Annotated Bibliography
THE GUIDE TO KNOWING THE SOUTHWELLS
Through this bibliography, a lot can be taken from my family and the region that we inhabit today. From historical sources about Statesboro, Georgia to rural literature that puts farming and small town life into perspective, my sources are full of history about any farm family but specifically mine. With a book about the Bible belt of the South, the importance of faith in my family is represented, and the medical report on Alzheimer’s makes this bibliography personal showing the effect of the awful disease to the Southwells. A scientific study of cattle breeds corresponds with a documentary on modern day farming to make the occupation a lot easier to understand. Coupled with the song, Small Town Southern Man, Wendell Berry’s book of poetry on farming brings a poetic approach to the life of a farmer. To the reader of this annotated bibliography, I hope that you enjoy getting to know a little about my family and where I come from.
Kelly, Hulda K. I See by the Paper. Bulloch County, Georgia 1899–1946. Athens: UGA Library, 1984. Print.
Taking a look into the history of Bulloch County will help me further understand the reason that my family has stayed here for the past two centuries on their farm. The Southwell family name has seen Statesboro evolve into a town in front of their eyes from nearby Brooklet, and they have to have been a part of a lot of what went on in Bulloch County from 1899 to 1946. Learning about what major stories of the area made the news back in the day is like being there when it happened all over again. A beautiful book of the history of newspaper clippings from the newspaper of Bulloch County from 1899 to 1946 have been compiled into one book that can show the fun times, deaths, crimes, and good news that have created the legend that we have today of the small southeastern town of Statesboro. Living in Statesboro all of my life, I have not even seen or heard of many of these stories, and reading this collection of articles makes me even more proud to call this area my home. This book takes a different approach at telling the history of the area that most history books do not. This is not a textbook that just gives the history of the area, but rather a story book that uses small real life articles to set the mood of what life was really like in the area during this time.
In 1896, the town saw some excitement when Mr. J.R. Lee took his wife’s sailor hat and a face veil with him into the cotton field. He scared a lot of the town, but he said that he wore the veil because the gnats were so bad. It is little stories like this that show the rural aspect of this small town in America. There is so much that is to be said about this article. The feeling that this article gives the reader is one of nostalgia and laughter. Every now and then, there is a need for comical good news such as this. It also shows the farming aspect of the area which better shows that like my family, farming was a way of life for so many people. In 1903, “an old Negro in town by the name of Bob” who was annoying everyone in town with his howling and singing annoyed the people of the town more than anyone else. They put him in the jail to cure him, but they said that if that did not work, they would use the rawhide to run him out of town. Sadly, this is the norm for a southern community in the early 1900s. African Americans faced racial prejudice that was unfair to them. This was probably a major aspect of my family also back then given that my family made a living off of farming. I know that my grandfather hired black people to come work for him during harvest season to pick the tobacco and dry it. My mother grew up right next to black people working in the field with them or playing alongside them. Racism was prevalent in the south during this time, and although black people were seen as lower than white people, children like my mom who were too young to know that whites were to view blacks as secondary, did not succumb to the racism that was pitted into the hearts of the older southerners of this time period.
Berry, Wendell. Farming: A Hand Book. Counterpoint Berkely, 2011. Print
“Wendell E. Berry Biography.” Wendell E. Berry Biography. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.
Like the poet who wrote this book, my grandfather could probably write his fair share on farming. Wendell Berry was born into a farming family, and this book of poems is a list of poems written by Berry about farming and the countryside. It paints the landscape and the man that he talks about in his poems very similarly to my grandfather and his farm. An article on Wendell Berry states that, “He is the sum of his beliefs.” I feel that my grandfather is the same way. He lives his beliefs out. This book of poetry is written to farmers of all kinds as an anthem to their profession. He is simply writing about what the farmer does and what they are thinking while they are farming.
One of the poems in the book is written as a play write called The Bringer of Water. It is written about a family that has been affected by World War II, and the patriarch is a 65 year old farmer who is trying to keep the family all sane. It is written really well, and one thing that stands out that makes it important to my family is when the man’s uncle who is 88 and still farming is approached about resting and retiring. He says, ‘setting and resting will just as soon make a dead man out of me’. My grandfather has said that for many years he will retire when he can no longer do anything, and it is his time to die. Like the old farmer in this poem, he feels that as long as he can work, he should work.
