And there was the Civil War

 It wasn't so civil...we've all got to remember. War is war.

I recently read a beautiful but harsh book "When the Crows Took Their Eyes" by Vicki Lane, another blogger. She is an accomplished mystery writer from nearby Marshall, NC. This book is historic fiction about the Shelton Laurel Massacre during the Civil War...with wonderful characterization of some of the real people who lived and died in that area, as well as one fictional character. It is griping, and I couldn't stop reading it, and indeed, I want to reread it again soon.

I'm reposting a post of 2017 in which I looked at the area of Georgia some of my relatives came from. My great grandmother (Zulieka Granger Phillips Swasey (Dear Nan)(1858-1935)was born in Fort Gaines GA, though her parents were settling in the east Texas area on the Sabine River called Town Bluff TX.

Fort Gaines GA ancestors

The Queen City loaded with bales of cotton, near a covered bridge, Chattahoochee River at Fort Gaines

I've been researching how my ancestors from the south lived and died during the years of the Civil War and following.
So to talk a bit about Fort Gaines GA, where my ancestors the William Phillips Sr. and Samuel Gainer family lived as of 1850. Before looking at 1850, here's some background of the location.

History lesson about Fort Gaines Georgia:

Located in southwest Georgia, on the Chattahoochee River in Fort Gaines was a smallish city where cotton had been shipped down river to the Gulf of Mexico prior to the Civil War. There were three forts built at that location, with the earliest having been a frontier fort to protect settlers from Indians. (The Indian culture had been established in that area for 2000 years, and included building Kolomoki Mounds nearby.) 

The First Fort:  Fort Gaines was established in 1816 by order of Gen. Edmund P. Gaines, commander of a large district, who used this as his headquarters. Containing two blockhouses, the 100-foot square fort was enclosed by a stockade eight feet high. During 1817, when Indians were active in the area, settlers look refuge in the fort, garrisoned by Federal troops under Gen. John Dill.  (Incidentally, a 100-foot square is 100 feet on each side, not 10 feet which brings a 100-square foot size.)

  

The Fort at Fort Gaines, and to the right, the railing overlooking the Chatahoochee River/ 

Frontier village restoration at Fort Gaines GA

The Second Fort: In May of 1836 the 88th Regiment of the Georgia Militia built a small fort in anticipation of an attack by the Creek Indians. The Steamer Georgian had arrived crowded with women and children fleeing from the Indian uprising at Roanoke upriver. The Steamer, Anna Calhoun was pressed for 5,000 pounds of bacon and 8 barrels of flour in order to feed the refugees and militia. 

The uprising was quelled before the fighting reached Fort Gaines. This was one of the last major insurgences of the Creeks before their removal to the West by Andrew Jackson. That was also known as the Trail of Tears.

Two Covered Bridges

 A covered bridge near The Queen City loaded with bales of cotton

Coheelee Creek Covered Bridge, Early County GA

I think these are 2 different bridges, based on the height over the water surface.  And the Queen City paddlewheeler (Steamer) is probably in the Chattahoochee River, not a creek! Early County later was divided into other counties, and Fort Gaines now is the county seat of Clay County.


Today's quote:

Be humble for you are made of Earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.

Happy birthday Great-grandmother Zulieka Granger Phillips Swasey

A repost of blog from last year's birthday with additions!

On July 30, 1858, Zulieka Granger Phillips Swasey was born.  Her mother Mary Phillips, had been a Granger before marriage.  Her father, William Phillips, was raised by a stepfather, Samuel Gainer in Georgia.  Her mother went from Texas back to Georgia to give birth, and I'm not clear whether she was with her own mother or her mother-in-law.

Baby Zulie was given a slave girl at her birth, with the papers written by hand by her paternal grandmother, Mary Phillips Gainer.  I wonder if any of them knew that the Civil War would be starting in just a few years.

She returned with her parents (Mary and Willian Phillips) to Sabine Pass, Texas or Beaumont, Texas, at a time when there were cotton plantations where now oil wells drill, and cities stand.

Front and back of Zulie G. Swasey portrait, mother of Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers

GG Zulieka was know to the family as "Dear Nan."  Her mother, Mary, had another child two years later, and Mary died within a year of that birth.  Julie's father William Phillips may have been sick, may have been grieving, or some other reason had him leaving the homestead, and sending his daughters to relatives in Galveston.  Within 6 months of his wife's death, he joined the Confederate forces, fighting early in the war with other Texans in a company from Alabama, and dying.

GG Zulieka and her younger sister, Ada Phillips, were raised by Granger and Gainer relatives who were the sisters of either their father or their mother.

When Zulieka married at age 24 to Alexander John Swasey, also of Galveston, she then had her own two girls, naming her first Ada Phillips Swasey, and her second Stella Zulieka Swasey.  Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers became my grandmother on my father's side.

Zulieka Swasey (Dear Nan) and her granddaughter Ada Mary Rogers. (Ada Mary Rogers died as a child)

And how do I know more than is available by census and city directory documents?  My relatives somehow kept copies of letters written by Zulieka's mother, her father, her grandmother Gainer, her grandfather Granger, and her uncle Marion Granger.  I've transcribed them into records for these people on Ancestry.com, which kind of makes these people more real.

The letters just before and during the Civil War are the most precious, because of the lack of true information that was available to people, and the privations they endured.  Letters were written on both sides of folded paper, then across the original writing at a 90 degree angle, as well as in the margins.  See HERE for some of the letters.

I've never known why GG-Grandmom Mary Phillips traveled to San Marcos, Hays County, TX from Galveston to give birth to my G-grandmother, Zulieka Granger Phillips Swasey on July 30, 1858.  Then she had her second daughter, Ada Pulsifer Phillips in Beaumont (or more likely Town Bluff) on Sept. 15, 1860. The second daughter, Great Aunt Ada, went by Auntie to the Swasey and Granger relatives, while Zulieka became Dear Nan.

The story my grandmother Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers told was that Dear Nan had been a 10 month pregnancy by her mother. I later learned that midwives were familiar with a second pregnancy actually starting within the first month of the earlier one, where a woman would lose the first pregnancy but keep the second one, and thus think she was pregnant 10 months.

Since GG Zulieka and her sister had been orphaned during the civil war, I don't know of any relations that might have lived in San Marcos.  Her Aunt Lizzie Granger Sweet who helped raise the 2 Phillips orphans, continued living in Galveston for many more years. As a matter of fact, when Zulieka was listed as living with her brother-in-law, Chauncey Sweet, Zulieka's 2 daughters were counted on the census as living with the Sweets, though they were also listed in Galveston living with their parents at another address.

So San Marcos remains a mystery.  I only know that her own mother, Mary Granger Phillips had traveled from Texas back to Georgia to give birth to Zulieka with her in-laws, but not with the second child.

Great grandmother Zulieka (aka Dear Nan) was a Christian Science practitioner, as was my grandmother Ada Swasey Rogers.  G-Gran Zulieka worked out of her apartment home in Houston and was listed in the city directory, as was her accountant husband, Alexander John Swasey, who may have gone by "A.J."

A.J. Swasey died in 1913.  GG Zulieka continued her practice until that year (1913.) In the 1920 census she was living with Chauncey Sweet in Galveston, but in 1930 she was back in Houston. She died in an automobile accident near Rosenburg, TX on April 21. 1935, and is buried in Galveston.