I Don’T Remember Mama, I Remember Granny

By Alberta L Richardson

I Dont Remember Mama, I Remember Granny is only part of the story of the life of Mary Jane Dixon who was our Granny. It is only part of the story of her life because she was already 54 years old before we (my siblings & I) knew her. It is a true story of the trials of Mary Jane. Though she was our grandmother, she became our Mama and our Granny. This is a story that should have been told at least sixty one years ago. To our readers, meet our Granny - - Mary Jane Dixon!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503530850

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Copyright © 2015 by Alberta L Richardson.

Illustration by Dennis E Peacock

Photos & Editing by Sharon R Peacock

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: 02/02/2015

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

(THAT WAS BACK IN THE DAY, Y’ALL)

PREFACE

R eader: This story – I (Don’t) Remember Mama – I Remember Granny is a true story. Many women have done great and noble things. Granny never held a public office, nor ever became a public figure. She never even posed for a portrait. She received her few years of education in a one room school house, but she could read as well as any well educated person. To me, Granny was a phenomenal woman. This true story is dedicated to her memory and to the courageous life she lived. I say courageous because – for a fifty-four year old woman to almost single handedly, take on five children – ages 18 months to seven and a half years old, and be responsible for their training and upkeep for fifteen years – that took a whole lot of courage. She took on this full time job in August of 1930. (That was back in the day, y’all.) It was during the early years of the Great Depression. Of course she was our grandmother, but not many women would have done that. This story is to acquaint others with this phenomenal woman. Although she has been gone for sixty years now, the legacy she left has been a memorial to us. All of ‘her children’ are now deceased, except me. Only I am left alone to tell the matter.

There is a saying that goes: Give me my flowers while I live so I can smell them. If only I could have been inspired over sixty years ago to pen this story, so she could have known just how much she meant to ‘her children’. (She always referred to us as ‘her children’.) However, I am grateful that I have been able to discover for her at least two skeletons that rattled in her closet.

To those who feel as I do about deep, dark secrets and skeletons in the closets: Check out those dark secrets, and take those rattling skeletons out of the closets. Perhaps that’s why they’re rattling – they want to get out. I am aware of the saying: Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. But if you don’t check things out for yourself, you just might believe someone else’s opinion about it. Check it out! You might find out how wrong your thinking has been for so many years.

(THAT WAS BACK IN THE DAY, Y’ALL)

D id you ever have a Gram-ma, a Gee-Gee, a Nana, or a Granny to whom you can give credit for all or even a part of your up-bringing? Four of my siblings and I had a Granny. Our mother passed away when I, the youngest was only eighteen months old, and we were sent to live with Mary Jane Dixon who was our maternal grandmother. I am now eighty-five years old, but I still remember her. I don’t think I could ever forget her. How could I ever forget Granny? (That’s what she insisted we call her.) She made such an impact on my life, that at times when I look at myself in the mirror. I tell myself that I look like her. (God, please forgive me for not having a picture of her face.) I had never realized just how much Granny really meant to me until she passed away in November, 1954 at the age of 78. I was 25 years old then, but I had never imagined life without her. To me, she was never supposed to die. She was supposed to live forever. I once heard her say, ….that doctor told me that I was as healthy as a horse and that I will be here when Gabriel blows his horn. I suppose I believed what that doctor said, but that must have been before I knew her, for I never knew her to visit a doctor until about a year before she passed away.

On the 1863 Slave Tax List in Johnston County of North Carolina, Edwin S. Sanders was a slave owner, and 16 year old Henderson Sanders was listed as one of his slaves – born in 1845 (An age discrepancy here). One record shows that Henderson Sanders was born Henderson Barker, son of Haywood Barker, but took on his slave owner’s name of ‘Sanders’. (Food for thought here: The name Barker could have been a slave owner’s name just as well as Sanders, since slaves were sold from one plantation owner to another.) Edwin S. Sanders, Henderson’s slave owner was killed during the Civil War at Drewry’s Bluff, March 16, 1864 at the age of 29.

On that same 1863 Tax List, Willis H. Sanders was listed as slave owner of Lydia (20) and Emmaline Sanders (16) who were sisters. (I was told, but have no proof, that these two sisters were born Lydia and Emmaline Morgan.) (Morgan could also be a previous slave owner’s name.) According to records, Henderson Sanders and Lydia were united in matrimony on April 21, 1866. To these two who had been slaves, Granny was born – Mary Jane Sanders – in 1876, the fifth of eight children – two boys and six girls: Movillia, Atlas, Alice (Cissy), Hardy, Mary Jane, Sylva, Aurelia, and Malinda. I remember each one of Granny’s siblings except Atlas and Sylva who probably didn’t live to become adults, for I never even heard Granny mention them.

I remember her brother, Hardy very well. He was a preacher and he would often come to visit us, but every time he came to visit, he would declare that he was going to take Mutt, my puppy home with him. I’d take Mutt and go into another room, shut the door, and prop a chair under the door knob so that Mutt couldn’t get out and Uncle Hardy couldn’t get in. Mutt would scratch at the door and whine to get out. I finally began hating to see Uncle Hardy come to visit. I don’t know why I never considered the fact that he didn’t really want that puppy, but I was only about four or five years old at that time and I believed him. When I was a little older, he really frightened me once when he was trying to explain to me about the body and the soul. Staring directly at me, he declared in a deep voice, You don’t see your Uncle Hardy. You only see the house your Uncle Hardy lives in, and your Uncle Hardy is looking at you through his windows." Oh, I know now what he was trying to explain to me, but because I couldn’t understand it then, it really did frighten me.

Records show that on January 2, 1904, Henderson and Lydia Sanders purchased 60 acres of land for $350.00 in Route 1, Clayton. N. C. (Wow! That’s less than six dollars an acre, folks! But that was ‘back-in-the-day, y’all.) Henderson must have been a Christian man, for besides being a farmer, he also became a church planter. He was very instrumental in the establishment of Oaky Grove Baptist Church which still stands today near the old town of Smithfield, N. C., and his picture hangs in the church’s fellowship hall. He also deeded ¾ of an acre of his 60 acres of land for a Sunday school. A church building was erected on that parcel of land, and the Sunday school soon became an organized, functioning, small, but very lively country church which someone named after him, Henderson Chapel Baptist Church. It became affiliated with the Southern Missionary Baptist Association. That’s where Granny was a member until 1954, just a few months