I Learned to Read Cursive

If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and the cousin of my cousin is a Southern Belle worth adopting as kinfolk, how long until I turn the dusty page of a genealogy source book and discover I’m my own grandpa?

These sorts of deep thoughts accompany a crack of dawn southbound run from Lebanon, TN through the horse country of Shelbyville to a destination of Huntsville, Al. No interstate involved or entertained.

I didn’t engage Google Maps until I hit the metropolis of Huntsville. I had the address of Tish Hammer’s house where my musical cousin James Allen Davis was holed up after flying in from Dallas. Tish is James’ cousin on his Davis side, but it didn’t take long after the meet and greet to welcome her into the Hallmark family. Tish can provide us a little uptown dressing up.

Tish and Morris Hammer’s home is wonderful, stately and eclectic, filled with antiques and touches that give a feeling of an earlier time without really being old itself. The most unique trait is there is no yard in the traditional suburban manicured lawn sense to which I’m familiar. The Hammers decided to “keep it native” and left the rocks and sticks and trees in both the front and back. It didn’t take long for Morrie Hammer to excuse himself to the golf course. Morrie is a retired NASA engineer who worked on SkyLab. His love of golf and design of a maintenance free lawn seemed to intersect perfectly. You can almost hear Lynn Anderson singing “I Never Promised You a Rock Garden” on the breeze through the trees.

James and I did some catching up and enjoyed the Hammer hospitality until it came time for the luncheon date Tish had arranged for us with Coy Hallmark. You would think three sons of the South would have congregated at a cholesterol clogging meat and three, but instead we took Coy’s suggestion of a Chinese restaurant nearby because of the good lunch menu.

Coy Hallmark turned out to be another one of those Methodist Ministers who keep popping up in the family tree, crowding out all the potential horse thieves or hanging recipients who make for a colorful bloodline. Maybe the Methodism is sparked by Old Original George, who was a sort of Johnny Holy Waterseed for helping found Baptist Churches back in his day.

It was easy to recognize Coy as one of us Hallmark descendants as he has the snow white hair that seems to be a trademark. Coy seems in better shape as he still has his military figure from serving as a chaplain all over the world. James Allen and I still have figures… there the similarity lessens.

Coy had us scheduled to meet up with another Hallmark distant cousin at the Huntsville Library to examine a book from 1816 with a George Hallmark reference. He amazed us with a story of Huntsville’s trusting nature in the 1940s in lending out a treasure of the old documents and books to a local family for a graduate research project. A descendent of the original borrower called up Huntsville City Hall in the 1990s and asked if the municipality would like its history back. The book with the Hallmark reference was among those stored in the attic or barn for about 50 years.

We met Nell Berry and her cousin Jim at the Huntsville Library’s Genealogy archives. Nell knew of the book where George Hallmark had sued his neighbor, James Hobbs, whose family cemetery would eventually welcome Original George’s remains. The George Hallmark doing the suing was likely son George as Original George may have been deceased by 1816. I read the suit as best I could in the longhand of the county clerk. It was very ornate and full of flourish. I was glad I learned to read cursive in first grade.

The facts of the case were simple, George Hallmark had lent $1317 to Mr. Hobbs and wanted it back. The suit amazingly directs the Sheriff to go and get Mr. Hobbs and bring him immediately for judgement. It wasn’t clear if George ever collected the debt. The result might have been in a book that was still back at the barn of the borrowers. I was wondering if he didn’t collect, how much a $1317 debt in 1816 dollars would be worth today. Whatever the sum it wouldn’t have been much money to my pocket when divided out among every man, woman and child in the Hallmark family tree.

An amazing aside was a picture on the wall of the Huntsville library, a smiling Elvis Presley standing next to a beaming bride, Davada “Dee” Presley of Huntsville, Al. This threw our Elvis lifetime timeline out of whack as the date was 1960 and this conflicted with Elvis’ courtship of an underage Priscilla. This sent us to Google where we discovered Dee Presley was the child bride of Vernon Presley, Elvis’ dad. The photo we were seeing was Elvis and his new stepmom.

The Huntsville Library archivist took a long time to find the George Hallmark book and we only had a few minutes to examine before the genealogy section closed. So, after our ejection, it was time to head to the cemetery.

Onward to the grave! Figuratively, not literally. The game is still afoot!