Reminiscences of a Christian Family: In the Mid-20Th Century South

Copyright © 2015 Silas Dobbs McCaslin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 (866) 928-1240

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-6874-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-6875-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-6873-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015901841

WestBow Press rev. date: 02/10/2015

Silas Dobbs McCaslin is a pediatric dentist in his forty-fifth year of private practice in Savannah, Georgia. His publications are: A STUDY OF ANORGANIC BONE AS A PULP CAPPING AGENT IN HUMAN PERMANENT TEETH, Master of Science in Dentistry thesis, Emory University School of Dentistry, 1968; A Better Mousetrap. A Program Written for the Computer for the Automation of the Dental Office Appointment Book. THE JOURNAL OF THE GEORGIA DENTAL ASSOCIATION, February, 1987; THE ALSTON JONES McCASLIN FAMILY, published privately, 1988; Making Child Patient Cooperation a Choice, JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY, January/February 2000, Volume 22, Number 1; Risk Management For Pediatric Dental Patients: The Philosophy Of One Practice," THE JOURNAL OF THE SOUTHEASTERN SOCIETY OF PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY, Vol. 7, No. 3-2001; THE ANCESTRY OF C. S. LEWIS, www.silasdobbsmccaslin.com, 2006; Thoughts on the Virtue of Work, by IPC Press, 2011; and LETTERS TO AND FROM A CHRISTIAN MOTHER AND MORE, WestBow Press, 2011.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: From Riches to Ruin

Chapter 2: Life in Eupora

Chapter 3: Visits in Ackerman During the War

Chapter 4: Going Home to Take Mother

Chapter 5: Loss Quickens Faith in God

Chapter 6: Our Prankish Youth

Chapter 7: Visits in Grenada, Greenwood, and Greenville

Chapter 8: Diligent Work Ethic

Chapter 9: A Glimpse at the Years That Followed

Epilogue

Further Reading

About the Author

Dedicated to my family,

especially my two granddaughters,

Ella and Adelaide Murns

My maternal grandmother was Mary (Mamie) Adams Dobbs. What follows, extracted from a letter from my mother to her cousins after a recent Adams family gathering in Mississippi, dated August 1, 1979 (exactly one year to the day before her death), is a statement concerning Christian heritage with which spirit we fully comply:

…I hope all of you first cousins of mine will instill into your children a deep pride and reverence for the splendid heritage we have. There are many people in the United States today who cannot claim ancestral lines in America back five and six and seven generations, as we can. I don’t mean to sound snobbish. I give the Lord the praise for my having been born who and where I was! And for His having chosen me to find and accept the Glorious Gospel of His Grace in Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

So my pride in our ancestors is actually gratitude and praise to God, for allowing me to be born of the parents I had. And having the background of such fine lines as those I have discovered. And I think – as things get worse all over the world and even in our own country – that our children are going to recognize and appreciate more and more the worth of such an heritage. But they can’t unless they know of it. And that is our duty – to teach them love of family and country and our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ. (Titus 2:13)….

Mary Margaret Dobbs (McCaslin) Ward

FOREWORD

Si McCaslin describes what it was like to grow up in a small Southern town in the 1940s and early 1950s: RC Colas and Moon Pies, Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys, Red Ryder BB guns, barefoot summers, tree houses and club houses, young boys and their pocket knives, Mumblety-peg, shooting marbles, spinning tops, riding bikes in packs, paper routes, unsupervised hours of outdoor play, unlocked doors, Saturday afternoon picture shows (with the standard double-feature), and plenty of mischief; Sunday church and Wednesday prayer meeting, intact families and strict Sunday Sabbaths. He strategically places family developments in the context of broader developments in the world: the New Deal, the outbreak of World War II, Pearl Harbor, the Allied Victories, the Korean War. He recounts the arrival of the refrigerator, washing machine, central air conditioning, television, and the administrations of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower. He takes us through the tragic death of his father at the young age of forty-five and the irrepressible determination of his widowed mother.

