Many years ago, I asked myself, “Who am I” then “what do I know about myself?” That turned into exploration about “who I am,” which in turn, evolved into “where do I come from” and finally “who did I come from?” I think today people are caught up so much on the first question, that the development of the idea never follows. We have a society built today upon the principle of “I am” with the constant treading of progress and need to sanctify ourselves in the court of public opinion, or career.
I am a Southerner, I am from the South, Alabama to be exact and my manners and conscience are informed by the cultural inheritance gained from those before me who taught me my manners and provided the principal foundations of values that I hold dear. But I never really took much time to consider where they came from, how they were formed, how they even passed down. In fact, my knowledge of my familial history didn’t branch past the most present generations. Now, I am likely an outlier in some instances, but my extended family is all broken and a modern tragedy that has painfully only become more commonplace today. As I have gotten older and have my own, thankfully wonderful small family now, I started realizing that the “Who I am” question is far less important than “who I come from and where.” So almost four decades into my run in life, I decided to start looking.
It’s not an easy glimpse, coursing through the maze and swamp of the current and preceding generation, and even more difficult for me, finding the documentation on people who seemingly never wanted to be found or cared to be. But a golden thread emerged as I spent time talking to extended aunts and cousins about what and who they knew. Then the stories started, snippets and snapshots of from the lives of the old-timers at the turn of the century, glimmers of people in places I felt in my core I knew but were intriguing strangers as wonderful as King Tut or Julius Caesar. I dug deeper into the hills of North Alabama and the poor farmers that I shared my blood with. Wonderful names too, Ambrose and Olan, Adeline and Bluford, you can also feel the old-timey presence like so many modern folks get at the old Cracker Barrel (before the tragedy of the redesigns of course).
Now, being removed from those hill-folk and the grandeur of their humble lives, growing up in the modern Leviathan of the United States, my ignorant brain played the Deliverance theme as I looked upon their pictures of them in sack dresses and overalls. I feel the shame of it now looking back upon my own programmed thinking that these people were “less than.” But soon, I started feeling it, I could feel pride in my people. As I read the snippets of their lives and saw their names in old census records, the tombstones and the reality of life and death, and even later as I read compiled service records of my kin and their service in the Confederate Army, I felt them. You can almost hear their voices in the letters, smell the dirt that they worked, tasted the lean cornbread they ate, and feel the joy of their wonderful lives.
I dug deeper, the prisoners who suffered and died in camps in the North, the pension records detailing a smashed forearm by a shell splinter, the scar on the forehead from a graze, and the lifelong tragedy of a bowel disease from a gut shot. And yet they persevered, as they lost their fortunes before the war, and the untold acres they owned, to be poor sharecroppers in the end asking the Federal overlords for a small widow’s pension. It stung knowing how badly they had it and how badly they were treated. Even more so being a combat veteran, it stung knowing how they fought and struggled only to return to homes so broken.
As I peeled back a generation from the war, a new image emerged, bold pioneers. Those who struck out from Virginia and North Carolina, South and to the Southwest, to South Carolina, to Georgia, to Alabama, riding on hope and ambition with everything they owned, and all their hopes and dreams bouncing along with them. Most of them from both sides of my family ended up in the same places along the journey, some going further West to Alabama, some finding comfort in South Central Georgia. I stumbled upon something so very interesting to me though, the preceding generation and their lives in and around the American Revolution.
Now I pause the reader right here for a moment, I think there has been a travesty done, a crime above reproach concerning the American Revolution. Being almost forty years old, I don’t recall my education in grade school or even in my advanced education at college and grad school, hearing much at all about the Southern Campaigns. The most I recall is distilled into a kind of “civil war” between Tories and Patriots, oh and the British were there some. Now maybe it’s my folly that I didn’t listen more or paid enough attention, but in any case, I believe the South as a whole is sold short on the Revolution. Now back to my story and why I think that.
I found quickly that most of my ancestors clustered mainly in the back country of the Carolinas, some from Virginia, but most being in the upcountry. As I researched more, specifically for my application to the Sons of the American Revolution and Sons of Confederate Veterans (that fire started a little before), I found that all my stories I heard as a kid about being Danish or some kind of German were patently false. Most of my people were Englishmen, and most fell into that Cavalier category that David Hackett Fischer wrote about. That was a surprise to me when I discovered all of this after reading Albion’s Seed as well, well at least I fancy that boyish notion. Also, most of all these different family lines possibly knew each other and certainly served in different militia units together in the war at those famous places like Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and Guilford Courthouse. They just didn’t all come together until later on.
