads up the Written in Stone: Tombstone Restoration Project, which is a project that replaces old broken tombstones of individuals that can be found in the Wadkins/Watkins line. A. M. Wadkins also host a yearly family reunion, held each year in her family’s hometown of Wilkes County, North Carolina. A Maryland native, A. M. Wadkins lives with her husband, two daughters, and her dog in Calvert County. She enjoys educating herself about history, especially the US Civil War, visiting Civil War battlefields, reading, and spending time with her family. She is a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and has spent many hours honoring military veterans from a time that time has left behind. A retired technical sergeant of the US Air Force with twenty years of service, A. M. Wadkins is a member of the American Legion. She has a master’s degree in computer information systems from Webster University and currently works at the Smithsonian Institution as an IT Technician.

Book preview

Just an Old Made

Up Mess

A Story about the Wadkins/Watkins Line of North

Carolina

A. M. Wadkins

Copyright © 2017 by A. M. Wadkins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/31/2017

Xlibris

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Contents

My Lineage

Before the Beginning

Finding My Family

The Research

Our Story

Generation 1

Generation 2

Generation 3

Generation 4

Generation 5

Generation 6

Epilogue

A Special Thanks

Cemetery Listing

References

This book has been lovingly

dedicated to

Joseph Cecil Watkins—I hope you like your book, Uncle Joe,

and to my precious sister,

Jessica Lynn Watkins—thank you for teaching me how to laugh.

May both of you find peace in God’s arms.

My Lineage

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Before the Beginning

I was once told that the hardest thing to do when writing a book was to sit down and write it. Now that I’ve got the first sentence out of the way, I truly hope that this will be one of those books that will write itself. I have so many stories, pictures, dates, and facts but no idea where to begin or how to arrange it. So like the little mouse looking up at a large piece of cheese, I say let’s start from the top.

I don’t remember the exact date, but I do remember the event like it happened yesterday. The weather was warm, and the trees had already begun to bloom into a beautiful bouquet of leaves and flowers. The grass had turned into the most vibrant green, and gardens blossomed with the promise of spring.

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My parents, sister, and I headed down to Damascus, Virginia, for a couple of weeks to work on my great-grandparents’ house (Dad’s grandparents). Well, it was work for my parents. They had bought the small house a few years prior and were fixing it up for their eventual retirement house. It needed a lot of work. There were bees that took up residency in the siding, no bathroom, the weeds had overtaken the entire yard, and the electricity and cooling were practically nonexistent. It’s not what you would consider a luxury home, but none of that mattered. When we looked at that beat-up old house, we only saw our roots embedded deeply in the past and all the hopes and dreams of our futures. There was love there. And even though the old house stood empty for many years, you could feel it wash over you when you step onto the drunkin’ porch. (It was called the drunkin’ porch because my grandfather and great uncles filled it with empty beer bottles to cut down on the cost of concrete. Of course, they drank all the beer. So maybe it’s the drunkin’ porch because they were drunk when they built it. You just can’t tell.)

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This trip was going to be special. My great uncle Joe and great aunt Jean were making the long trek from Tennessee to visit us for a bit. My great uncle’s failing health caused my family concern, but his Watkins stubbornness got him into the car with his wife in tow to head in our direction. They arrived later in the evening. Mom, Dad, and my sister, Jessie, had gone out for a walk. For some strange reason, I was motivated to clean, so I stayed back and was doing exactly that. Uncle Joe told me later that when he saw me cleaning, he thought he was looking at the ghost of his mother. She liked to clean too, and according to her, the house was never quite clean enough.

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The days wore lazily by. You could tell that the trip had done a number on my great uncle. He had shattered two disks in his lower back while he was working as a truck driver, which left him in constant pain. He couldn’t sit, stand, lie, or be in any other position that would afford the body comfort. It all simply hurt him. He was taking medication for the pain and doing his best to amble around at a decent speed. No matter how bad his body hurt him though, Uncle Joe’s smile would light up any room, and the look of the devil always twinkled in his eyes. He reminded me of an older James Dean, just with a few years added on for good measure.