Above all, Si describes lesson after lesson learned at the knee of that Christian mother, often reinforced with a switch, and always with Scripture and prayer. Devotion to God was cultivated, integrity insisted upon, and commitments honored. These were simpler times, and comparatively, innocent times. Si’s wistful narratives of growing up with big brother Jay will bring a smile to your face, as well as a touch of sadness for the loss of the positive side of an imperfect civilization that is lost forever.

Terry L. Johnson

PREFACE

My mother, Mary Margaret Dobbs, was born in Amory, Mississippi, December 11, 1913. Amory was a small town located seventy-five miles northeast of Ackerman, Mississippi.

DOBBS FAMILY HISTORY, published 1971, by Mary Margaret Dobbs McCaslin Ward, was the inaugural and definitive work for the Choctaw County Dobbs. The work finds Mother’s great, great grandfather, The Reverend Silas Dobbs, in Anderson County, South Carolina, where he was born to Fortune Dobbs in 1794. Silas came to Noxubee County, Mississippi in 1834 as a circuit Baptist minister. His son, Lieutenant Silas Mercer Dobbs, fought and died in the Civil War following the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Silas Mercer’s son, Silas Barnabas, Mother’s grandfather, was born, reared, and died in Ackerman. Silas Barnabas’ son, Estel Bridges Dobbs, married Mary (Mamie) Eunice Adams in 1907 after completing college. They always resided in Ackerman, except while in Amory when Mother was born. The Dobbs family long had been Baptists.

THE ALSTON JONES McCASLIN FAMILY, by Alston Jones McCaslin V and Silas Dobbs McCaslin, published in 1988, traces the McCaslin line back to 1740 North Carolina. This McCaslin line was Presbyterian in their faith.

LETTERS TO AND FROM A CHRISTIAN MOTHER AND MORE, by Silas Dobbs McCaslin, was published in 2011 by WestBow Press. Somewhat autobiographical, it is interwoven principally with the correspondence to and from Mary Margaret from the third decade of the 20th century up to and shortly beyond her death in 1980.

A chance inquiry by my pastor, Dr. Terry L. Johnson, led to my writing LETTERS TO AND FROM A CHRISTIAN MOTHER AND MORE for which he wrote the FOREWORD: I was surprised, even excited, when I encountered a small sample – three letters – of Dr. Silas McCaslin’s mother’s letters to him, from the middle of the twentieth century. Their literary quality was outstanding. More importantly, they were filled with sound, shrewd, bold, Biblical counsel for her boys, particularly in the years between the beginning of college and the birth of Si and Suzanne’s first child, Carey. I wanted to read more and became convinced that others, particularly parents, could benefit from hearing the strong counsel of a Christian mother to her beloved sons.

As I had recently read some stories of Southern, small town family relationships of the early to middle 20th century, the thought was evoked of writing my own early memoirs. I found myself asking: Why not do the same sort of book, but including more details of the works of God in our family? These family experiences have not been told. The late Paul Harvey always closed his syndicated radio news program with the segment: The rest of the story.

I am compelled to elaborate on the three family publications named earlier, which have become the resource of family tradition, both biographical and genealogical. Repeating all of the events would be redundant. Yet, in what is to follow, I wish to tell the rest of the story.

Experiences of my grandparents and parents blend into the early experiences of my childhood as I was growing up in Mississippi. My personal memories are gleaned from the period of the mid to late 1940s until college in the fall of 1958. Many of my memories emanate from the instruction and admonition of a Christian mother, proffered to her by my maternal and paternal grandparents. That instruction, conveyed to Jay and me later, blended with our own recollections. Hence her memories evolved into my memories. It would be difficult to completely separate the two. The overarching purpose of this book is my desire to convey to the public my experiences in a small town in the mid-20th century South.

Several close friends have aided me in the production of this book. Dr. Terry Lee Johnson, Senior Pastor, Independent Presbyterian Church, graciously agreed to read an early draft and to write the FOREWORD. Paige Cothren, pastor, Christian counselor, speaker, and a native Mississippian, kindly honored my request to review the manuscript. Paige authored twenty-nine books in three decades. Patrick B. McLean consented to produce the pictures for the cover and the back. My niece, Jennifer Dobbs McCaslin Lobel, provided support with technical questions regarding the conversion of the manuscript to Microsoft Word. From all of them came many suggestions. I offer my gratitude to my sister-in-law, Pamela Stanley McCaslin, who refers to herself as the old English teacher, having taught in and later heading up the Specific Learning Program at Savannah Country Day School for over twenty years. Pam proof-read the last copy prior to my final draft. Finally, to my dear wife, Suzanne Campbell McCaslin, I offer my sincere thanks for her advice. She, also, carefully proof-read an earlier copy of the manuscript. Moreover, Suzanne was patient and positive toward my efforts throughout the entire process.

