I was planning on writing today about the 1830s homes of Columbus that are rapidly being destroyed without even an attempt to salvage valuable materials out of them. However, the last two days I have had several people ask me about family stories. As families gather to celebrate the Fourth, they need to recall, preserve and treasure stories passed down from older generations.
Here are a few of the stories passed down to me.
One of my favorite stories is of a college road trip party by my grandfather T.C. Billups and my great uncle J.S. Billups. It all began with a sixtieth anniversary party for the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity chapter at Ole Miss in April of 1910. There was a grand “German Banquet in Oxford” with at least one side trip adventure.
The story of that side trip is found on two different pages of what was an April, 1910, Senatobia newspaper. One account appeared on the society page. It stated that, “Winston Smith, Roger Montgomery, Cham Conner and T.C. Billups, students at Oxford” had been visiting in Senatobia. The article went on to say that “the young gentlemen came in Automobiles and during their stay had many enjoyable rides with young ladies and friends.”
It sounded like a most pleasant and relaxing visit, until you see the headlines in the local news: “Citizens Call Upon Mayor to Take Action Upon Automobiles.” The article told how “Senatobia does not boast of any automobile of its own but during the past few days there have been quite a number of visiting ones which have caused considerable commotion among the horses and incidentally among those who drive them.”
The report continued to say how some of the “leading citizens in town called upon the Mayor Monday afternoon requesting that the Board of Mayor and Alderman take some action looking to the protection of the citizens of the town from accidents caused by the unrestrictive use of Automobiles in the town. It was desired that a law be passed prohibiting the use of automobiles on the streets of the town.” How people view something has an awful lot to do with which side of the fence they are standing on, or in this case, riding on, and I’ll bet a good time was had.
My mother Ida Billups Ward was in college when the U.S. entered World War II. She was attending college in Virginia but returned to Columbus in 1942 and went to work at the Columbus Army Air Field base hospital.
She also joined the Civil Air Patrol, where she was the first girl from Lowndes County to solo. It was not until I was grown that I discovered that she had once been a Civil Air Patrol pilot. I asked why she had stopped flying and heard a story for the first time.
Toward the end of World War II she was dispatched to Birmingham solo in a Piper Cub, a small single-engine two-seat plane that had a top air speed of only about 85 mph. When she arrived there, she got stuck in a lengthy holding pattern over the Birmingham airport with several large fast four-engine aircraft. She said her little plane seemed lost and bounced around among the huge planes and it scared her half to death. Frightened, she turned around flew back to Columbus and never flew a plane again.
In the 1920s, members of the Billups and Hardy families of Columbus and the Kimbroughs of Greenwood would vacation together during the summer at the Kimbrough house in Biloxi. On one trip my grandfather was driving with chairs and luggage strapped on the outside of his automobile. South of Macon, the car broke down. It was repaired but broke down again near Scooba. After repairs they again headed south but at Lauderdale, it broke down a third time. My grandfather then ordered everyone out of the car. He reached into the glovebox and pulled out a 45 cal. pistol which he emptied into the engine. Turning to the family he calmly said: “That’ll put the SOB out of its misery.”
I recall asking, “What did y’all do then?” Turned out a friend of his was a car dealer in Meridian and they called him to bring up a new car.
All families have stories to tell, and unless those stories are passed from generation to generation, they are usually forever lost. Columbus is blessed with a rich history but with much of its early story surviving only in bits and pieces. In 1814 David Crockett got lost here. Thomas Jefferson was providing advice on Franklin Academy in the early 1820s. In 1842 Horace King, a black architect/engineer, built the first bridge over the Tombigbee here. The fist house built in Columbus was constructed in the fall of 1817. But who built it? Was it Thomas Thomas, Thomas Moore or Thomas Sampson? All have been mentioned in different accounts. Then again, it might have been Thomas Cheadle, a carpenter working for early Columbus resident William Cocke. If only more of the stories had been preserved and not just bits and pieces, how interesting they would be.
This holiday week, pass along and preserve your family stories. They are something that will be treasured in the future. I know that is true, for I was brought up in a family of story tellers and I treasure every story I heard.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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