"The Magic of Christmas" at Central State Hospital

The Powell Building named for third administrator of Central State Hospital, Dr. Thophilus O. Powell, commands a central position in the hospital complex. Here the stately columned building is decorated for Christmas.

Some of the mayors present on a special day in Middle Georgia may have driven through mountain mists to arrive at Central State Hospital by mid-day when the parade began forming for an annual event enjoyed not only by the clients and employees but by local citizens and visitors as well. This was my sixth year to be inspired by the event.

Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia held its annual “Mayor’s Christmas Parade” and an unbelievable musical presentation called “The Magic of Christmas” on December 1, 2009.

Called “Mayor’s Christmas Parade” because the mayors of towns and cities throughout Georgia are invited to attend and bring gifts their constituents have collected to be distributed to the patients at Christmas time. The annual event begun by First Lady of Georgia, Betty Vandiver, wife of Governor Ernest Vandiver, in 1958 has continued. Weeks in advance, social workers, music therapists, and staff gifted with preparing a program work with the patients to aid those able to participate in the musical production.

The auditorium is always well appointed with beautiful Christmas decorations. Although the day was cold for Middle Georgia and standing to see the parade was chilly, inside the large auditorium a warmth lifted the spirits and the chilled bodies.

Chief Executive Officer Marvin Bailey gave opening remarks summarizing the history of the institution. Approved in 1837 by the Georgia Legislature when the capital was Milledgeville, it took from then until 1842 for the four-story dormitory building to be open for clients. Then called the Georgia Lunatic Asylum, it at first admitted paupers with mental disabilities, but services were soon expanded to include any citizens who needed institutional care. Tomlinson Fort and William A. White were the legislators who introduced the bill to begin the institution. The first allocation was $20,000 for the four-story building which contained clients’ rooms, treatment rooms and a small area for office space. The hospital facilities grew on the 1,700 acres set aside for the institution. At one time in the 1960s, almost 13,000 clients occupied the various buildings of the massive complex. At that time, it was the largest mental hospital in the United States, and maybe even in the world. The first administrators were Dr. David M. Cooper (serving 1843-1846), followed by Dr. Thomas F. Green (1847-1879), and then Dr. Thophilus O. Powell (1879-1907), with the central building still standing that was named in his memory.

Mr. Bailey told us that current client population is slightly above 600. One reason for this low number, compared to the thousands that once occupied the dormitories, is new psychotropic and other treatment medications that can assist patients with mental disabilities. Then about two decades ago, it was deemed better to place those capable, with supervision, in group homes to live more like ordinary citizens. The group homes are not on the Central Georgia Complex. Also, the regional hospitals care for those with mental or other disabilities, thus decreasing Central State’s population.

First, we heard “Somewhere” from the movie “West Side Story” performed as a solo by Robb Weiss with Lisa Vaughn accompanying on piano.

Then the curtains opened to “The Magic of Christmas” setting, appropriate choreography and lighting to enhance the performances. Milledgeville ballet studios provided dancers, especially the children, who performed “Little St. Nick” and “Frosty the Snowman” interspersed with the musical and dance numbers by Central State clients and staff members. The costumes fitted each musical number and the backdrops were artistic, eye-catching and bright. “The Magic of Christmas” truly came to Central State December 1. Several numbers from “The Nutcracker” ballet were spectacular. In the middle of the program was a tribute to current service men and veterans with ties to any of the hospital staff. My daughter had not told me in advance, so I was surprised when a picture of her father, my husband, Rev. Grover Jones, appeared in his World War II navy uniform. There was a picture, too, of Cynthia’s husband, S/Sgt. Carlos Berenguer, retired from the Air National Guard, along with many others in the power-point and patriotic music interlude.

