Description of Granny

On May 5, 2007, I wrote to Gloria, Dad's first cousin, saying in part that when I had e-mailed Dad the previous year to ask what role Granny played in their family life, he said something to the effect that she just sat in her rocking chair, knitting. I felt sure that there was more to her than that. So I wrote that I was certainly interested in Granny's journal, as well as in any pictures that she might have.

Note that the vital statistics we have for Granny, Ava Lucerne Campbell Hill, from various sources, are: Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, October 3, 1858. A recent e-mail from Dad says that he believes Granny rode the Texas & Pacific RR to the end of the line, which was the "tent city" of Abilene, in 1881 to visit her brother and met her future husband. Married David Graham Hill in Tuskegee, December 12, 1884, and then the couple departed for Abilene, Texas.

Granny became a widow when she was about 70. Dad has confirmed that she lived for a while in Memphis, being sort of a substitute mother for two of Dad & Gloria's cousins (Florence and Hank), as our great Uncle Henry Hill had become a single parent. Then, when Dad was between 8 and 12, Granny returned to Abilene and lived with the Haynies for the rest of her life, or approximately ten to fifteen years. She died August 7, 1949, at age 90.

Here is a transcription of Gloria's reply, dated July 13, 2007:

Dear Sandi,

I'm sorry to take so long to answer your nice letter. I have been very busy and I can't say exactly why. If time flies I certainly don't and that is one problem. I can't tell you how many times I have started and mentally composed a letter to you about Granny, but I never completed my thoughts well enough to present them to you.

I did not know Granny like Hi did because we always lived in another city and saw her only on visits to Abilene. She was pretty in the face with sparkling brown eyes, that run in the Hill-Campbell family. My daughter Judy and son George luckily have those big soft brown eyes like my Daddy, your [great] Uncle Dege (short for D.G.). Granny laughed a lot when I saw her and had a nice soft tinkley kind of laugh. She was gentle but I feel she had a very strong personality. From her memories she was a bit mischievous when she was young. She was raised in a strict Baptist family. She did not like the restrictions imposed by the Baptist religion. For instance she loved to dance (so do I, still), when she went to Abilene to visit her brother who went there after the war and opened a Bank like his father, Grandfather Campbell (G.W.) had the first registered Bank in Alabama. There she met Grandfather Hill who was raised on a large homesteaded ranch in Texas and educated in Galveston.

Granny came to N.O. when all the family lived in the Pontalba Bldg. in the Fr. Quarter. She did not stay long. The dampness was bad for her arthritis. She had come to stay with Auntie Mace and Uncle Roy McCullough, your great aunt, the twins' mother. I'm sure Granny was very spunky and brave for a young woman raised in a very protected home with a loving mother, and slave servants watching over her. When she was very old and airplanes were first beginning to fly Granny flew to New York and visited the McCulloughs up there. She had six children without much help as Abilene was such a new, small town at the time. Her father, went out to visit her and took a black maid, former slave, to work for her and help with the children and Granny sent her back to Tuskegee as she said she was more trouble than she was worth.

Granny went back to Tuskegee for the birth of her first three children and went through N.O. staying at the old St. Charles Hotel. Daddy remembered going with her.

Much love. I've run out of space -

Gloria

Granny went to college, stayed in dormitory there -