On the last day Uncle Joe and Aunt Jean were with us, Uncle Joe decided that he was going to take us on a local tour of his memories. After all, Damascus was where he, his brothers, and his sisters had grown up. It was their beer bottles that helped fill the porch that was attached to the house we were working on. It was there that he met my aunt Jean and fell in love. It was there that his parents were buried. Damascus was more than a Stop sign on a blacktop; it was his home, which he was very proud of.

We all got up early that morning, ate breakfast, and were off. Uncle Joe first took us to the Konnarock School in Hillsville, Virginia, which was the boys’ school where he and Aunt Jean had met. At that time, she was a young girl by the name of Jean Harvey.

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The school had been closed for many years and was falling apart, as do all old buildings that have been denied the expert attention of their owners’ hands. Still, even though it was in desperate need of repair, you could see through my uncle’s eyes how the school looked in his memories. As he walked, he touched the wood, admired the small desks that were scattered sporadically through the halls and classrooms, and surveyed the grounds like a man feeling ownership of his family estate.

On the way back to the car, my uncle giggled like a little boy as he remembered sneaking out at night, running as fast as his legs could carry him to the girls’ school that wasn’t too terribly far away, and meeting for a few moments with the girl he would eventually make his wife. After their tryst, he would go running back to his school and sneak back in. No one was the wiser. We all laughed at his story while shaking our heads and knowing that was just typical Uncle Joe. We piled back into the car and got ready to go to our next stop.

A short drive later, I found myself standing on one of God’s most beautiful creations—Whitetop Mountain. We were so far up; it looked like we were walking in heaven. The air was much cooler and thinner. The wind had picked up a bit, and everything was quiet, except for the sounds of our own voices. The sky was the most stunning shade of blue, and soft white clouds passed us slowly by. Small wildflowers grew in bunches around the top of the mountain. They were brilliantly colored, looking as though they were painted by a master artist.

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My dad had picked my sister and me a flower and gave them to us. He’s always been sweet for his girls. We walked around for a little while, my great uncle telling us stories about singing at the old radio station building that still stands there. As I meandered about, I found myself looking out, mesmerized by the beauty of the land below. It was then that my great uncle walked up to me and we began to talk.

Isn’t it amazing how one little conversation can change the rest of your life? The right words, the little nudge, the motivational speech—call it whatever you would like. It was with my great uncle that I had one of those moments.

The whole conversation started with me telling my great uncle how much fun I was having touring his youth. It continued with my telling him of how frustrated I was because I had just begun doing research on our family history, but it was getting absolutely nowhere. He asked how far I had gotten, and I told him, As far back as your mom and dad. With that devilish Watkins grin, he nodded in understanding and said the one thing that would live in my head since that day, Big Ang, you’ll find them. When you do, I want you to write it all down in a book, and I want the first copy. I laughed at him and shook my head. Me? Write a book? Now you’re just being funny!

After that, we didn’t talk about my research anymore. He simply left it like that. But immediately, my mind’s gears started to turn. Could I do it? It was going to be a challenge, but could I really do it? After all, we were only talking about finding our family, writing a book, and giving him the first copy. How hard could that really be? My Watkins ego kicked in as I accepted my mission (insert Mission Impossible music playing here).

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Our last stop was to visit my great–grandparents TJ’s and Mary’s graves. No one caught it at that time, but before getting into the car, my great uncle pointed at his mother’s plot and very sternly said, You gave me away once, woman! I’ll be seein’ you soon, and you won’t be able to get rid of me again! He was very bitter about his mom making the decision to send him to that boys’ school, and Watkins bitterness doesn’t fade easily. I guess visiting his childhood home had brought up a lot of old hurt for him. I could only pray that he was healed by the visit as well.

Our time together ended a few moments later, and my great uncle and great aunt made their way back to Tennessee. They never called to say that they were having trouble. My great uncle was getting sick, and the pain from his failing body was increasing.

