Hamp

A pink marble obelisk rises from the little hillock that dominates the cemetery in old Duluth, Georgia. It has been there for over a hundred years, a monument to love. A three-foot square polished block rises to about shoulder high from the wide chiseled marble base. Above the central block a round tapering column rises another ten feet and is topped off with an urn like cap that adds another two feet to the spire. Sometime in the past fifty years a walnut tree has grown up to half hide the top of the column and shade the pink stone. It's splintered and partly decayed trunk shows signs of numerous lightening strikes. The tree grew up through the gravel of the narrow cemetery road that borders one side of the family plot. Knobs have healed over here and there where it has been trimmed up to let hearses bring their burdens to other parts of the hillside. The white lap sided building that was once the Baptist church still stands on the north side of the cemetery. Looking in any other direction, there is not much left to see but derelict homes and rundown neighborhoods. But, to me, this is where it all begins, with the people who have been laid to rest within the granite borders of the family plot and the community of friends departed.

My grandfather, Elisha Green Ware, moved to Duluth from Walnut Grove, Georgia shortly after my father was born. Within a year, my Grandmother, Emily Robena Carter, died in childbirth and the pink marble obelisk was raised with it first roughly cut inscription:

Erected
In Memory of Precious
Emily Robena
Daughter of
James W.& Laura Carter
Wife of Dr. E.G. Ware
Born Dec. 4 1864
And fell asleep in Jesus
July 12, 1896
As a daughter, she was obedient and good.
As a wife, she was perfection.
As a mother, she was positive and firm,
patient, kind, gentle and loving.
As a Christian, she was earnest, devoted, faithful, and true.

I had seen the obelisk before; when my father and I stopped by to pay our respects at the family shrine. It stood out, caught your eye, in a field of stone bordered family lots and gray headstones. But it had been standing there for seventy five years before I read its message. Love was in my father's house. It sloshed between the members. It was sentimental, lavish, joyful, immediate, and lasting. It was responsible and loyal in life and in death. That was the way it was, and it was inconceivable in my father's family for it to be otherwise. There was nothing pretentious, arrogant, or ingenuous about it. It was like laughter that filled all the distances between them.

My father was two years old when my grandmother died leaving three young children. Viola was the oldest. Samuel David Hawthorn, who was two years older than my father, was next. My father, James Theodore Hamilton Carter, was the youngest. My grandfather had a penchant for giving his children family names even if it meant that they would each have four or five. Viola became more than a sister to the boys; she became the female head of the house. Probably the most influential woman in the children's lives was Aunt Charity, the cook that lived with the family until the household was broken up. She was really the children's surrogate mother. Until I recently learned about Aunt Charity's role, I never quit understood why my father gave our Chinese ahma (nurse maid) so much latitude in my upbringing. Both brothers became known by their third names, Hawthorn and Hamilton. Although Hamilton, or Hamp, as he was known most of his life, was the youngest of the three, he seems to have had a great deal of influence over his siblings. In later life they not only loved him, but idolized him.

As a child, I heard very little about my grandfather, accept that he was a physician, and nothing about my grandmother Ware. My first real knowledge of him came after my own mother's death when my father came to live with us in Staunton, Virginia for a short time. One week we drove down through the mountains of North Carolina into the foothills of North Georgia to visit Duluth. It was homecoming for my Dad, a time to pass on memories and a legacy. We came into town down old highway U.S. 29, which was still two lanes, turned across the railroad tracks, moved down the rows of red brick storefronts that seemed to stand at parade rest as we passed by. Like so many old graying towns that straddled the railroad, the buildings reflected an era that was not only passed, but almost forgotten. A few buildings were still in use. Others were empty, boarded up, or in such bad repair that no one still cared for them. As my Dad reminisced aloud everything came alive as we drove down Main Street and then explored the roads west of town where the family farm had once been. He showed me a house that was a duplicate of the old home place, and we went back and forth passing the newer homes and the new stone Baptist church until finally we came back to town and the old cemetery.

According to the lore in Mathews County, Virginia, five Ware brothers arrived on the western bank of Chesapeake Bay sometime before the American Revolution. There are still places like Ware's Warf, Ware's Neck, and Ware's Church in the area. One of the Wares, Lt. Edward Ware, was born in Amherst County, Virginia in 1760. He married Sarah Thurmond. Edward and enlisted in the Revolutionary Army at the age of sixteen. His brother James also fought in the Revolutionary Army and was sighted for bravery in the field by General Washington after the battle of Yorktown. Edward Ware seems to have served as a Private, a Sergeant (sic), a Brevet, and a Second Lieutenant. He fought in battles at Guilford and York. After the Revolution he moved to Madison County, Georgia where he amasses a small fortune. In his Will he gave each of his eleven children a horse and a saddle, and, much to my chagrin, a slave. Three of the five brothers left Virginia and ended up in what is now Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Of course, they were all Anglicans. Henry Ware, one of George's sons, was a strong Presbyterian and opposed immersion. His wife joined a Baptist Church; there were no Presbyterian Churches near her. Henry told her that he would shoot the preacher when he immersed her. However, after advising with his mother, his wife was baptized and Henry did not shoot the minister, but cried.

My great grand father Asa Jones Ware was born in 1813 and out lived three of his wives. He was first married to Francis Bird by whom he had two children and five grandchildren. Following her death Asa married Mary Ann Hood, my great grandmother, and had three children, the last of the three by her was my grandfather, Elisha Green Ware. William Ware, the second child of this marriage, and his wife, Cornelia McElhannan, had nine children and at least six grand children. This is not particularly unusual for the times, because there was a shortage of men after the Civil War; but it created quite a problem when Mary Hood died. Asa was already in his eighties when he married a third time to Victoria Harmon who was eighteen years old, but already had four children. Asa and his new family moved to Talladega, Alabama where a fifth child, John Ware, was born. According to my...