Tyler, Selma, and Old Cahawba

For her birthday my mom wanted me to go with her to see where her father grew up. She was 14 when he died, and he was 22 years older than my grandmother, so he is a mystery to most of my family. My grandmother knew him best, but her memory is all but gone now.

My grandfather grew up in the Selma area. His name was Herbert Lamar but people called him Herb or Lamar. He was a dentist.

First we stopped off of US-80 near Tyler, Alabama, where my grandfather's homeplace was. The old house burned down, but my mom's half-cousin's widower named Jimmy lives in a newer house on the property. He was an older man, "a good country boy" as my mom called him. He has a white house on the edge of a field with crinums planted along the front porch. He had two large dogs that barked and jumped all over us. He would yell at them and hit them with a horse whip.

He showed us all the old photos he could find. He misplaced the best old album, but he found a metal box with half-burned pictures from the old house that burned down. It was one of those old Southern houses with 12-foot-high ceilings. "I know," he said, "because they had me paint the walls one time when I was coming up."

From there, we drove to Selma and picked up some belongings of one of my mom's cousins that were being stored in a church there.

We drove around town and ate at an awesome bar-b-q place. We were the only white people there.

We stopped at Sturdivant Hall, an antebellum mansion in Selma.

Sturdivant Hall, Selma, Alabama

Then we went to Live Oak Cemetery in Selma. We don't have relatives buried there, that we know of, but it's a beautiful old cemetery.

Me, posing with the live oaks

Confederate veterans

Next we went to Old Cahawba, the site of Alabama's first state capital. It was built on the site of an old Indian village where the Cahaba River runs into the Alabama River. Almost nothing is left of the town, other than an extensive grid of dirt streets, and occasional columns, ruins, and cemeteries. It's a eerie place.

One of the few intact buildings is a two-story slave quarters. The main house was in front of this but now all you can see are the four corners of its foundation. When I went to Old Cahawba ten years ago, there was a two-level porch with columns on this house, which are now gone (removed?).

Slave quarters at Old Cahawba

In the old graveyard in Old Cahawba there are planted a lot of trifoliate orange trees (Poncirus trifoliata). These are Chinese relatives of citrus with vicious thorns. The lady in the information office said it was to remind visitors of the Crown of Thorns.

Artesian well in Old Cahawba

After Old Cahawba we went to a church south of Selma where some relatives were supposed to be buried.

Shiloh Baptist Church, near Sardis, Alabama

Shiloh Baptist Church

Family graves:

My great-great grandmother, Emma Huffman (my maternal grandfather's maternal grandmother). My great-great-grandfather was buried next to her, along with some distant uncles and cousins.