Now that the backstory is done, here is what I learned not about “who I am” but “who and where I come from.” If we distill my descent down from the brave Englishmen who crossed the sea, to those searching the frontiers of a colony, to the rugged militiamen, to the bold pioneers, to the honorable farmers who fought, to the broken sharecropper, down through the destruction of my family into the modern age, I think you have a story of the South. It’s not the mud and blood of strife or the rubble of destruction; it’s a thread, a culture, a people, and their suffering that reigns from generation to next. I like to think of it as my thread in this tapestry that started weaving in Jamestown and a core one beyond the additions of the Puritan patches.
I remember my Momma would smack me if I didn’t say “Sir” or “Ma’am,” or if I didn’t hold open a door. I remember my Grandma was fierce with the fly swatter if I put my elbows on the table. Now manners are universal and follow similar patterns, but a seventy-year-old Southern woman is a different type of motivator to get you “listenin’.” There was a universal shame granted to you if you were rude or impolite to someone, even if they were impolite to you. That shame often brought up mention of acting like a “damn Yankee.” There was pride in cooking those downhome meals, where grits are a staple and spice cabinets overflow. You know of course, Yankees don’t know or use spices. Those hot Saturday mornings with Coke and fried chicken gizzards with my dad on the bench seat of his old Ford. The love of music, especially Southern Rock, was something I grew up knowing was the best music, because simply everyone I knew listened to it and knew it, years and years after the record was replaced with tapes and CDs. Nostalgic I know, but all glimmers and glimpses of things handed down. These are the kinds of things, among so many countless others that I inherited growing up. But I didn’t know where they came from. Maybe it was like the “magic dirt” theory that some Conservatives and Libertarians believe, once you are in a place, you just absorb these cultural tokens through osmosis from the dirt you stand on. This fanciful notion that you can become Southern by just being around, maybe some can steep in the Southern Tradition, whereas some of us are the Tea. There wasn’t a realization that I inherited something so special from so long ago and it pains me I didn’t discover until so late.
As I started my journey on figuring out what people I come from, I also started discovering more about the people that I didn’t know I belonged to. I started embracing the South, learning more about this fierce and humble people, that I would only learn are my own. The pieces came together on who and what the South was before I knew I was actually ingrained into it. Now be gentle with me dear Reader, I was a Marine and slow on the uptake. I simply took for granted the treasures I had inherited. But now I embrace the roots and soil of my people.
As for me, I have a presence of mind, every old-time country phrase I still use, the accent in my voice, the preference for that downhome meal I make for my wife and daughter, and the appreciation for the Southern ground I stand on. My library now is full of Southern history, and even though I grew up playing guitar and bass most of my life, my mandolin and banjo are what I strum on in the evenings. This is a voyage of discovery for me, not about “who I am” but “who and where I came from.”
I originally wanted to share some of this as a commentary on the state of Men today in our country. But to even cast glare at someone else, you have to understand yourself before you can treat a subject with humility. I believe that I realize now, the state of Men today is in direct relation to understanding where they come from and what made them, not this notion of a singular quality or defect that exists within. If we seriously want to improve the condition of our Men today in the South, we have got to start looking at where we severed our relationship with the past and why we let modern vipers today steer us from our natural paths. We have got to help others find their inherited gold in those histories of us.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Terrific column Mr. Nix. Words of wisdom, truly.
} If we seriously want to improve the condition of our Men today in the South, we have got to start looking at where we severed our relationship with the past and why we let modern vipers today steer us from our natural paths.”
Truer words have not been spoken. Nice article.
A while back, I did a little spreadsheet on ancestors and discovered that with each generation, the number doubles. I have a famous 5x great-grandmother. She’s just one of 128 5x great-grandparents. The only ancestors that really count are the ones you knew personally. All others are just names. You better be careful reasearching ancestors unless you’re willing to accept the horse thieves, gamblers and whores.
Thank you for this excellent article!
And some day, in the distant future, your descendants will be including you as they read and study that rich tapestry we call family history. But only if they ask themselves the same question you settled on- “who did I come from?”