What‘s in the Box?

My mother, Rossie Lucille Atwater, had six siblings, four brothers and two sisters. They all grew up on a farm in southwestern Decatur County, Georgia. As was the custom in those days the boys inherited the assets of the family, and the girls got married or found “suitable” employment. Mother became a schoolteacher, Aunt Gertrude a milliner, and Aunt Margaret a nurse. Margaret moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, the home of the state mental institution.

There she met Joe Wootten, who was only one year younger than her mother. Joe was brought up on a Georgia plantation, became a reporter for the Atlanta Constitution and later the chief pharmacist at Milledgeville. He trained Aunt Margaret in this profession, and, upon his death, she assumed the position and title.

While Joe was at the Constitution he became good friends with Frank L. Stanton, the first columnist for that newspaper. Stanton was the first Poet Laureate of Georgia, made so by the governor.

Stanton wrote many poems, including several that were set to music and one or two became popular “parlor” songs. Because of this friendship, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Joe were often given autographed first editions of his books, and once Stanton wrote and published in the Constitution a poem about Margaret. Stanton was rumored to be a hard-drinking newspaperman, and I suspect that some of his continued friendship with my folks was carried on during some “treatment” time in Milledgeville.

When Aunt Margaret died about thirty five years ago I rented a U-Haul truck and, with my wife Theresa and my older daughter as passengers, went to Milledgeville to close the estate. I sold the house and automobile, and we loaded the truck with antique furniture, including two pieces that had been built by slaves on the Wootten plantation.

As we were getting ready to leave, Theresa noticed two cardboard boxes filled with books. We loaded them, and months later opened them. They contained books that were contemporary to the times of Uncle Joe and Aunt Margaret, including the Stanton editions, other poetry books and inspirational writings. Some of the authors were James Whitcomb Riley, known as the “Hoosier Poet”, Edgar Allen Poe, Tennyson and others, tomes that you would expect to find in a well-read couple’s library of the late 1800’s and the early part of the last century.

Interspersed among the leaves of the books were personal letters from Frank L. Stanton to Uncle Joe, much of it written on foolscap, a size and type of paper used in the newsrooms of the day. None were typewritten, almost all were scribbled, large and bold, with pencils. Uncle Joe on two occasions had written to Stanton about a particular poem that had been published, and the author would write it from memory for him. He included the poem to Aunt Margaret, praising her red lips, and in the margin wrote: “I hope that this does the trick with the lovely woman”. This reminded me of the times in my courting days when I would quote Robert Burns’ “My love is like a red, red rose”, and this would usually “do the trick” for me. If my date was somewhat on the uneducated side, I would tell her that I wrote it “just for you”. I wonder if Joe used that line also.

And we found something extra.

Also stuffed between the pages of these old, prized books was something that would have once been a treasure. We found, and spread out to examine, Confederate money, from small fifty cent denominations printed by local banks up to and including one hundred dollar bills of the Confederate States of America. Early ones were crisply printed on both sides on quality papers. Later ones, those that were in circulation during the last days of the Confederacy, appeared to be on scraps of paper that had been used before: wall paper, wrappings, anything that was available. And these were printed on only one side.

So which was the treasure? Some of us may believe that “The South will rise again!” and the dollars will have exchange value. In truth, much of it is valuable now as collectors’ pieces.

Or is the treasure the first editions and personally inscribed books of Frank Stanton, given in friendship to a young couple beginning life together? I tend to lean toward this as being the real treasure. After all, Frank Lebby Stanton was the first columnist for the Constitution, and perhaps the first newspaper columnist in the United States.

And I, a friend of his by my relationship with Margaret and Joe Wooten, am a columnist with the Times, and a passing fair one at that, if I am to believe the folks that flatter me on the one hand and try to sell me tickets to a political event or a drawing for a quilt on the other!