INTRODUCTION

Found in this work is a collection of events – stories – that define who we are. The stories are centered in Eupora, Mississippi, and nearby towns.

A Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper ran a feature article in 1957 stating essentially that Eupora was a city of beautiful homes, Cadillacs, and churches. In fact, in the early 1950s it was said that Eupora had more Cadillacs per capita than any other town in the state of Mississippi. Along with the text in the newspaper article were pictures of the town and photographs including former Mayor and State Senator, Judge Everette Eudy, and Town Officials Marshall Ernest Coleman and Mayor T. F. Taylor, Jr. These men were among the close friends of my parents, and their lives were enmeshed. T. F. was a multi-millionaire by forty years of age. He became Daddy’s close friend in the early 1930s when Daddy was a banker. Ten years later he was Daddy’s employer and soon after, his business partner. T. F. Taylor, Jr., his wife, Lavinia, or their daughter, Foy, are mentioned over one-hundred and fifty times in this book, which affirms the deep friendship.

My brother, Jay, was sixteen months my senior. Our father died accidentally in July 1953 at the age of forty-five. Having never worked during her nineteen years of marriage, Mother wished first to complete her BA degree in psychology and then to earn the Master’s Degree in speech therapy at Mississippi Southern College in Hattiesburg. A lesser alternative was to remain in her home town of Eupora, teaching speech in the high school, with the security of being surrounded by dear friends. Yet, in a huge step of faith, at forty-one years of age, Mother packed up all of our belongings, the moving van arrived, and she left Eupora with her two young teenage boys, and moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. There she resumed the college education interrupted in 1932 at Blue Mountain College by the Great Depression. Two years later, we packed again, arranging for a moving van, and this time left our home state of Mississippi for Gainesville, Georgia. At age fifteen, we all were again starting over. The moves were best for our mother, and we loved her and supported her in her decisions. In God’s providence, the move to Gainesville resulted three years later in Mother’s second marriage. Eugene Long Ward was a recent widower and a physician. His daughter and son were approximally the age of Jay and me. Mother and Gene were married in May 1959. At her death in 1980, they had been married for twenty-one years, longer than either had been married to a first spouse.

The work that is to follow traces the lives of our family from the early 20th century Mississippi up through our high school years. The events following our college years and beyond are but briefly covered. LETTERS TO AND FROM A CHRISTIAN MOTHER AND MORE, spans much the same period, but from an entirely different perspective. Here we offer childhood experiences couched in both the grace and the goodness of God. Lest we forget. The experiences of my parents and grandparents are near alien to the young people of the 21st century.

Chapter One

FROM RICHES TO RUIN

Robert E. Lee’s distant cousin, Elizabeth Lee, married Joshua Logan Younger. Robert was the son of Henry (Light Horse Harry) Lee. Elizabeth Lee was the daughter of the great Virginia statesman, Richard Henry Lee. Both Robert E. Lee and Elizabeth Lee descended from Richard Lee (b. 1647). Joshua Logan Younger was the great grandfather of Thomas Cole Younger. The outlaw Jesse James and his brothers were relatives of the Younger brothers of Missouri, the relationship being of record.¹

Joshua Logan Younger was the first cousin of Susannah Younger McCaslin, the wife of John McCaslin. Alston Jones McCaslin was born in 1810 in Tennessee. He was the grandson of John and Susannah Younger McCaslin. Therefore, our great grandfather, Alston Jones McCaslin II, was the fifth cousin of Thomas Coleman (Cole) Younger, the most celebrated of the outlaw Younger brothers. Moreover, as stated above, we have a distant collateral kinship to Robert E. Lee, the commanding general of the Confederacy. From that point on, our family had few other collateral relationships to renowned Americans, be they generals or outlaws, although Arthur Dobbs, Colonial Governor of North Carolina, was a kinsman, as mentioned later, and former Mississippi governor, James Plemon Coleman, distant kin, was a life-long friend of Mother’s. More importantly, what our family did have was an extraordinary Christian legacy, as proven in twenty-eight hundred pages of family genealogy that I assembled over some twenty-five years.

