Henry Clayborn Jones Sr. Family Reunion Photo

I’ve blogged about this reunion photo before but with “family photo” being the 52 Ancestors theme this week, I thought it made sense to post it again since there are still people that need to be identified. This photo was taken circa 1908 at the Henry Clayborn Jones Sr. family reunion held in Between, Walton County, Georgia. Henry Jones Sr. (1) and his wife Sarah Elizabeth Tuck Jones (2) are my 2nd great grandparents.

click to enlarge

Henry and Sarah’s daughter Elizabeth Jones (4) is my great grandmother; Elizabeth’s husband, Thomas Terrell Burnette (3), is my great grandfather; and Elizabeth and Thomas’ daughter Floria Mae Burnette (17) is my grandma. The rest of their children are Henry T. Burnette (5), twins Claudia Burnette (14) and Maudie Burnette (15) (or vice versa), Prince Albert Burnette (16), Eva Drucilla Burnette (18), Luther Terrell Burnette (19), and Willie Lloyd Burnette (20). Claudia and Maudie could be reversed since I’m not sure which little girl is which. Elizabeth had three more children after this photo was taken—Eleanor Estelle Burnette, Samuel A. Burnette, and Julia Virginia Burnette. She had another set of twins born January 1899. One twin died before 1900 but the other twin, a boy named Jesse, survived until at least June 26, 1900 when the federal census was taken. My grandma Floria would have been about 11 years old when this photo was taken.

I don’t know what month in 1908 the reunion photo was taken but I’m inclined to believe it was November. If you look at the photo, all of the men are wearing jackets and the women and children are wearing long sleeves. Henry Jones was born on November 19. My Lankford family used to have a family reunion every September, the month my grandpa, Carroll Harvey Lankford, was born. Had the Jones family gathered to celebrate their patriarch’s birthday and brought in a photographer to document the event?

Of the 70 Jones family members in the photo, I’ve identified (or believe I have) 38 people. I could use some help with identifying the others! I know there are people out there that have this photo. In 2006, descendants of Henry and Sarah Jones gathered to dedicate the newly restored Jones Family Cemetery. After the dedication ceremony, everyone went to a nearby church for a Jones family reunion. This group photo was passed around at the event. Individual family photos were taken that day in 1908, at least my Burnette family posed for a photo so I’m assuming other families did as well.

Thomas Terrell Burnette family, ca. 1908

If other descendants have an individual family photo taken that day, it would help with identification. If you’re reading this and can help identify someone in the photo, I’d love to hear from you.

Sending love via a Valentine V-mail

The 52 Ancestors theme this week is “love.”

Last spring, my brother-in-law Randy shared two boxes of correspondence his father Johnnie Marston wrote to his mother Lucile Stacks Marston—340 letters and postcards that began July 1939 and ended October 1945. Johnnie and Lucile were dating when the letters began. He lived in Atlanta, Georgia; she in College Park, Georgia. By today’s standards, that’s a short trip in a car or the transit system. But in the early 1940s when you don’t have a car, nor apparently a telephone, you communicate by writing to each other.

Johnnie Marston and Lucile Stacks Marston

In November 1942, Johnnie joined the U.S. Army to serve during World War II. By December 1942, he shipped to Texas for training at Camp Howze. Johnnie would spend time in Louisiana and New Jersey before being shipped overseas in January 1944, where he served until the war ended.

From the time Johnnie left for Texas until he returned home, he and Lucile spent two Valentine Day’s apart. I’ve transcribed all of the letters and postcards Johnnie wrote to Lucile so have read every one of them. There’s no doubt that he loved Lucile and he didn’t forget her on Valentine’s Day.

Lucile traveled to Texas in February 1943 to visit Johnnie at training camp, so they were together that Valentine’s Day. By the time Valentine’s Day 1944 rolled around, Johnnie was in Italy. He sat down at Noon that day and wrote a letter to Lucile. In the letter, he reminded her that they were together in Texas the last Valentine’s Day. The rest of the letter was mostly general conversation but I’m sure Lucile had a smile on her face after she read these four sentences:

Say, you said in one of your letters that we might have a sister-in-law soon. Tell Mickey I said to go right to it, Ha Ha. One thing, if he does get her, I don’t care if she’s an angel, none of them will compare to you, Lou. I mean that more than I have ever meant anything in my life.