One of his poems entitled, “In This World”, is a beautifully written poem of imagery and juxtapostion. The hill pasture, and open place among the trees, tilts into the valley… Below me cattle graze out across the wide fields of the bottomlands… In this world men are making plans, wearing themselves out, spending their lives, in order to kill each other. From just this small excerpt it can be seen that this poem is symbolics. A poem with so much peaceful imagery shows the country side and a farmer watering the horses and taking the cattle to graze. But the sad thing is that somewhere in this world, someone is wearing himself or herself out wasting their life just so they can kill the competition. Wendell Berry wrote this to show how messed up people in this world can be and how different a farmer typically is. Real beauty is in nature and peace, but today our country is the exact opposite. My grandfather is one of the men who appreciates nature and wants to see wildlife preserved and farmers respected. In my family, a strong belief in the appreciation for the countryside has been instilled from generation to generation. We all have gone and seen other things out there, but the majority of us have been drawn back to the flat farmland with pine trees and stoic ponds that Berry writes about so much in this book of poetry.
Paulsen, Gary. Harris and Me: A Summer Remembered. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1993. Print.
This coming of age fictional novel is based on a rural imaginary farm that an unnamed narrator is sent to live on because his family life is poor. He is introduced to Harris, a nine year old boy who shows him an entirely new world. This Tom Sawyer type friend is full of tall tales and eager for adventure. I chose this book because I remember reading it in grade school thinking about how much it reflected the life that my grandparents probably lived. I found myself envious of them for living before technology had taken over and when farming was the center of everything.
One scene in the book has the young boy come downstairs for his first morning of farming. Harris woke him up while it was still pitch black dark because breakfast was about to be served. He goes downstairs to see all of the men and Harris sitting at the table with the mother and daughter cooking pancakes. He recalled never seeing the women sit down and eat with them. This is very fascinating to me that the women’s role in this day was just as crucial as the men’s. They were in charge of feeding the men and keeping them fueled for the day, but they also helped them in the field when they needed it. This excerpt reminds me of my Grandmother and the many stories I heard about her. She was a strong woman who could cook better than anyone in the countryside, but who could also work just as hard as any man. She raised four babies while doing everything else she was asked to do by my grandfather.
Meals were the center of farming for many families including mine. I would loved to sit down in the past with my family and see what they talked about or did at meals. The boy in this book recalled that at his first meal he saw how fast the men ate, and the women laughed at how the boy had not learned to eat fast yet. This is interesting to see how essential time was for the farm. Like the boy, I do not know a lot about farming. Harris and Me is great at showing a glimpse of farming while adding in some humor along the way.
Norris, Crystal, Joyce Friedland, Rikki Kessler, and Robert Newton. Peck. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck: A Study Guide. Roslyn Heights, NY: Learning Links, 1987. Print.
Full of death and loyalty to its core, A Day No Pigs Would Die is a novel written by Robert Newton Peck that is a tribute to his father, a butcher, in rural Vermont. It is written about a boy named Rob, presumably the author, that lives on a farm with his family. This novel is rich in narratives that include animals, just like the livestock and hogs that my Grandfather raised. Rob has to deliver two baby calves from a mama cow named Apron for his neighbor. As a gift for what he did, he is given a piglet.
Rob’s father is a hog butcher, so Rob worries that his father will kill his new piglet. His father tells him he will not kill her if she has babies, but they find out that she is barren. The boy and his dad try to ignore that they will have to eventually kill his pet pig, but when they are out of meat one winter, the father is forced to kill the pig. The emotions that they feel are extremely mixed and perfect for the scene. Rob feels hatred that his father kills his pet, but he understands what must be done. At the same time, his father is crying as the blood from the pig splatters on the snow. They feel the upmost love for each other in that moment when Rob realizes that it is difficult to do certain tasks in life with strength when it it so painful.