Tears always come to my eyes when the march of the wheel chair patients, each decked out in Christmas finery, followed by aides who roll the wheelchairs, come down the aisles and perform a wheel-chair dance in front of the stage. Even though the music was cheerful and peppy, “Mister Santa,” many in the audience smiled while wiping tears. This group appeared again in the finale when together with all the others made one great crowd of performers. We were inspired by the final number, “O Holy Night” performed by soloist Angela Ingram, a staff member with a magnificent voice.

A standing ovation and much applause filled the large auditorium. Then came brief remarks by selected mayors and Mrs. Nita Cagle, wife of Lt. Governor Casey Cagle. And what the clients will enjoy at Christmas, the gifts from towns throughout Georgia were presented, stacked in abundance before the large stage. The staff will give them to the clients and make them happy again by their gifts received on Christmas Eve.

We sometimes think of “lunatic” asylums (we don’t call them that any more) or mental hospitals being dismal places with no prospects of enjoyable times. This Christmas extravaganza is a wonderful event that brings “The Magic of Christmas” to many people—cheer enough to last the New Year through.

c 2009 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Dec. 10, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved

Della L. Vandiver Zieske's long life

Della Vandiver was born in Choestoe, Union County, on February 1, 1886. Her parents were John Floyd Edward Vandiver (1849-1923) and Rhoda Lucinda Souther Vandiver (1853-1947).

The span of Della's years was 102. She put a lot of living into the century and more of her life.

When Della Vandiver was a young girl of nine, in 1895, her parents decided to "go west." This call of western land opportunities was strong in that era, and John Floyd Edward Vandiver, grandson of the famed Adam Poole Vandiver (1787-1876) and son of George Vandiver (1812-?) and Frankie Wheeler Vandiver (1816-?), took the challenge to move westward. As review, you may access my accounts about this family's move westward in previous articles now in The Sentinel Archives online. See, in particular these articles: "From the Memoirs of John Joseph Vandiver” (May 3, 2007); "Continuing the Saga of Vandiver's Life in the West" (May 10, 2007); and "John Joseph Vandiver Settles Down in Washington State" (May 17, 2007).

But this is the fascinating story of John Joseph Vandiver's younger sister, eight years his junior. She was nine years old when her parents loaded the children who were going west with them (two of their children were already married in 1895) into their covered wagon and left the home of John Souther and Mary "Polly" Combs Souther on Choestoe, where Della was born that cold February 1, 1886. In fact, all their married life until this point when they decided to "go west," Rhoda Lucinda and her husband had lived with her parents near New Liberty Baptist Church, Choestoe, Union County. The farm, though containing several acres along Town Creek, was still not large enough to support John Joseph and Rhoda Lucinda Vandiver's growing family.
But this is Della L. Vandiver’s story…and I will move on to highlights in her long life.

Imagine the excitement of a nine year old girl leaving the only home she had known in the shadow of Bald Mountain in Choestoe to set out to unknown places with her parents and siblings. She was sad to leave her friends and relatives, and especially her cousins about her own age with whom she liked to play when they visited at her grandparents' house. But Della had deep anticipation for what she would find as their exciting adventure unfolded.

The family went to Gainesville, Georgia in 1895 where they took a passenger train westward. "Our first major stop was in Asher, Arkansas," Della Vandiver wrote. There her father got work and Della's brother, Jesse Edward Vandiver, was born there on March 17, 1897. This sibling was thirteenth and last of the children born to Della's parents. The Vandiver family remained in Arkansas until 1900. Again the urge to move farther west propelled John Floyd Edward Vandiver to move his family on to Back Creek, Wyoming.

A sad day came for Della and her family on June 17, 1900 when her brother, Thomas Marion Vandiver, died at Back Creek. He had been born, as had Della, in Choestoe, Union County, on March 30, 1884. He died at age 16 on June 17, 1900.

Della L. Vandiver Zieske poses at age 100 showing the large fish

she caught at Port Townsend, Washington.

