Millie Ann Ward Jackson and John Hamilton "Ham" Jackson.
Millie Ann Ward Jackson and John Hamilton "Ham" Jackson, the couple at right, with unidentified friends or relatives.For more on both of their genealogies, keep reading in this blog.
Here's what their youngest son, Robert Alton Jackson, wrote about them in a family history he penned in the mid-1970s:
MY FATHER: JOHN HAMILTON JACKSON
John Hamilton Jackson was born March 18, 1859, the son of John Madison Jackson and Julia Ann Richardson Jackson. His parents had four children: James, J.W. (Jerd) [other accounts call him William Jordan], Belle [other accounts call her Ruth Isabell] and my father, who was the last born.
He was married to Millie Ann Ward, daughter of Ebenezer Ward and Mildred (Millie) Martin Ward, on April 1, 1883. He and my mother were born in Stokes County, N.C.
My parents had nine children, three daughters and six sons. They were William Daniel, James Lee, John Madison, Grover Cleveland, Mamie Louella, Hattie Belle, Edwin Schley and me, Robert Alton.
One daughter, Mary Ward Jackson, born in 1887, lived only eight months. The Ward and Jackson families intermarried. My mother's brother, William T. Ward, married Belle Jackson, my father's sister.
You will note that the men in our family, like their father, were named for famous Americans -- John Hamilton (father), James Lee, John Madison, Grover Cleveland, Edwin Schley and Robert Alton. I believe Schley was a famous naval officer from the period of Edwin's birth. Alton was for a famed American judge, Alton Parker.
Most of the family married early. I was the last born and am now the only survivor of my family.
My father was congenial, people-loving, a hard worker and religious. He was loved and respected by all who knew him. He was a friend of all people, white or black, showing his care for others and compassion for those less fortunate than he. He had a great love for his family. He never showed his concerns when things went wrong, keeping it mostly within himself. He let my mother discipline the children, and she did.
My father had little education but what he had he made the best of. My mother could neither read nor write -- she learned to draw her name in case it was needed on a legal paper -- but this never dawned on me as being a handicap. They insisted their children go to school and kept them there as long as they had the wherewithal and power to do so.
I remember my father reading the newspaper to my mother. His education did not reach to the pronouncing of complicated words, or, for that matter, to a full understanding of their meaning. When he reached a word he couldn't pronounce, his voice would lower to a mumble, continuing as if the word hadn't been there. But the meaning, the gist of the story, always came through.
My father was a stern man with his family, but he was fair and compassionate. The only time I can remember him whipping me was when he caught me stealing candy from a candy case in the store. I was taking it to a girl in the neighborhood with whom I was fascinated. My mother insisted that Papa whip me. He did so reluctantly -- and it was only a few whacks on my back end -- but that, plus his stern lecture on stealing, was all I needed never to repeat the act.
Although at times he could have managed it, my father never owned a home. The Hickory Street house in which I was born and the building housing the grocery were owned by my brother Daniel. We lived, prior to my father's death and even sometimes afterwards, in some 20 houses, all rented and mostly in the northern end of the city. I never knew why he moved so much, except that it wasn't because of the rent -- he always paid that, and on time.
Because I was just out of high school when he died and knew little about finances, I never thought to question his reasons. He was Papa and when he said move, we moved. He could have, had he taken advantage of his opportunities, become a rich man in real estate. He had the chance of buying property on the courthouse square when he was running the grocery for about $2 a square foot.
Several people who came to Winston about the time he did bought property in the heart of downtown and became rich landowners. I am not condemning my father, because how many times have I had the same opportunity and never took advantage of it? Another thought is that members of the family were a proud lot and made their marks without the help of a rich parent. I wonder what would have happened however, if the family had had a lot of money.
My parents were never poor to the extent of asking for help from anyone or so poor their family had to suffer for want of food, clothing and a roof over their heads.
The only time I saw Papa take a drink of liquor was on Sunday morning before breakfast. He kept a pint in the kitchen safe and would pour a shot in a cup, fill it up with hot coffee, put in some sugar and presto! -- he had a coffee lace. Why he took it only on Sunday mornings I never understood. After breakfast he walked all the kids eight or nine blocks to North Winston Presbyterian Church. Somehow, I know that if he violated any commandments, the Lord forgave him.
I never remember my father being sick in bed. I know he had at one time an ailment which I realized in my later years was a bleeding ulcer. He never gave into this and eventually healed it by taking laudanum, a medicine sold over the counter without a prescription. Laudanum was a solution of opium in alcohol that cannot now be purchased without a prescription, if it is available at all. Maybe present-day doctors are missing a cure for ulcers.
An outstanding feature of my father was his closely cropped mustache. One day I came into the house and saw a man sitting in the living room reading a paper. I went to the kitchen and asked Mama who that stranger was. She laughed and said, "Don't you know your own father?" He had shaved off his mustache, but when Mama told him what I had said, he let it grow out again. He figured if his own children didn't recognize him sans his mustache, he'd better get back to normal.
