My Country Granddad
The obituary in the Walker County Messenger, dated July 14, 1965, read: “Roy A. Morgan of 503 North Main Street, LaFayette, Georgia, died unexpectedly last Wednesday morning at 9:15 a.m. Mr. Morgan was a man of high integrity, devoted to his family, loyal to his friends, dedicated to his church and an active supporter of every movement for the progress and well-being of his community and county. He was a good citizen.”
The most vivid memories I have of him come from visits to his home in LaFayette. My brothers and I considered the weeks we spent with our grandparents the highlight of our summer vacations.
Their house stood at the edge of town, with giant pin oak trees on each side of the short sidewalk leading up to the front door. It had a long back yard with a barn that once sheltered horses and cows. Now only the chicken coop was alive with clucking hens, making egg collecting a daily ritual. Beyond the barn and down the hill ran a creek where we spent hours wading in the cool, shaded water, and played all kinds of “pretend” games.
I thought there was nothing more wonderful than walking hand-in-hand with Granddad, down Main Street, into town to the drugstore, and being allowed to get as many comic books as I wanted.
We all sat together on the front porch in the afternoons, watching the traffic go by. In 1955 it didn’t take much to entertain kids, and grandparents of that era didn’t think it was their job to entertain them anyway. Nothing significant was said or done during this time, but I do remember feeling happy and satisfied at being part of their routine. Granddad sat in his metal lawn chair, feet propped up, puffing a cigar. Grandmother was usually behind him, in the shadows, gently rocking in the matching glider. Calling out the names of passing cars kept us occupied.
My grandfather liked to dabble in real estate, and I remember standing in the middle of a pine thicket, listening to the wind blow through the pine boughs, as he explained how the land was laid out in precise measurements that made for straight rows at every angle. When we went for these rides in the country, he always waved to every car we passed. It amazed me that he knew so many people until he explained it was a courteous hello you gave to even strangers in rural areas.
Once, for a class assignment, I interviewed my mother and daddy about Granddad. Daddy related this story which helped me understand his father-in-law’s position in his home town: “A young man from Villanow shot himself and his pregnant wife. I was there on summer vacation from college and they sent me to get Mr. Morgan.”
I interrupted to ask why.
“Well, he had about the most sense of anyone around,” Daddy replied, “After being told of the tragedy he got into his car and went over to the home of the man’s mother to see what needed to be done, and made sure it got done.”
My mother described him as the unofficial mayor of Villanow. It was through her detailed genealogical journals that I completed the picture of my country granddad. Her memories personalized for me the words of his obituary.
Born on December 1, 1889, Roy Austin Morgan grew up in Villanow, Georgia, a “wide spot in the road” about fifty miles below Chattanooga, Tennessee. The rural East Armurchee Valley, where everyone was kin, or at least knew everyone else, was the perfect setting for this boy who loved people.
When she married Grandpa Morgan, for some unexplained reason, he refused to let her bring Gordon to their home. As their sons were born over the next few years, this half-brother often walked up the road to play with them. It was a fact of life that my granddad and his brothers accepted, and the seven were close throughout their lives.
Annie Morgan, or “Babe,” as she was called, was crippled with rheumatism, or possibly multiple sclerosis, sometime after her last child was born. Unable to walk, she sat in a straight chair, and with a son on each side, was carried wherever she needed to go. She taught each of the boys how to do a specific household chore, from washing dishes to hand making shirts and pants. Granddad was the cook for the family, turning out biscuits and gravy for the eight of them each morning.
Country living meant living without some of the staples city dwellers took for granted. “Hickory tea was the only brand of tea I knew until I was 20 years old,” he often related when talking about the good old days.
The way Granddad was raised shaped him into a responsible person, but apparently nothing could made him like school. The Concord school house he attended was directly in front of the Morgan family home. Mother said, “One day Grandpa went looking for him to find out why he wasn’t in school, and he found Daddy on the creek bank below the house fishing. When he asked him if he wanted to go to school or take a whipping, Daddy took his whipping and went on fishing.”