Della Vandiver celebrated her sixteenth birthday on February 1, 1902 in Wyoming. She and her brother John Joseph, to whom she was especially close, decided they would go to Medicine Bow, Wyoming. They got the family buckboard and the horses and started out early on that cold February morning. They had only traveled 15 miles when one of the sudden snowstorms of that part of the west began. The temperature suddenly dropped to about 15 degrees above zero. (How did they measure temperature in 1902?). The snow was blinding them, and the horses could not travel. Besides, Della and John Joseph were freezing in the buckboard, even wrapped up as they were in woolen blankets. Finally, they found a house along the way and the kindly people took the Vandiver siblings in. When the storm abated, not to be outdone by the weather, Della and John Joseph went on to Medicine Bow and celebrated Della's birthday late. She remembered into her old age that her sixteenth birthday was one of the best.

A few years after Della's birthday celebration, she was able to pursue education for the career she had dreamed about. Her beloved brother was living in Washington State at the time. He invited Della to come and begin her nurse's training. She became a student nurse at Seattle's Wayside Emergency Hospital. It was then located aboard a hospital ship docked in the harbor. She enjoyed her training and graduated in the class of 1908 with her nurse's certification. For the next fifty years of her life, she was a caring and hardworking nurse.

Her nursing career was not confined to Washington state. She was called to assist in Treadwell, Alaska when a gold mine there collapsed, leaving several miners dead and many severely injured. She went there as a nurse relief worker and sought to minister to the men whose lives hung in the balance.

During the Great War, or World War I, Della served as a military nurse. She didn't like to talk about this period of her life. Perhaps what she experienced was too traumatic to tell in accounts of her -nursing career. Mainly, she worked in hospitals and as a private nurse in the Seattle area.

Della Vandiver was married five times. Her first three husbands died, leaving her thrice a widow. Her last two marriages, unfortunately, ended in divorce. Her first marriage was January 1, 1913 to Joseph McDonald. After his death, she married Chaney Canning. After his death, she married a Carl Zieske. Unknown to this writer are the names of her last two husbands, unions that led to divorce. When Della Vandiver visited Union County, GA in April, 1986 to see one more time the place where she was born, she was going by the name of Della Vandiver Zieske. Della had no children of her own, but her nieces and nephews loved her, her stories, her zest for life.

She enjoyed fishing and reading. At age 100 she went out in her aluminum boat to her "bigger" fishing boat in Port Townsend Harbor, Washington. Boarding the larger boat, she steered it to the "saltchuck" where the big salmon ran. One of the largest she caught there was a 28-pound salmon. One weighed in at 17 pounds; still another at 11 pounds, and one was a 35-pound lincod that had an 8-pound silver she had hooked, it had gotten back into the water, the lincod swallowed it, and Della hooked the big fellow with the silver fish in its mouth. And these are no "fish tales." They're true experiences of a seasoned seawoman who plied the waters of Straight Juan de Fuca to find and hook the big fish.

Della Vandiver Zieske's 100th birthday cake had this inscription: "Della - 100 Extraordinary Years." She died in Seattle, Washington at age 102.

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published June 26, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ishmael Theodore Thomas – Preservationist of the Year 2005

Some of you, as I, may wonder what has happened recently to Ted Thomas who lived in Union County, Georgia for awhile, was named Historical Preservationist of the Year by Union County Historical Society in 2005, and then decided to move back to Oklahoma to live out his days. Ted is still alive and well, and still engaged in fixing up things that need his special touch. He is modest when it comes to owning up to any achievements he might have accomplished.

While he was in Union County, the land of his forebears, he did much to help preserve historical artifacts. The old courthouse bell was his special project, and for it he received the prestigious "Preservationist of the Year" award in 2005.

He was also quite interested in the Old Souther Mill at Choestoe, a landmark of his forebears. He uncovered a portion of the old mill in the debris where the old mill pond once provided the water power to turn the turbine that ground wheat, rye and corn for the community. That retrieved mechanism now stands proudly on display at the Butt House Annex in Blairsville, a testament to this humble man who appreciates and wants to save for posterity remnants of the past. He worked with his cousin, the late John Paul Souther, to erect a marker at the old mill place on Highway 180 to tell the history of the mill and to mark the spot where the mill once operated.

