Ma Ma's Wedding Band III

Ma Ma’s Wedding Band - Errata and Updates

Cousins Annie Wright and Edna Ione Tatum in August 1902

Errata

Annie Wright and Edna Ione Tatum have always been set in my memory as first cousins and best friends. Research in the lineage of Jacob Izlar, however, indicates that Annie’s and Edna’s maternal grandmothers were sisters. Annie’s was Ann E. Izlar (b. 1812) and Edna Ione’s grandmother was Eliza Izlar (b. 1822); Ann and Eliza were daughters of Jacob Izler 2nd and Ann Elizabeth Rickenbacker. So Annie and Edna were most likely second cousins. Bear in mind that genealogy is history, and is written by the victors and is constantly being revised by folks who weren’t in attendance at the happening. They were, obviously, very good friends. 

The long lost wedding band was not found by Biggy in the 1970s but was found by Shot, most likely between August 1963 and May 1964.  Biggy’s remark “What that is?” was made, instead, to Thomas who was standing in knee high cotton about 10 feet away from a good size Timber Rattlesnake on which Biggy had just parked the front wheels of his John Deere 630 tractor.

The house that Little Joe built at Magnolia Center sometime in the 1890s did not burn in 1926, but burned in November 1925 according to Thomas’ Memoir.

Undated photograph of Little Joe and his house

 

The well house on the left was still in use in my youth, but with a large ground level water tank. The elevated water tank served to provide full time water pressure to the house. According to the stories, water was pumped with an engine that burned “tractor fuel” and which also generated electricity for lights for the house, which explains the absence of a windmill.

Update

Lost when the house burned in 1925, was everything in the house except what was set on the dining table for a meal for company. Legend has it that someone grabbed the table cloth by the four corners and dragged it out and down the steps to the yard with much damage to china and crystal. The ashes were sifted in the area of Ma Ma’s dresser and the diamond from the engagement ring that Little Joe had given her was recovered and re-set. Since her wedding band was not lost in the fire, we can speculate that she had already lost it at the hen house, or that she had ceased to wear Little Joe’s diamond but still wore the wedding band.

She did cease to wear the diamond at some point in her life and transferred it to her niece Peg, one of three beloved unmarried sisters who worked as professionals. Peg, in return placed money in trust to pay for an engagement ring for each of the three boys when the time came - from whence eventually came T’s engagement ring. 

Peg willed the ring to brother Joe B’s daughter Cat B, as the firstborn daughter of Little Joe’s namesake. Peg wisely willed it to a female descendant instead of a male one so it would not get lost in a divorce. Cat B used it as her own engagement ring and it is still in her possession.

Ma Ma about 1939

The photograph above was taken in the front yard of “Ma Ma’s House” (later know as "Nanny’s House" and then as "The Hurrah’s Nest") looking north. She had the house built next door to the site of the burned house leaving the original house site for Thomas' future use. The automobile is a 1938 or 1939 model. The person in the backseat is unidentifiable but perhaps this picture was taken somewhere around the marriage of Libba and Thomas which, of course, took place in Hemingway. The building in the background was known by us as “The Warehouse” and may have been built to replace the Gin that burned in 1915. It was torn down around 1990.

Related Posts

Ma Ma's Wedding Band - May 26, 2014

Ma Ma's Wedding Band II - The Treachery of Memory, June 3, 2014