A few weeks later, my great uncle Joe passed away. The doctors said that it was from pneumonia. I think that there was more meaning to his death than that. I remember back when I had visited him and my great aunt for the summer. He and I had talked about God and heaven. He had told me that he had surgery when he was younger and that while under the knife, he saw God. He asked God if it was his time to go home, and God told him no. He was to go back and finish his work. He said that he didn’t want to come back, but before he knew it, his surgery was over, and he was waking up in his hospital bed. I guess God finally decided that my uncle’s work was done. It was a mercy to take him and stop his pain. I know that now.

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Although my great uncle’s story had ended, I still had lots of work to do. I had no idea how to start looking for my family, no clue whom to talk to and was completely lost on where to start. But I made a promise that day, and I was going to see it through.

I truly do hope that you enjoy this book as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing it. I still intend on giving the first copy to my great uncle Joe. But to tell you the truth, I can feel his presence, and I know that he’s already reading it.

Finding My Family

I went through a bit of a bad spell after Great Uncle Joe passed away. I didn’t go to his funeral—a fact that my parents were mad at me for. I made up every excuse in the book that would stop them from dragging me along, from not feeling well to a major test in school.

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At that point, I had only experienced death when I was younger. My grandfather (Dad’s dad) had passed away, and it was such a sad affair. I watched as my dad broke down and cried, and my mom looked helpless, not able to do anything about it. I certainly didn’t want to experience that again. I always say, the only funeral I ever plan on going to is my own, and I would get out of that if I could. So I stayed home alone and grieved in my own way. I cried and I cried, and when I thought I couldn’t cry anymore, I would cry again. I would cry myself to sleep and then cry myself back awake. After all, how could this be? I had just seen him a short time ago! Gone? I’m confused. Is this some sort of joke?

The reality of it was that it wasn’t a joke. No one was playing a game with me, and there would be no April Fools at the end. It took a while for my heart to settle, but eventually, it did, and I came back to my research. After all, that promise I made was still sitting on my plate. Looking at my mental checklist, I had to work on and complete task number 1—finding my family. That was certainly easier said than done.

Now please understand. When I say find my family, I am talking about my paternal grandfather’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and the line that goes up from there—my Watkins line as I saw it. Like I had said previously, I know who my father is, as well as my paternal grandfather and paternal great-grandfather. It was everyone else that was absent in my life. I looked at my dad’s brothers and sisters and knew that there had to be more. My dad is so different from them. The difference is so drastic; it reminded me of a single orange in a basket of apples. Now, I’d like to believe that I’m not simple. So I think it’s safe to say that he had to get his personality from someone. It was those someones that I was looking for.

Frustrated with questions, I began to ask the easy questions of the people I knew. After all, the greatest mystery to me was why I had to search for them in the first place. Where did they go? What happened that made us so distant from them? I asked my dad and my grandmother; neither really knew. My dad said that my grandfather would leave the house for a short period and head to Damascus, but no one was allowed to go with him. He never understood why there was so much separation between the Watkins in Maryland and those unknown faces in the South.

I started keeping notes on what I had found. My notebook was certainly unorganized and had more questions in it than answers, so I moved the information from a notebook to a folder. That really didn’t seem to do the trick either. So I went out and bought the latest version of Family Tree Maker, which included a library of records on disk and the Social Security Death Index.

For those of you who have never invested in family research, let me tell you, it can be both time-consuming and expensive. I began subscribing to different genealogical websites—usgenweb.org, ancestry.com, rootsweb.ancestry.com, and so on. I searched almost daily, until it started taking over my life. Even when I didn’t think I was looking for them, I would find myself posting to a genealogy board or checking out books in the bookstore. I laugh at myself today when I stumble across those early postings and realize just how off base I was with the limited information I had. Doesn’t the Internet throw anything away? But I digress. I had to start somewhere, and posting to those boards seemed like the most logical place to start.

The years slipped by, which was met with more frustration, dead ends, and more questions. I had gotten married, enlisted in the military, and bought a house. Time and time again, I found myself sitting in front of the computer, Pepsi on my desk, wondering where to begin, searching, looking at the genealogy boards, waiting, and searching some more.