Ted Thomas's sojourn in Union County was notable by the deeds he left behind him. A few years ago he departed these environs and moved back to the place he grew up, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, wishing to live out his days among the familiar places of his childhood and youth.

Recently, the Tahlequah Daily Press had a feature article by Betty Smith entitled "Coming home." It was about this great, great grandson of the famed Adam Poole Vandiver, "Hunter of Tallulah" of Blue Ridge Mountains fame, and how Ted is now spending his days in Tahlequah.

The reporter, seeking an interview, found the 87-year-young Ted Thomas on a ladder, dressed in his typical bib overalls, carpenter's apron, and repairing a shed. There is little time for an easy chair or rest for this active octogenarian.

Ishmael Theodore Thomas was born May 18, 1920, the eleventh of thirteen children born to Frances (Frankie) Roseanna Vandiver Thomas and John Wesley Thomas. His mother Roseanna claimed deep ties to early Union County settlers. Her mother was Rhoda Lucinda Souther who married John Edward Floyd Vandiver. Earlier through this column, their story of going west was recounted. They stopped awhile in Arkansas and then moved on to Wyoming. But Frankie Roseannah and John Wesley Thomas remained in Arkansas and then went on to Oklahoma where they reared twelve of the thirteen children born to them.

Many of us may not know of the life and career of Ishmael Theodore Thomas, lovingly known as Ted. Born nine years before the Great Depression struck, his education was cut short. But what he did with his six years of schooling received at the old Bald Hill School near Tahlequah (Robbins) would put many of us to shame.

He and his brother farmed to help the family make a living. They bought a hay baler and drove it around the countryside, hiring out to bale neighbors' hay in season. Ted Thomas remembers the first Model A Ford that came into Tahlequah. He also remembers his father going into the First National Bank and borrowing $500 to see his family through a hard depression time. The banker, Mr. Upton, required no signature, but only a handshake from Ted's father. The money was summarily paid back.

Then came World War II. By then, Ted Thomas's father had died and he was helping to care for his ailing mother. He got a temporary deferment, but realized he was going to be drafted so he volunteered for the Navy and entered service August 3, 1942. It was there he distinguished himself as a worker on submarines. The USS Batfish, which is now on display at the military museum in Muskogee, Oklahoma, was one of the 140 submarines for which Theodore Thomas fabricated many of the parts. One of the most effective parts was a successful firing pin for the torpedoes launched from US submarines.

Thomas was on an aircraft carrier somewhere in the Pacific when news came that the war was over. He said he would never forget the lights coming on in various vessels that had been running dark to avoid enemy attack. "Suddenly it looked like a galaxy across the water," he said. Proceeding on to Japan, he and his crew survived a gigantic typhoon.

Upon his honorable discharge from the Navy, he married his sweetheart, Bonnie Lee Watkins. Their lives read like a storybook, rearing a family, being a peppermint farmer in the Columbia River Valley of Oregon; then to Kansas City, Kansas where he was a carpenter and a feed mill maintenance man and builder; and then with Koppers Sprout Waldron, a Fortune 500 Company, where he spent the next eighteen years of his life, until his retirement, traveling the world and troubleshooting in equipment maintenance and plant development.

In his travels, he grew to have an appreciation for old things. He once collected wood cook stoves and had over 200 of them that he had repaired and restored. In Clinton, Missouri, he and his wife bought and restored an old 1896 Queen Anne mansion which made the Register of Historic Places. He said he opened his mouth once too often, and found the house sold in less than thirty minutes. He also restored a number of old cabins and stone houses in the Ava, Missouri area.