My father's favorite recreation was fishing and hunting. I went hunting once with him, Edwin and Grover, but I was only a sightseer as I was too young to carry a gun. As for fishing, a sport all my brothers loved, Papa would go fishing in the old Winston Water Works. He fished at night when he couldn't be seen easily, since it was against the law to fish in the lake. We walked from home to the lake, at least a mile or more, sneaked through the woods to a favorite spot, and came home, most of the time, with fish for breakfast. He would sometimes take a gig and gig for frogs, the legs of which are an expensive delicacy. If you haven't experienced the taste of fresh fish or frog legs for breakfast, you've missed a culinary treat!
Ham and Millie Ann stick out in my memory as hardworking, honest, sincere Christian people devoted to their family, friends and neighbors. It was only until I got some age on me that I realized this fact, although as I look back I realize I must have known it from the day of my birth.
MY MOTHER: MILLIE ANN WARD JACKSON
My mother, like her husband, seldom if ever complained. She took it for granted that it was her job to cook for the family (and at times for a host of other people), keep up with the housekeeping, go to church on Sundays and come back to start all over again for another week -- week after week after week.
My earliest remembrance of my mother is of her cooking. My most vivid memories were the Sunday dinners. She never knew how many people would be present, and I don't remember a time when there wasn't a second table to take care of the family and their friends. You didn't have to have an invitation to eat, you just came and sat down, and Mama always had enough. The meal was served in the kitchen, a large room with a cast-iron wood-burning stove. The food was cooked in cast-iron skillets and pots, cooking utensils you can't even find today. There were no gourmet recipes. It was wholesome food and of a variety you wouldn't believe, two or three kinds of meat, beans, corn, squash, potatoes, cabbage, green peas, dried peas, dried beans, radishes, onions. With the number of people we had for Sunday dinner, we had few leftovers. Then, of course, my mother would slave over the dishpan until time for supper before she was finished cleaning up. If she had lived today, she could have made a fortune as a chef for a restaurant serving a wholesome country meal. How she stood this, day after day, I'll never know.
When my daddy killed his hogs, the fat was used to make lye soap for washing clothes and lard for cooking. Both were made, separately of course, in a huge iron washpot under which a hot fire was built. Mother mixed lye in with the fat and after it boiled for a time, it was allowed to cool and cake up. I used to help the best I could to cut the soap out of the washpot, usually in wedge-shaped pieces. It was then put out to dry, after which it was ready to use. It was a brown soap mass resembling the Octagon soap used so much in those days for washing clothes, and still obtainable today. I am a little hazy as to the rendering of lard, but it was pure white and was stored away in cans for Mama's use in producing those wonderful meals.
Mother was not an austere person, but she was strict on discipline and maintained high moral standards for her family. She beat me with a switch from a tree and paddled my hiney many times. My father let my mother handle the discipline. When Mother spoke, it was final. I remember one instance when I was playing about three blocks from home and forgot the time, and brother Edwin was sent to fetch me. He yelled, "Mama said for you to come home!" Now, Edwin and I got along most of the time, but he was about four years older than I and sometimes he rubbed me the wrong way. My temper flared and I yelled, "You go to hell!" Edwin grinned, hot-footed it home and, I am sure with a gleam in his eye, told Mama what I had said. When I got home, she took me into the bedroom, took some sewing thread and tied me to the bedpost with it and dared me to break the string. This was one of her disciplinary measures and it did a lot more good than a spanking, paddling or whipping.
One thing Mama insisted on was that we attend church on Sundays. We walked to church every Sunday, the children in front and Papa and Mama bringing up the rear; to be sure, we didn't stray.
Mama could put up with just about anything, but she finally got tired of the white rats Edwin and I were raising in the barn in back of our Hickory Street house. She gave one direct demand that they go, and they went. I don't remember ever arguing with my parents about everything. Their word was law and we obeyed. Sometimes it hurt, like getting rid of the white rats, but we did what was best according to our parents, and we never questioned them or regretted doing what they said do.
My mother got a great deal of happiness from simple pleasures. For instance, she always wanted to live in a house with a front porch, which the vast majority of houses had at that time. She dearly loved to sit on the porch (when she had time out from her household chores) and watch the horses and buggies and wagons, and later automobiles. She watched the streetcars go by when we lived on Liberty Street, the streetcars' northern route.
After the death of my father, Mama and I lived with my sister and her husband, Clifton Miller, for a time, and then with my sister Hattie Belle and her husband, Clarence Davis. We were living with them when we discovered Mama had cancer, which was terminal. She suffered much pain, couldn't eat and experienced all the other ailments that went with this disease. She passed away on Aug. 9, 1928.
David Edwards and Dee Ann Edwards at the graves of John Hamilton Jackson and Millie Ann Ward Jackson, their great-grandparents (and mine), at Woodland Cemetery in Winston-Salem, N.C., in November 2011.
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