I chose this novel because my grandaddy talks about how close he and his father were on their farm. He told me that they were best friends, and that they worked together every single day. Those were some of the fondest memories of his life. Having come from a father-son relationship that was broken, I am jealous of how close my grandfather and his father were. This book does a great job to show my grandfather’s life as a boy because although they farmed crops, they were mainly focused on livestock. He worked a lot with animals of all kinds, and my mom remembers having one of every type of pet growing up. I am sure that during my grandfather’s childhood he grew close to a particular pig or cow that they had to butcher for meat. I bet he felt the same way that Rob felt and that his father had the same sadness in doing the job that he had to do. That is how respect is earned, and hearing my granddaddy talk about his dad, I know that he loved him.
Heyrman, Christine Leigh. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1997. Print.
For a long time, people have associated the South, as the “Bible Belt of America,” but what if I told you that wasn’t the case? What has long been seen as the biggest Christian majority was once on the verge of extinction. Only 1 in 5 whites actually had membership in churches in the south in the year 1810. Only 1 in 10 African Americans were members in churches. This number may have been smaller due to slavery. The few evangelicals that there were in the South had to fight their way into the area to be heard. They persevered eventually after much work from evangilists. My family has long been Southern Baptist, namely members of Emit Grove Baptist Church.
Baptist and Methodist Churches prevailed as the large two churches of the South, offering a more liberal version of Christianity than Roman Catholicism. They also presented to the people that Protestantism in Christianity claims that ordinary people could have better chance to access the Bible and biblical teachings. One bad thing about this is that the times corresponded with the religion, so it was not perfect. African Americans and females and children were seen as unequal to white men in the church, and a lot of the things that they said to draw people to church was only found to be true to the white men. This may have been the case for my family as they grew up working hard, and only taking off to go to church on Sundays. A pattern I have seen in studying my family’s ancestry is that the men were most definitely head over the house. In my memories of Grandmama and Grandaddy(My mother’s parents), Grandaddy was always respected by Grandmama. It was not a situation where he was given freedoms over her and where he did not have any respect for her, but it was just seen that they had mutual respect for each other, and she looked to him as the leader of the house. In all elderly rural couples that I have had interactions with, men were the breadwinners while women were the housewives that cooked and clean and raised the children. I feel that this study of household rank along with the study of the beginning of the Bible Belt line up pretty parallel.
There is also a pattern in the South that is not found anywhere else in this country. 76% of the citizens of the southeast area of the United States are Christian, while less than 4% are another faith, and 19% have no affiliation. It is just the way of life. As diverse as the United States is, one thing that remains is the Bible Belt of the South. My family has instilled the Bible into my life, and I will do the same to my children. It is the beginning and the end of everyday for us, and from learning about my Grandfather, it was the same for him. None of us claim to be perfect, but we want to humbly serve God in our everyday activities.
“Alzheimer’s Disease.” Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, 2014, 1p. Chicago: World Book, 2014. Print.
No other disease can cloud the mind such as Alzheimer’s. My grandmother died from Alzheimer’s before I got the chance to really know her in 2009 after a nine year battle with the dreaded disease. Alzheimer’s Disease is the progressive degenerative disorder of the brain. It comes in two forms: early-onset and late-onset. My grandmother received the news that she had late-onset Alzheimer’s when she was 68 years old. I was only 4 at the time, and I did not know that she was sick until maybe 6 years later. I will never forget the way she cried in utter pain at the knowledge that she would soon lose all memory.
She found out that she had Alzheimer’s when Grandaddy took her to the doctor because something strange was going on. She was burning the biscuits at suppertime every night, and that was not something that she had ever done in decades of marriage. Before the doctor started talking to her, he told her to remember three simple words; a year, a cake, and a card. After he was done talking to her, he asked her what the three words were, and she had no idea. Since then, major improvements have been done to diagnose the disease. She ended up getting an MRI on her brain that showed that nerve loss had occurred in parts of the brain that had been associated with cognative functioning. Only a true diagnosis can be found when an autopsy or biopsy of the brain shows that nerve loss has occurred.
