The Last Confederate Widow Tells Nothing

I signed up for the free version of Ancestry.com, well, it will be free if I remember to cancel, but you know how that goes. I started out with known knowns, and have found a bit of new information in just a couple of hours. For instance, I now know the name of the woman holding onto my grandfather's arm in this picture - she is Lydia Lavenia Touchstone, widow of Amos Carson Hilton, late of the Mississippi 19th.

As near as I can tell, this picture was taken in 1942 as the country was gearing up for WWII. On the right side of the photo, in the back row, are my father's side of the family. They gathered at my maternal grandfather's house in Jackson, as people were concerned that life as they knew it was about to be altered drastically. They were correct. My mother's father, in the center of the front row, died in 1944. His mother lived to be 97 - I had no idea that anyone in our family ever lived so long. The things you learn along the way, eh? She outlived her husband and her son. Both of my older brothers got to meet her. What a long, interesting life she had.

Anyway, I met or knew 9 people in that picture, and as far as I know, only my cousin, the young girl in the front row, is still with us, if you consider living in Australia still with us.

I got to stay in that house a couple of times, but after my uncle pissed away his inheritance the house was lost to our family and was picked up and moved to a park in Jackson. The land around it was developed into a housing tract, no doubt with the word "Plantation" in its name. So it goes.

I wish I had met that dog - what a good looking animal.

Did someone say Jackson?

"Ben Affleck demanded..."

"...PBS program hide his slave-owning ancestor"

Ben Affleck insisted on censoring the fact that one of his ancestors owned slaves from PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” the Sony email hack has revealed.

In a hacked Sony email from July 22, 2014, now available on WikiLeaks, the show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., writes to Sony USA chief Michael Lynton asking for advice: “One of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors–the fact that he owned slaves. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We’ve never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He’s a megastar. What do we do?”

Twitter JeffB commented...

Hilarious not b/c this somehow makes him guilty of anything, rather b/c he obv'sly THOUGHT it did. White guilt taken to glorious absurdity.
— Jeff B@AoSHQDD (@EsotericCD) April 18, 2015