After his wife Bonnie Lee died in 1996, Theodore came to Georgia to live for awhile. It was during that period that he actively researched his family genealogy and got involved with the Union County Historical Society, making various contributions to the preservation of local history.

At age 87, still active and alert, Ted Thomas, the great, great grandson of Adam Poole Vandiver (1788-1877), has this to say: "I've always enjoyed life. I'd like to push a button and do it all over again!"

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Jan. 17, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Dyer-Souther Reunion

Saturday, July 14, 2007 marks the date for the annual Dyer-Souther Heritage Association Reunion. Choestoe Baptist Church's Family Life Center will be a-buzz with people, beginning with registration at 11:00 a. m. A bounteous covered dish meal will be enjoyed at noon. The reunion program will begin at 1:00 p. m.

If telephone calls and e-mails are an indication, many new "kin" who are just now finding out about the wonderful reunion are planning to be first-time attendees. My excitement begins to grow weeks before the event.

The reunion honors early settlers to the Choestoe Valley who began coming into the county about the time Union County was formed from the large Cherokee territory. Elisha Dyer, Jr. and his wife, Elizabeth Clark Dyer, and several of their children came from Pendleton District, South Carolina by way of Habersham County where they remained awhile, and then moved on across the mountain to Choestoe, "place where rabbits dance."

The Souther early settlers migrated from the vicinity of Old Fort, NC a few years later, about 1835, with John and Mary Combs Souther settling in the vicinity of present-day New Liberty Baptist Church. Altogether, five Souther siblings had settled in the area by 1850. These were John, Jesse William, Jr., Joseph, Hicks (or Hix), and Kizziah Souther Humphries. Jesse established a mill, with assistance from his brothers John and Joseph. The mill opened in 1848 and ground corn for meal and grains to bolt flour. A sawmill was operated on the site using the water power provided by a head of water passed through a chute to operate the turbines. The grist mill operated for 90 years.

Another family, in the valley by 1832, was Thompson Collins and Celia Self Collins. Her father, Job Self, also settled in Choestoe. Claiming other homesteads were the John and Elizabeth Hunter family. Daniel England married Elizabeth, a daughter of John and Elizabeth Hunter. The oldest house in the county still standing is the Hunter-England cabin, now in bad repair, which can be seen just off Highway 129/19 in the Choestoe District. There were other families: Nix, Jackson, Duckworth, Spiva, Henson, Vandiver, Brown, Townsend, Turner, Reece and more. By the time marriages were performed from one family to another, there soon came a rich fabric of kinship.

Saturday, present for the first time, will be Dan Smith of Raleigh, NC. He descends from Rhoda Lucinda Souther who married John Floyd Edward Vandiver. Dan is a musician. He will sing and will also lead reunion attendees in singing an old, old song.

On April 13, 1868 at New Liberty Baptist Church, Nancy Collins Souther, wife of John Combs Hayes Souther and daughter of Thompson and Celia Self Collins, sat writing the words of a song as the song "heister" lined them out to the congregation. In her own handwriting, these words have been preserved. Set to the tune of "The Good Old Way" found in Southern Harmony # 156, Dan Smith will lead reunion attendees in singing this old church song on Saturday. It is entitled "Come All Ye Righteous Here Below." Nancy Souther wrote nine stanzas of the song. Here are three:

"Come all ye righteous here below,
Oh, Ha-le, ha-le-lu-jah!
Let nothing prove your overthrow,
Oh Ha-le, ha-le-lu-jah!
Chorus:
But call on me both day and night,
Oh Ha-le, ha-le-lu-jah!
And I'll visit you with delight,
Sing glory ha-le-lu-jah!
When the day of judgment doth draw nigh,
Oh Ha-le, ha-le-lu-jah!
Poor sinners will lament and cry,
Oh Ha-le, ha-le-lu-jah!
For the earnest deeds that they have done,
Oh, Ha-le, ha-le-lu-jah!
They will repent in time to come,
Oh, Ha-le, ha-le-lu-jah!