Later that day, Johnnie sent Lucile a V-mail letter in which he hoped she “had a grand Valentine Day.” For those of you that have never heard of V-mail, short for Victory Mail, it was a process used by the United States military during World War II to ship huge quantities of mail to and from soldiers overseas. Letters were written on standard sized paper, photographed, and then transferred to microfilm for shipping. Once the microfilm made it to its destination, the letters were printed and cut to a 4 ¼ x 5 ¼ inch piece of paper. This freed up space and weight for other cargo needed for the war. Johnnie sent Lucile quite a few V-mail letters during his time in the Army. Johnnie’s Valentine to Lucile in 1945 was another V-mail, sent from Italy on February 7, 1945.

But Valentine’s Day wasn’t the only time Johnnie expressed his love to Lucile—he told her he loved her in every letter he wrote to her. Continue reading for some of the memorable love quotes from Johnnie to Lucile.

December 24, 1942
Darling, I know the 27th of this month is our anniversary and I hate to be apart from you. But that is something we cannot do anything about, as you know. Being as I haven’t got any money, I cannot get you anything to show I really care for what time we have spent so many happy days together. But you know there is no one else that will take your place with me, you know I would give anything in this world to be with you at that certain date, and as soon as I get my basic training, which won’t be long, I will be home for a while. I am sure I will.

January 5, 1943
Can’t you write a letter a little bit longer or are you worried about me so bad that you can’t think of what to write? Darling, don’t worry about me because I will take care of myself. Let me do the worrying for both of us.

January 9, 1943
Uncle Sam may have me, but you got my heart. I love you: check that.

February 21, 1943
Honey, the radio is playing now, and the song is “I don’t want to set the world on fire.” That’s me. I just want to keep that flame you got in your heart for me always there. What about it, will it stay there? I hope so.

October 17, 1943
As for me the doctor said there wasn’t anything wrong with me except just love sickness and he wasn’t wrong about that either.

July 26, 1944
Darling, this picture of you I just received, you look so tired and worried and your face looks so thin. Gee Honey, please watch your health and take care of yourself. I wouldn’t know what to do if anything happened to you. You have just got to believe me Lou. God knows how much I love you, and how many times I have told you that. So, Honey please take care of yourself for me. Will you?

October 4, 1944
Gee Honey, all I look forward to now is getting back to you and taking care of you and I pray to God every nite to help me get back to you. You and you alone is what I want to see again. You are all I have and only God knows what would happen to me if anything shall harm you or take you from me.

July 27, 1945
You talk about getting the blues, you shall know how I feel. Robert and Cecil are home and me thinking what a time they are having. Get what I mean? It hasn’t been long since they were home before they come home this time. But me, it has been twenty months or more, going on two years and I been lucky to come through what I have. Sometime, or rather a lot of times, while the war was going on over here, I just give up all hope and would get to thinking that I didn’t care what happened to me. But I would get to thinking about you and knowing that you were waiting for my return. I would do my darn’est to get through whatever mess I was in. It was tough Lou. But you can say and be telling the truth that it was you who pulled me through this war with Germany. Whatever I did, it was for you. Well that’s that and Honey, war is no glory either.

August 10, 1945
If you are sick, I am sick. If you are well and happy, I am well and happy. To die for you Honey would be a pleasure.

What woman wouldn’t love to hear her husband say those words to her?


References

• Personal collection of letters written by Johnnie Marston to Lucile Stacks Marston dating 1939 to 1945.
• V-mail; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-mail.
• Arbuckle, Alex Q., c. 1942-1945 V-Mail, Handwritten letters, smaller than a postage stamp; Mashable; https://mashable.com/2017/03/19/v-mail/#4f2Jr2P04OqI.

Atomic bomb test number 6

Earl Murphy's Navy ID card photo

The 52 Ancestors theme this week is “surprise.” At first, I had nothing, but then on January 26, my husband decided to go through one last box of papers that belonged to his father, Earl Murphy, and he found a couple of surprises.

