A Southern Yankee Met Fan
My great grandfather was born in Rocky Sink, Fla in 1895 and in 1947 died of lung cancer at a VA Hospital in Baltimore, MD. But he spent a large chunk of his life in neither place, mostly living in Brooklyn, NY and working as a telegraph operator for Western Union, in-between bouts of climbing on and falling off the wagon.
This man, William Brown Hodge, is my link to the American South. Most of my ancestors came from Europe and settled in NYC — as one comedian, Tara Clancy, who has a similar family story said, “They got off the boat, looked around, and said, ‘Good enough!’” I could identify because who wants to move, especially after you’ve been seasick for a month? Also, they were New Yorkers, and like family, I get them, for better or worse. Dare I say even love them? Eh, some of them. But the Floridian branch felt more foreign than my Europeans, and was the least interesting to me. I’m 6% Sicilian and ¼ English, the latter probably largely from my southern connection, yet I tell everyone about my ancestors from Corleone, Sicily (it exists!) and almost no one about Rocky Sink. It’s not deliberate, it’s just not Corleone.
But the American South also happened to be the branch where I could dig up the most information. It was my mother who kicked it off, connecting with a (genetically and geographically) distant Texas cousin who informed my mother that her maiden name, “Hodge,” was an alias from a murder our mutual ancestor committed in 1830s Georgia. She’d found this out while trying to join the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The DAR doesn’t play — like genealogical bureaucrats of the highest order, they demand paperwork. And in the process of acquiring it, our cousin uncovered a murder.
The family name had originally been a rough-sounding “Rouse” — William Rouse, who, after the crime, changed his surname to “Hodge” and fled with his family to Macon, Ala, where my third great-grandfather was born. After I told this to my uncle, he said, “I could’ve lived happily not knowing that.” He meant Alabama, not the murders.
I’ll fess up to the prejudice that existed in my New York family toward our southern family. And it went from south to north as well. “BROOKLYN?!” our Texas cousin said when my mother revealed where we’re from. “I’d heard we had Yankees in the family but BROOKLYN?” I wondered if she thought we were all strapped. And I wondered what she’d say if she heard I was from the Bronx. And as Met fan I resented being called a Yankee.
I had a hard time seeing the point of view looking north, but from my view looking south, I saw:
The names: Grover, Perry, Effie Clyde, Effie Mae, Lula Mae, Edwin Augustus. Epaphroditus. Great-uncle Lloyd’s son, Little Lloyd Jr, who was still called Little Lloyd Jr as an adult.
They were Southern Baptists. We’d all gone to Catholic School.
Rocky Sink.
The family also lived Live Oak, Fla, which I called “Dead Oak.”
My great-great grandmother Mattie Brown married three times, learned how to drive when most women didn’t, and kept a shotgun under her mattress. That was cool.
And there was slavery. In researching the south, I’d learned that not every southerner was an enslaver! Not every southerner lived like Scarlett O’Hara! But our family did. We descended from people who owned a Georgia Plantation called Marietta Plantation, as well as an Englishman named John Goldwire who ended up in Savannah, GA and became so prosperous he willed everything from mirrors to cattle to slaves:
“The tenth day of August 1774. I John Goldwire of the parish of St Matthews in the province of Georgia … give unto my daughter Sarah King and her children the use and whole profits of labour of the slaves viz. Ned, Jack, Isaac (the cooper), Jenny, Jane, Little Isaac, March, Tansey, Foy and Fanny.”
I had a hard time taking in that information. While it’s one thing to say to yourself, “Yeah, there were probably enslavers in my family,” the probably leaves the door open for the possibility that there weren’t. But thanks to Ancestry.com, there it was — a document that, unlike the ones my earliest New Yorkers signed, had the affiant’s signature, not an “X.” John Goldwire signed his name to something that willed people alongside cattle and mirrors. Not a surprise given what we know about the institution of slavery, but it is when you find out it’s your family. Family you don’t even know other than birth certificates and wills. Is it in my blood to do that?
NYC was second only to Charleston, SC in the number of households that had slaves until it was finally outlawed in New York on Independence Day, 1827. We pride ourselves on our lack of slave history when meanwhile it was just as thriving an enterprise here. But people are less inclined to look at it. I researched my friend’s family tree and learned her Queens ancestors were enslavers. It’s been three years since I found out and I still haven’t told her, I think she’d have a heart attack.