At the age of eighteen, he took the civil service exam for a job as rural route carrier with the post office. This job was important to him because money was needed at home for his mother’s medical expenses, and Granddad prayed he would pass. He made the highest grade of anyone taking the test, and began a career that lasted forty-nine years.
Mother said, “When people couldn’t bury their dead, he bought a coffin; when they couldn’t pay for their medicine, he did; when they needed kerosene for their lamps, he bought it at the general store, and carried it to them the next mail delivery day.”
His mail route was a seventy miles round trip, and could be a challenge during a cold winter. He often had to wrap the horses’ hooves in gunny sacks to keep them from sliding on the thick ice. A charcoal warmer kept his own feet safe from freezing. Because of his job, Granddad was one of the first in the community to have a car, a Ford Model T.
In 1911 he married a local girl, Bertha Hamilton Puryear.
He lived within a mile of her home, and their courtship centered on Sunday evenings spent on her parents’ front porch.
After a marriage ceremony, not attended by immediate family members(creating another family mystery), they took the train to Chattanooga for a two day honeymoon. The newlyweds reported upon returning that the ride up the Incline at Lookout Mountain was a highlight of the trip.
He was a leader in the Macedonia Baptist Church, serving as Sunday School superintendent for twenty-five consecutive years. Many Sundays the preacher could be found sitting down to a plate of chicken and dumplings at the Morgans’ home.
Church socials were often held in their front yard, with tubs of lemonade for refreshment, and entire families playing “Drop the Handkerchief” and “Farmer in the Dell.” Box suppers were in vogue during this time, and according to Mother, Granddad watched to see where his favorite cook placed her box to make sure he bid on the right one.
Outside of church, Granddad played tennis on the dirt court of the village doctor, Dr. Shields, and performed in plays that were fundraisers for the school. It was noted in The Walker County Messenger on April 19, 1919: “Two plays will be presented to raise money to paint the interior of the school building. In Out in the Streets, the part of Colonel Wayne is to be played by Roy Morgan. The program throughout will be interspersed with good music by Stradivaro Phonograph.”
Once my granddad had to write a biography for the Rotary Club bulletin, and on the subject of hobbies he said: “I’ve walked hundreds of miles following a bird dog. I must confess that while I had the will and stamina of ‘Nimrod the Hunter,’ I never had the sure aim of ‘Hawkeye’ of The Deerslayer fame.” Still he supplied my grandmother with plenty of quail which she often fried up to serve with eggs and biscuits at breakfast.In addition to his job as a mail carrier, Granddad was a part-time farmer. During the years he used a horse and buggy for delivering the mail, he was responsible for the horses’ upkeep. This often meant tilling fields after dark so he took a lantern, and hung it from the plow handle to guide his path. On nights with a full moon, he kept going past midnight.
He raised white face cattle, and kept a country store for three years, but quit, as he said, “before I went completely broke.”
In the 1930s, shortly after my mother had married, a promotion to clerk in the main post office took my grandparents to LaFayette where they resided for the rest of their lives.
As so often happens, when I started high school, I didn’t go to my grandparents’ in the summertime any more. During the early sixties I visited them on holidays or for a short weekend trip with the entire family. Because long distance telephone calls were still reserved for special occasions, my contact with Granddad was sporadic by the time he died, two years after my grandmother.
His Rotary biography from 1949 ended with “I have always known there was nothing to it and now you know it.” When he was alive, I was young, and I didn’t look at the qualities he possessed that made him well-thought of in the community. I looked at him as my granddad who showed his love for me in our every exchange.
I am thankful that through memories of others, and with my own memories, rooted deep in my heart, I know there was much to the life of this Georgia country boy, “born in East Armuchee Valley, on the first day of the month, in the last month of the year 1889.”