The first surprise was a copy of Earl’s Navy identification card. We have many photos of Earl as a young man but had never seen this card, so it was a new photo. That’s always exciting. My son had a lot of fun with it too. When I sent him a copy of the photo, I didn’t show the right side of the card with the Navy information, only the photo itself. Of course, the photo has the height markings in the background, so my son’s first comment was “Lol looks like a prison photo. He ever get sent to the brigg?” Luckily, we know that’s not the case, at least as far as this photo is concerned.

The second surprise included several newspaper clippings related to explosions on two ships and Eniwetok atomic bomb testing. None of this was familiar to my husband or I, but one thing caught our attention—one of the articles report that after the explosion, the USS Comstock helped rescue survivors. We knew the Comstock. According to Earl’s Naval Service Record, he served on the Comstock from November 5, 1947 to April 12, 1948 and often spoke about it. So, what was the significance of these articles?

The day after finding the clippings, Jeanne Bryan Insalaco wrote about her father and the 1946 atomic bomb tests he observed in Hawaii on her Everyone Has a Story blog for her Week 4 (I’d Like to Meet) 52 Ancestors entry. That caught my attention since I’d just read the Eniwetok news clippings and knew Earl was in Hawaii during that timeframe. I mentioned it to Jeanne on Facebook and she posted several links to stories related to the atomic bomb tests. All very interesting and news to us. We began to wonder if Earl too had observed the atomic bomb tests. It was time to read the news clippings again.

One clipping tells about the Comstock rescuing the crew from the net tender Elder. It reads [newspaper and date unknown]:

RESCUE SHIP NEARS SURVIVORS. The LSD Comstock shown as she approached survivors of the net tender Elder afloat in a lifeboat and rafts (arrow) for seven days following explosions and fire which wrecked the ship. The entire crew was rescued.

Wikipedia tells us that the incident took place on March 11, 1950 which means Earl was no longer on the ship, having served in the U.S. Navy from February 6, 1946 to February 5, 1949. He probably saved this article since it mentioned the Comstock.

Another clipping talks about atomic bomb test number 6. A third clipping tells of Rear Adm. William Parsons arriving to join the A-Bomb staff. Copies of both clippings are below, newspaper and dates unknown.

Neither clipping provides any information to help us understand why Earl kept them and what, if any, significance they had to him. Another clipping tells of an explosion on the USS Duncan and mentions atomic tests at Eniwetok. It reads [newspaper and date unknown]:

LATE NEWS FINAL

BLASTED BY AN EXPLOSION EN ROUTE TO PEARL HARBOR, the destroyer Duncan limped back to Los Angeles harbor from 200 miles out. The blast tore a jagged hole at the waterline. One man was killed, six seriously injured, others less seriously hurt. The Duncan and other naval ships were en route to Honolulu for reported—but not confirmed—atomic tests at Eniwetok—NEA telephoto.

Another mention of the atomic tests at Eniwetok! So, my next search was to figure out the date of this event. Wikipedia is always there to help and in the Service History section of the page for the USS Duncan (DD-874), it reads:

On 1 March 1948 she suffered 2 killed and 14 injured in an explosion on board. She “suffered considerable damage at the stern and the flooding of the after compartment from a hole at the water line.” After repairs at Long Beach, California, the destroyer rejoined the fleet for training until January 1949, when she again sailed for the western Pacific, this time for eight months.

Now we have a date—March 1, 1948—which means Earl would have still been on the Comstock. The Duncan page contained a link to a page about the USS Comstock. In the section “1945 – 1950,” I found the following text:

After operating along the west coast, Comstock trained in the Hawaiian Islands from July 1947. Between 28 November 1947 and 31 May 1948 she furnished boat pool services to Joint Task Force 7 for Operation Sandstone.

Now, what was Operation Sandstone? Luckily, another link to a page on Wikipedia. This page finally confirms that Earl did in fact observe and take part in the atomic bomb tests. It appears that the Comstock supported Operation Sandstone as part of Task Unit 7.3.2 Main Naval Task Unit and it was on a date when Earl would have been on the Comstock. Wow, this was all a surprise to us! And Earl never mentioned any of this.