There is no cure for Alzheimer’s to this day, and my grandmother had to live with the realization that she was going to lose everything from the inside out. I believe that through this disease, I witnessed true love as I saw my grandfather take care of my grandmother in the last stages of her life. One story I recall one time when Grandmama was crying one night and praying to God. She told my mom that she wanted to go to Heaven, and Mom and Grandmama said a prayer of salvation together. There is no doubt in my mind, that my grandmother was already a Christian, but seeing her at her weakest seeking the Lord was something that I will always remember.
While there is no cure, there is medication that can be taken to prolong the inevitable. There is medicine for moderate to severe Alzheimer’s that lowers the activity of glutamate which is a neurotransmitter involved in memory and learning ability. Grandmama died in 2009 from Alzheimer’s leaving behind a legacy as the best cook at Emit Grove Baptist Church. One interesting thing about it is that my grandfather was best friends with two people growing up. They each got married, and all three of their spouses ended up dying from Alzheimer’s within a couple of years of each other. There are strange things that happen in a small town. I would love to know if there is a connection to the reason that Alzheimer’s was so prevalent at a certain time in this area.
Williams, David Willard. Beef Cattle Production in the South. Danville, IL: Interstate, 1941. Print.
The value of pastures can not be overemphasized in cow farming. The kind of cattle in an area are a direct reflection on the pastures that they graze from. My grandfather’s cattle are moved from pasture to pasture everyday so that they can graze good grass all the time. This book is richin the history of beef cattle in the Southeast. It tells about the importance of pastures, feed, and watering holes while also going into details about the different types of cattle breeds.
My grandfather has three types of cattle breeds that he works with. Currently he has Brahman bulls and Angus and Limousin cows. The Brahman bull is known for its prominent hump over its shoulders which casue really loose skin under his throat. His Brahmas are pure bread, and they father the rest of the cattle. Cross-bred cattle, meaning cattle that have been bread from Brahmans and other native cattle breads have been extremely successful. They sell very successfully as heavy veal cattle.
The other cows he has are Angus and Limousin. Angus cows are known for their great Angus meat because they have the most desirable cuts of any other cattle. They lack the size of other cattle, but they make up for it because of the amount of meat that can be yielded from them. They are known for being solid
black, and they do not constitute as purebred unless they are dark black. Another form of cattle that he farms and that this book describes is the Limousin cattle derived from France. They were exported into the States around the mid 20th century. They are known for being really muscular which helps them to interbreed with different types of cattle that may be a little fatter. They are one of the favored types of cattle breeds that make meat taste a little better than strictly fat meat. They also are not very good unless they interbreed because they tend to taste a lot tougher. While my grandfather made a living for much of his life on cattle, hogs, and crops, he has leased his cropland and gotten rid of the hogs to only work with cows now. It is interesting that he decided to stick with the cattle. Cattle are a safer profession for the most part over crops. While crops can yield a greater income, they also have a huge risk with things like drought, plague, and too much rain can cause them to be ruined. Cattle have the same risks, but it is easier to manage them at a lower risk. Breeding cattle is something that requires a lot of time and knowledge. Normally, the cow will be released in the pen with a bull, and they mate. A bull can be the father of a ton of different cows. Bulls are more dangerous than cows or castrated steers. Castration has occurred for centuries to young calves which involves removing the testicles from young male calves. Steers are easier to work with, and they can walk freely in the pack with other female cows. Bulls have to be kept separate because of their high strung mentality. The Study of beef cattle farming is something that is very interesting, and I would love to continue to learn about what my fore fathers have done before me.
Anderson, Larry, Smith Callaway. Banks, Charles Bonds, Frederick W. Brogdon, Isaac Bunce, Daniel Good, Norris Kemp Mabry, John C. Paton, and R. Frank Saunders. Bulloch County: Spirit of a People. Statesboro, GA: Auspices, Statesboro Herald, 1996. Print.
Bulloch County was named after Archibald Bulloch, a Revolutionary statesman who helped lead the resistance against the British. The county was created in 1796 from lands of St. Philip’s Parrish by the Georgia Legislature. Archibald Bulloch was a famous man in Georgia who served in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, was the first president of Georgia when it declared itself independent from Britain, and the great-great grandfather of President Theodore Roosevelt. After the Revolutionary War, flocks of war veterans came to settle in Bulloch County. Bulloch County used to be gargantuan in size having over 1,200 square miles, but with the addition to many smaller counties through the years, it has shrunk to 684 square miles. Statesboro was the first town made in Bulloch County, and it was originally named Statesborough after Thomas Jefferson’s fight for state’s rights.