One particular night, as I sat alone in my house, I decided to give it another go. I opened up Google, as I had done so many times before, typed in the oldest name I knew—my great-grandfather Thomas Jefferson Watkins—and waited expectantly for the thousands of dreaded returns. I searched countless records, weeding out the ones for President Thomas Jefferson. I was there for hours, opening this website, discounting that website. Eventually, I made my way to a return for ancestry.com. The name and dates were the same as those I was looking for. I sat for what felt like a lifetime in disbelief. Could it be? Was it really that simple?

Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. The small bedroom, which I had turned into an office due to a lack of children, began to drop in temperature until it was freezing cold. It felt like an icebox surrounded my chair. I kept turning around, feeling eyes staring at me from behind, but there was no one there. I was home alone. I checked the clock on the computer, and it was almost 2:00 a.m. Where had the time gone? I hadn’t even had dinner yet.

Not realizing that my ancestors were finally making their presence known, I shrugged off the oddness of the moment for exhaustion and turned my attention back to the monitor. I clicked on the link, and there they were (insert hallelujah music here). The family from Thomas Jefferson Wadkins and his descendants were a bit spotty, but looking at the family file, I found names upon names of Watkins/Wadkins. I found them! (Increase volume of hallelujah music.)

I felt like a kid opening a much-wanted toy at Christmas. I wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time. My heart began to beat hard and fast in my chest. My hands began to shake with the surge of adrenaline. I had been searching so hard for so long, and just like that, there they were.

Excited and finally able to gather my wits, I immediately picked up the phone to call my dad. I began dialing his number when I remembered that it was barely past 2:00 a.m., and this wasn’t a life-threatening emergency. The phone call would have to wait.

Not able to contain myself, I did the next best thing that I could do; I contacted the family tree contributor, Sam. I quickly wrote a letter, included my small portion of the family tree as proof of who I was, and got it into the mail that night—or morning, depending on your perspective of 2:00 a.m. I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t wait for my response letter, and even more so, I couldn’t wait to call my dad in a few hours. Everything I had been looking for, all the frustration, all the unanswered questions, and there they were, just like they have been there waiting for me the entire time, waiting for me to find them, waiting for me and mine to come back home.

It was several days later that I received a letter back from Sam. I barely let the postman deliver the mail to my box when I was running down the driveway to get it. Seeing the letter from Sam, I began jumping up and down like a lottery winner. Nothing could stop my excitement at that moment, except for the car horn that sounded very loudly in my ears, reminding me that I was still in the middle of the road. I curbed my celebrations momentarily and ran back to the house. I threw the rest of the mail on the table and ripped open the letter. The first words I read were Hello, cousin, which brought on another wave of excitement and more jumping up and down like a lunatic. I could barely read the letter.

My fingers stumbled with the phone in a pathetic attempt to call my dad. I read the letter to him while doing my victory dance. I’m sure I was a sight. The letter mentioned that the Watkins family reunion would be held in a few short months, and he invited my family and me to attend. Plans and reservations were made before the afternoon was over.

After that, time began to pass very slowly. I occupied my days with work and more research. I had to laugh when I saw that the family name had changed from Wadkins to Watkins and then back again (depending on which document you were looking at). Amazing! Once I was clued in to this little fact, an entire treasure chest of information was opened up to me—everything from World War I and World War II registration cards, census records, and birth and death records. You name it; I was finding it. It was as if all my ancestors decided to talk to me at once. I think they had been talking to me the whole time; I just didn’t know how to listen.

The day had finally come for my family and me to head south. I was anxious, nervous, and excited all at once. I couldn’t wait to get down there, but on the other hand, I was scared to death. I had been searching for these people for years. Our drive down to North Carolina took forever, and the same questions kept plaguing my thoughts. Will I have anything in common with them? What will we talk about? How can I explain to them who I am and where my family has been all this time? I barely knew the answers to those questions myself. My mind raced with possibilities and problems.

We ended up staying in Boone, North Carolina. That night, we visited Hooters for dinner and devoured buffalo wings like they would never be sold again. We laughed and joked, but the tension of our trip was apparent. We were all nervous with the unknown of the following day, me especially. When we finally returned to the hotel, we attempted to surrender ourselves to slumber. I tossed and turned with excitement. Sleep did not come easily, but