USS Comstock (from Earl's Hawaii photo album)

USS Comstock Mast (from Earl's Hawaii photo album)

Earl (from his Hawaii photo album)

Thanks to Jeanne for her timely blog post about her father and his involvement in the atomic bomb tests. If I hadn’t read her post, I probably would have just filed the clippings away and never learned this part of my father-in-law’s military history.

A-bomb-test Operation Sandstone, Event X-Ray detonation, April 15, 1948, Engebi, Eniwetok-Atoll, U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station - Former Defenses Nuclear Agency (DNA), Public Domain.

Earl's United States Navy ID Card

References

1. A-bomb-test Operation Sandstone, Event X-Ray detonation, April 15, 1948, Engebi, Eniwetok-Atoll, U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station - Former Defenses Nuclear Agency (DNA), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1657600.
2. Insalaco, Jeanne Bryan, 2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 4 (Jan. 22-28) I’d Like to Meet; https://everyonehasafamilystorytotell.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/2019-52-ancestors-in-52-weeks-week-4-jan-22-28-id-like-to-meet/. 
3. Operation Sandstone; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sandstone. 
4. USS Comstock (LSD-19); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Comstock_(LSD-19). 
5. USS Duncan (DD-874); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Duncan_(DD-874).
6. USS Elder (AN-20); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Elder_(AN-20).

Going to the library

Me (about the age I would have gone to Stewart-Lakewood Library)
and my sister Jennifer standing on top of the
Grant Park observation tower in Atlanta (November 1966).
You can see downtown Atlanta in the background.

The 52 Ancestors theme this week is “at the library.” I started to write about the time I went to National Archives in Washington, DC and had them pull the Civil War records of Samuel C. Murphy, my husband’s 2nd great grandfather. I wasn’t allowed to carry anything in the room except for the card you inserted in the copy machine to pay for printing. They had lockers for people to store their personal belongings while you were in the record room. Once I got in the room, I remember how exciting it was holding the actual records in my hands. I couldn’t believe they let people touch them. The pages were brittle, and I remember thinking I was going to get in trouble when the first few pages I touched seemed to flake off in my hands. I just knew they were going to walk me right out of that room and lock me up. But then I thought, that’s not really a library so it doesn’t count. Then I thought I’d write about the time I visited the Daughters of the American Revolution Library, again in Washington, DC, in the 1990s. I was just beginning to do genealogy and was overwhelmed by the enormity of the room. I made several trips into DC and found some good stuff there but even though it is a library, decided against that story. Instead, I’ll tell you about my experience of going to the library as a child and as an adult.

I grew up in Atlanta and remember going to the Stewart-Lakewood Library in the mid-1960s. This library was located on Lakewood Avenue, in the corner of the Stewart-Lakewood Shopping Center parking lot, not too far from home. Growing up, I read a lot. With five children in the family I’m sure money was tight, so we didn’t buy many books. Instead, Mama took us to the library. I remember getting stacks of books to bring home to read. During the summer months, the school must have encouraged us to read and keep track of the books we read. When school started back in the fall, the students that had read a certain number of books got to participate in a Coke party. Of course, I’m talking about an ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola. Coke is a staple in our homes today, but in the mid-1960s, it was a treat to get one, so I always made sure I read enough books to get mine. My favorite books as a young girl were the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read them over and over again. Since it was pre-Internet, if we had to write a report for school, we’d have to go to the library to do our research. I do remember having a set of Collier’s Encyclopedias at home but still needing to go to the library for research purposes. I also remember pulling the long drawers out to look through the card catalogue in search of books. Once you figured out the Dewey Decimal system it was a piece of cake.

As an adult, I discovered the interlibrary loan service and often used my local libraries to order books from other states to research my ancestors. What a great service that is—if you haven’t used it, you should. In addition to books, I’ve ordered microfilm and used the readers and printers at my library to print records. At the time, there was no fee to use this service. You just needed a library card. Today you pay a $3 fee but that’s very reasonable. Ten years ago, I was able to obtain many obituaries from libraries in Pennsylvania and South Carolina by sending a letter with my request, a list of names and dates, and a donation to the library. I always got a response and most of the obituaries. I was thankful for all the help the wonderful librarians gave me.