Bulloch County was affected by the Civil War first hand. General William T. Sherman marched through Statesboro on his march from Atlanta to the sea burning everything in his path. Over 600 Rebel Soldiers were defeated by his army in Statesboro. As a result, Sherman’s troops burned the crops and looted a bunch of the buildings. Five months later, the war was over.
One interesting story in this book is the story of how Emit lost their chance as the county seat of Bulloch County. This story is important because the Southwell family lives near the Emit community and has attended Emit Grove Church for over one hundred years. Emit was named after Emit Anderson. At the end of the 19th century, Emit was considered to be the future county seat of Bulloch. Some wealthy farmers in nearby Statesboro used their influence to make Statesboro the county seat, and the rest is history. Around 1891, a post route was established with Emit Anderson being the postmaster. Around that same time, Emit Grove Baptist Church was esatblished. With the creation of Highway 67, a road that makes the trip to Statesboro easy for surrounding communities, businesses left Emit making it only a small community. I wonder that if Emit had won the county seat of Bulloch how things would have been different. My forefathers would have had prime land for the county seat. Georgia Southern University might have been built in Emit rather than Statesboro, and my family might have either sold the land or used it for something different rather than farming.
“Alan Jackson — Small Town Southern Man.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.
If there ever were a group of lines that tell the story of my Grandfather’s life, it is a song entitled, Small Town Southern Man. Small Town Southern Man by Alan Jackson is a song that was written as a tribute to anyone with a rural upbringing. It is a song that Alan Jackson wrote in 30 minutes one day when he was thinking about his father who had passed away in 2000. Jackson uses catchy rhythm in this song along with short, simple sentences that run together throughout the entire song.
The song starts out by saying, “Born the middle son of a farmer and a small town southern man, Like his daddy’s daddy before him, brought up workin’ on the land.” My Grandfather was born as the middle child in his agricultural family, and he was the one who ended up taking over the farming business with his father.
The next lines in the song say, “Fell in love with a small town woman, and they married up and settled down. Natural way of life if you’re lucky for a small town southern man.” My grandparents were both from small towns. Grandmama was from the small town of Daisy, Georgia, and Grandaddy was from Brooklet, Georgia. They met and and were married after a short courtship. Their marriage was extremely traditional for what marriages in the South looked like at the time. Grandmama cooked and cleaned, and Grandaddy farmed and made the important decisions.
The chorus goes as follows, “And he bowed his head to Jesus, and he stood for Uncle Sam, and he only loved one woman, was always proud of what he had. He said his greatest contribution is the one he’ll leave behind. Raised on the ways and gentle kindness of a small town southern man.” This song could be the anthem for any rural area Christian man. My grandfather takes his faith very seriously, used to be in the navy, and was married to one woman his entire life. He does not have that much to his name, but he has passed down his work ethic and humility to many people. Jackson’s dedication to his father is the perfect dedicatory song to my Grandfather. I hope to live the life of a small town southern man.
Presley, Delma Eugene., and Smith Callaway. Banks. Statesboro. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2003. Print.
Statesboro arrived in 1801 when George Siebald of Augusta, GA donated 200 acres for a centrally located seat of government for Bulloch County. Two years later, it was made Statesborough. The town was full of immigrants from Britain, so they changed the name to Statesboro. The census in 1880 revealed that 25 residents actually lived in the town, while 8,052 lived in Bulloch County. It took a long time to get Statesboro to grow, but a man from Bryan County named J.A. Brannen moved in to make it grow. This is cool because my great grandparents moved from Bryan County to Bulloch County around the same time. There must have been something that caused people to leave the established Bryan County to enter Bulloch County.
One story from Bulloch County’s history that I found in this book that really puts things into perspective is about when General Sherman came through the South to burn his way to the sea. A Union commanding officer walked into a saloon in the middle of a forest in Bulloch County. He asked for directions to Statesboro, and the man said, “You are standing in the middle of town.” The invaders laughed and then torched the wooden courthouse and the few other buildings in the middle of the woods, but they saved the three homes and nearby farm that inhabited the area.