Alston Jones McCaslin and his father, James McCaslin, pioneered about 1833 to Marshall County, in north Mississippi. Alston died about 1840. Alston Jones McCaslin II, born in 1827 in Tennessee, migrated sixty miles south to Graysport in Yalobusha County. He is found in that county in the 1850, 1860, and 1870 census records. Alston McCaslin II died accidentally at age forty-nine in 1876 while assisting in the loading of cotton bales on a barge on the Yalobusha River in Graysport, Mississippi. (In 1953, his grandson, my father, Alston Jones McCaslin IV, died accidentally in a body of water in Humphreys County, Tennessee, at forty-five years of age).

Alston Jones McCaslin III, my grandfather, was born in the old McCaslin home in the village of Graysport, Mississippi, November 28, 1863. (Today, Graysport is beneath the massive Grenada Lake). He was thirteen years of age when his father died. Although Alston McCaslin II had wealth, as verified in the census records, his widow had no other source of income. Alston McCaslin III received such early education as the town of Graysport could provide. As a young man, he entered business, first in Graysport and later in the adjacent small town of Coffeeville. Although he had to forego higher education, Grandfather McCaslin put two younger sisters through college while he built a successful enterprise selling farm equipment in Coffeeville.

Alston Jones McCaslin III, at thirty-seven years of age, married Mary Bell Lester on April 26, 1901. Born in 1871, Mary Bell was the daughter of Captain George Lester, of the prominent Lester family of Coffeeville. Mary Bell died in childbirth, she and the baby, March 16, 1902. Mary Bell and the newborn were buried in Coffeeville.

In 1904, having established a lucrative business in Coffeeville, Grandfather McCaslin took up residence in Grenada, Grenada County, Mississippi, twenty miles removed from Coffeeville, where he began acquiring real estate, buying a mercantile business, building and operating a bakery, purchasing the Railroad café, and establishing the Eclipse Drug Store, which at that time had the most ornate soda fountain in Mississippi, from Memphis to New Orleans, bar none.

It is estimated that sometime after his marriage in March1905 to Miss Maude Henry Windham (b. 1886) he began construction of a home in Grenada for his bride. Grandfather McCaslin was twenty-three years her senior (and for her entire life she referred to him as Mr. McCaslin).

The new residence was located at 515 Main Street, in the second block from the Grenada city square. The house was two stories in height and had a parlor, dining room, six bedrooms, and a broad foyer from which the staircase rose to a landing where it divided to the right and to the left. A wide porch extended across the entire front. Mr. McCaslin must have built the house in the anticipation of a large family.²

Henry Ford awarded Grandfather McCaslin a Ford dealership in Coffeeville in 1909, ostensibly in view of his experience and success in the farm equipment business. In the words of Daddy’s baby sister, Aunt Louise McCaslin Vance: At that time, my daddy was so intrigued with this newfangled invention that he really investigated it, and as a result, he got the dealership for Ford in Coffeeville. Ford Motor Company had been established only since June 16, 1903.

Soon thereafter, Grandfather established four additional Ford dealerships in north Mississippi towns, the first of which was in 1912 in Grenada. The other three were in Clarksdale, Cleveland, and Calhoun City. During the next few years, Grandfather McCaslin continued to prosper in every business venture. While Henry Ford built his first car in 1903, it was not until 1908 that the first Model T was sold. In 1909, Ford built about ten thousand Model T’s, and the demand was so high that Ford would not sell more cars to dealers until they had completely depleted their stock. Production increased each year, and by 1916 Ford had built about five hundred thousand cars. They reached one million in 1922. On reaching that goal, Ford gave a fifty dollar rebate to everyone who bought a new Ford during that year. The timing of Grandfather McCaslin was almost perfect. He picked up the four additional dealerships just as the production was climbing and while the demand for cars was very high. He had about twenty very good years, from 1910 until 1930. He paid more income tax than anyone else in the entire state of Mississippi in 1913, the first year that income tax was collected since having been abandoned after the Civil War. Grandmother McCaslin reaffirmed this fact about income tax on several occasions.

