Grandma Carrie and Me

One purpose unites two people from two different worlds.

By DALE HARTER

We came from two different worlds.

I was a white college student in Virginia chasing the ghost of a Confederate general forgotten in his hometown. She was an elderly black woman from South Carolina chasing the ghost of a grandfather she never knew.

In 1990, this same ghost brought us together in the Shenandoah Valley. The bond we forged would last for nearly 20 years.

Carrie Allen McCray already had enjoyed a long and fruitful life when I met her in Harrisonburg. Born Oct. 4, 1913, in Lynchburg, to a civil rights activist mother, she had been a scholar, teacher and a social worker. She became a serious writer after age 70, first as a poet and later as a historian researching her family heritage.
She journeyed to Harrisonburg with her sister Rose in 1990 to learn more about her roots. Her mother, Mary Rice Hayes Allen, was born here in 1875, but divulged little about her genealogy before dying in 1935. The memory of a photograph of a uniformed man on her mother’s mantle and the recollections of her mother’s best friend, poet Anne Spencer, led Carrie to believe her grandfather had been a Confederate general from Harrisonburg.

My Search

For three years before Carrie’s visit, I had been researching the life of John Robert Jones, a Confederate general accused of cowardice during the Civil War and forgotten by locals after his death in 1901. Early on, I discovered he had fathered two black sons. I also learned his wife had divorced him for adultery with someone named Malinda Rice. That name meant little to me before meeting Carrie.

Chris Bolgiano, then the Special Collections Librarian at JMU, had heard a few earfuls from me about Jones by the time Carrie and Rose arrived on campus. When Carrie told her she was looking for a Confederate general who might have been her grandfather, Chris contacted me and gave me the telephone number for their room at the Holiday Inn. Over the phone, I learned that Malinda Rice was their grandmother, and they learned that Gen. Jones was their grandfather. Within a few hours, I was sitting with two elderly women in their hotel room, connecting the dots of two separate research paths.

The next day, I took them to Woodbine Cemetery to visit their Confederate grandfather’s grave. Our interaction was cautious and guarded at first, but a relationship began that would transcend our research and change my life.

The Journey

Continues Our initial meeting led to an invitation to stay with Carrie and Rose at their home in Columbia, S.C. Carrie took me to the University of South Carolina to meet Tom Johnson, a friend and archivist at the South Caroliniana Library. Based partly on this meeting, partly on the university’s applied history program and partly on my relationship with Carrie, I moved to Columbia to attend graduate school. Tom, who also was a Presbyterian minister, performed my wedding service on the campus in January 1996.

After moving to Columbia in 1993, I saw Carrie and Rose more often. At first, every conversation was mainly between me and Carrie and revolved around Jones and her mother. As time passed, we talked of our own lives, current events, politics and racial issues. We enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner together and Rose’s homemade rolls. I went to one of their family reunions; they came to my wedding.

They had become Grandma Carrie and Grandma Rose. I had become their grandson.

In 1998, Grandma Carrie published “Freedom’s Child: The Life of a Confederate General’s Black Daughter.” The book, which told the tale of Jones but revolved around her mother, brought her national acclaim. Although I had spent countless hours in dusty archives uncovering previously unknown facts I wanted to keep for my own book, I shared it all with her. She made the dry facts of history sing, and she never stopped thanking me for my help.

We continued to keep in touch and visit after I returned to Virginia. Whenever I could, I went to hear her speak or recite poetry, to hear her gentle delivery and her delightful chuckle. She captivated every audience to whom I ever heard her speak, whether it was Civil War historians in Richmond or high school girls in Tappahannock. She brought tears to my eyes every time. Like other grandsons, I didn’t write, call or visit enough.

A Final Visit

In October 2007, I traveled to Lynchburg to hear her speak at a conference dedicated to an African pygmy named Ota Benga who had lived with Carrie’s family when she was young. She had been working on a narrative poem about Ota and read it at the conference. Although slipping some at age 94, she still stole the show. We spent too brief a time together, and she told me she was getting married. We shared some hugs, and I went back to Harrisonburg.

On March 28 , 2008, I drove to Columbia to see Grandma Carrie one last time. Shortly after marrying 95-year-old John Nickens, and mere weeks after speaking in Lynchburg, she had suffered a severe stroke. She had been in a rehabilitation center since December. Over the phone, Grandma Rose had sounded hopeful of her recovery.

When I went to see Grandma Carrie, she couldn’t speak. I showed her the latest pictures of my wife and daughter, I held her hand and I told her I loved her. I want to believe she knew who I was. Then I made a long, long drive home.

Carrie Allen McCray Nickens died July 25, 2008. Her passing was front-page news in South Carolina and was picked up by the Associated Press. Across the country, people who knew her mourned her death and celebrated her life.

When our different worlds collided nearly 20 years ago, we were just two people searching for the memory of a Confederate general. Now, the memory of someone else means much more to me.
Someone I called Grandma Carrie.

History everywhere I look

Sometimes I enjoy being a passenger rather than always driving. Unencumbered by the responsibilities of piloting the vehicle, I’m free to contemplate the scenery unrolling before me like a scroll. Over the years, I’ve seen things that made me scratch my head as well as beautiful things that led to introspection.

If you’ve been around the Shenandoah Valley for long, you’ve noticed the old barns, houses and outbuildings that pepper the Valley. I’m always intrigued by these structures. I think my favorite is a silo in the middle of a pasture — the barn it was once attached to is long gone.

If these barns and houses have been standing long enough to fall into disrepair, I wonder when they were originally erected?

Were these structures silent witnesses to the strife and destruction in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War?

What were the hopes and dreams of the people who lived in the old houses I see along I-81?

Did the owners of the now-weather-beaten barns expect to use them for decades, or were these people in the Valley temporarily?

Every now and then I’ll see an old, abandoned house that was surely once a beautiful domicile. I’ll indulge in a bit of day-dreaming about the history of the house. I’ve created entire families in my mind, along with particulars of the lives they might’ve led in that old house.

I’ll have to start bringing my camera along with me to capture these beautiful pieces of Valley history.

–Colleen