Being a farmer near Statesboro was great for this time period. Cotton was making a killing even after the Civil War, and once Statesboro began to grow after it was torched, it grew in corporations that were installed to service farmer’s finances and other needs. During the early 1900s, Statesboro led the world in the production of Sea Island Cotton. Sea Island Bank was made around this time for the Sea Island Cotton farmers, and my grandfather still uses Sea Island Bank to this day. For every bale of cotton sold in Savannah, 10 bales were sold in Statesboro. After the boll weevil killed cotton, and the Great Depression came, tobacco took over. My grandfather and his father farmed tobacco for many years. My mom remembers picking tobacco when she was barely old enough to walk. By 1953, over 20 million pounds of tobacco passed through warehouses in Statesboro, make it the largest market in the “Tobacco belt” that included Georgia and Florida. This book did a great job of talking about the farming part of Statesboro that most other books did not. Statesboro is the largest inland city in the southeastern part of Georgia. It was a perfect location for rural immigrants who wanted to continue to farm when they came to America just like my ancestors. It was far enough inland, but also close enough to the coast to be an agricultural center for trade.
Jones, Lu Ann. Mama Learned Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina, 2002. Print.
“The nature of women’s work evolved as they combined the duties of daughter, wife, mother, farmer, and friend.” In the book, Mama Learned Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South, Lu Ann Jones interviews numerous older southern women about the history that is never told;farm women. My Grandmother was a farm woman. There are so many stereotypes about farm women that just aren’t true. Through this novel, it can be seen the truth about what farm women really did. The beginning quote shows that a farm woman was all aspects of life pulled into one. My grandmother grew up on a farm learning to farm with her father, Roy, but also learning to cook and clean with her mother, Allie. Her father died in the worst of ways when his barn caught on fire, and he died trying to put the fire out by throwing water on it.
Grandmama worked on the farm with her father, one brother, and one sister growing up. The book states that women were used as farm labor because it was free, and they were capable. Not only did they have to work in the fields, but they also had to cook the food, and bear the children. One reason that children were so highly esteemed on farms was that they could offer more labor and therefore allow the mother to go back into the house full time. My grandparents had four children, three of which were boys. My mom recalls all the time of how strong my grandmother was. She was as tough as nails but as delicate as a butterfly. She was the quintessential farm woman that lived it until the day she died. I wonder if she had lived in this day and age how different she may have been, or if she would still want to be the farm woman that she was.
Farmland. Dir. James Moll. 2014. DVD.
I watched a documentary about modern day farming on Netflix called Farmland. It takes the lives of 6 young farmers in different types of agriculture and documents their day to day life in the business of farming. The attempt of this documentary is to shorten the gap between the farming industry and the everyday person that knows nothing about the food they eat. This documentary educated me a lot on the production and business aspect of farming that I never knew. I may be from a rural area, but I still do not know farming that well. Through the movie, I was able to see first hand the small family farming business.
My grandfather may be older now, but he was only 20 years old when he started farming for a living. After serving in the military out of high school, he got married and started farming first with his father, but later on his own. There is one man in particular in this documentary from west Georgia that farms chickens, cattle, and hay. My grandfather farms cattle and hay now also. This film makes an emphasis on the trading part that I did not know a lot about. They raise cattle up and maintain their health so that they can either butcher them and sell the meat or sell the cattle alive at an auction to later be butchered or used for mating. Grandaddy goes to the auctions a lot, but I never knew why he went so much. Now it makes sense that he must do this to always be making enough money and maintaining healthy cattle. He trades bulls periodically to keep the gene pool healthy and prevent cross breeding.
Another farmer farms hogs and grain. He talks about how he grows wheat, feeds the hogs the grain, and then uses the manure from the hogs to fertilize the soil to grow more wheat. This is very smart farming because it takes out the middle man. I know that my grandfather grows corn now to not only sell to the markets but also to feed his cattle with. This film makes farming something I would maybe want to do, but it also shows me how hard it is. I think that I want to work in a more marketable business, but I would love to grow my own produce and chickens one day possibly.