Henry Ford called the Model T A car for the great multitude. Grandmother McCaslin stated that, prior to 1920, Henry Ford personally asked Grandfather McCaslin to divest himself of four of the dealerships to give others the opportunity to own an automobile business. Grandfather McCaslin retained ownership of the Grenada Ford Company, selling those in Coffeeville, Clarksdale, Cleveland, and Calhoun City. Grandfather McCaslin was literally riding the crest of prosperity. He owned a large 1915 touring car in which he took the entire family on trips to Memphis, to Indianapolis for the races, as well as to the Gulf Coast for vacations.

The new Fords were shipped to dealerships by train, but they could be acquired more quickly if picked up by the dealer. On at least one occasion, Grandfather and a driver took the boys, all whom were teenagers (and Daddy was the oldest), to Detroit. Everyone drove a new Ford home over dirt roads. Louise once stated that Henry, the youngest, fell asleep while driving and his car slipped off of the road into the ditch. Once it was pushed out onto the road, they continued on to Grenada in their caravan.

Daddy was born in May 1908. In 1926, Daddy, Alston Jones McCaslin IV, met William Adams Dobbs, who was about eight months younger, born 1909. They both were in their freshman year at Mississippi College, Clinton. They quickly became friends, and William traveled with Daddy to visit in Grenada on several occasions. In the winter of their freshman year, William invited Daddy to accompany him on a trip to visit with his family in Ackerman. While there, he first saw Mother when she had just turned fourteen years of age. As she was much too young for a college freshman, he apparently decided to wait for her to grow up.

The economy slowly had begun to destabilize in the early 1920s. Speculation in the stock market resulted in countless people’s buying stocks with borrowed money. Many used the stock as collateral for buying more stocks. The woes of Wall Street continued to exacerbate until brokers’ loans from mid-1928 to September of 1929 went from five million to eight hundred and fifty million. The stock market boom that had occurred was based upon borrowed money and false optimism.

October 29, 1929, was known as Black Tuesday, but it was also called the Wall Street Crash. A record more than sixteen million shares of stock were sold, compared with four to eight million shares per day earlier in the year. The stock market crashed, throwing the country into what would be named the Great Depression (which lasted until 1939). By March 1930, there were thirteen million unemployed, and almost every bank was closed.

The Great Depression wrought both physical and psychological havoc on the entire nation. Most people feared the loss of their job, and in spite of the efforts of the government, unemployment ran rampant. Anxiety by many brought on feelings of failure, often leading to depression and, for many, suicide. Thousands of people went hungry, and children’s health suffered from poor diet and lack of adequate medical care. Food lines were common across the country. Land owners planted relief gardens for food and for barter. Multiple families crowded into small houses, causing deplorable living conditions. The divorce rate decreased, because few couples could afford to live in separate households. Others postponed wedding plans.

By January 1930, four months into the Depression, Grandfather McCaslin already had been terribly saddled with grievous financial losses. Mary, the oldest of his children, had finished at Brenau College, Gainesville, Georgia (to which city, by the sovereignty of God, Mother, Jay, and I moved in 1954). Mary remained at Brenau College for a time, teaching elocution. The rest of Grandfather McCaslin’s assets, bank stock, real estate holdings, and business enterprises were in peril.

In 1931, repercussions from Europe had aggravated the crisis in America. President Hoover had opponents in Congress who he believed were sabotaging his government programs for their own political gain. They were unfairly characterizing him as a cruel and callous president.³

Daddy earlier had transferred to the University of Mississippi to begin his sophomore year. Now twenty-two years of age, during his senior year at Ole Miss in 1931, he must have been greatly stressed in the face of the state of affairs of the nation. His father, once a wealthy man, had witnessed his assets slip through his fingers during these first two years of the Great Depression. Daddy was the oldest of