A solemn memorial service will honor those who have moved from this life to the next- a large number since the last reunion.

We will gladly welcome familiar faces, those who return to their roots year after year. We will help those who come for the first time to feel welcome through connections that have been made since July, 2007. And if you would like to come, too, and see what's up with this large family, you will find a warm reception.

In 1989 my cousin, the late Watson B. Dyer, nominated me to take his place as family historian. Without even asking me if I would accept the job, I was suddenly plunged into a task I didn't anticipate. But one of the great pleasures of my life since then has been contacting people throughout America to help them find their roots. I don't always succeed in giving them the right links, but I've made many new friends and have more "cousins" than I thought possible. The Russian writer in his famous novel, Anna Kerenina, wrote: "All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." We're one big happy family and that's a good way to be.

c2007 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published July 12, 2007 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved

John Joseph Vandiver settles down in Washington state

John Joseph and Lula Mae Estee Vandiver and their children,

Ada Margaret and John Henry.

From Choestoe, Georgia to Washington state is a long distance, even by today's air miles. In 1895 and the years following, it was a journey of faith to find work and places to live. The stops the John Floyd Edward Vandiver and Rhoda Lucinda Souther Vandiver family made along the way in their move west in 1895 were recounted in the memoirs of their fourth of thirteen children, John Joseph Vandiver. This is the third and last in a series of his memoirs.

In the spring of 1906, John Joseph Vandiver moved to Seattle, Washington. There he went to work in a surveying crew mapping the route for the Oregon and Washington railroad that paralleled the Northern Pacific from Portland to Seattle. That job was completed in November.

Work in Alaska was next on Vandiver's agenda. When he landed in Catalla in March, 1907, the weather was colder than any he had experienced in his life. Seven feet of snow greeted him.

The surveying team worked in all weather conditions and finally finished the work for a terminal and rail line northward to the Copper River. In November of that year, with the Alaska surveying over, he returned to Washington.

Job prospects were still poor. He found work on the survey team for the Tieton Canal and the Ellensburg high line. While he was thus engaged, he decided that he needed more education. He attended night school in Seattle at the YMCA. Finishing high school, he was admitted to the University of Washington in 1910. Simultaneously studying at the University as a "special" student and working for the Reclamation Service on the Tieton Canal as inspector, John Joseph Vandiver was able to complete his engineering studies.

But all was not work for this ambitious man born in Georgia and transplanted in far away Washington state. While a student at the University, John Joseph Vandiver met and courted beautiful Lula May Estee, also a student. She was from East Lynn, Illinois.

They were married May 26, 1914. As newly-weds, they lived near the Tieton Canyon where John Joseph was employed by the Reclamation Service keeping canals and roads operable for construction of the giant Rimrock Dam. When the Reclamation Service wanted to transfer engineer Vandiver to Wyoming, he and his wife decided Washington was for them, and he resigned from his job, moving to Yakima permanently. There he spent most of the remainder of his career as a carpenter, building his own house and those for many others. As he progressed in his ability as a builder, he was able to upgrade the houses he built for his own family, including one for his in-laws, Mr. and Mrs. C. D. Estee, whom he and Lula Mae moved from Illinois to live near them in Yakima.

John Joseph and Lula Mae Estee Vandiver had two children. Ada Margaret Vandiver was born May 23, 1915 in Seattle, Washington. John Henry Vandiver was born August 23, 1916.

From his parents and their beginnings in the mountains of North Georgia, John Joseph Vandiver learned a strong work ethic which guided him all his adult life. He was always able to make a way for himself and his wife and children. Honesty and integrity were distinctive marks of his character. He admits in his memoirs that at times life was "hard sledding." But he persisted, was willing to tackle hard jobs, and finally had a most productive life. Many of the couple's happiest years were spent in a house he built for them on Pleasant Avenue in Yakima Washington. There they could see the towering mountains in the western landscape. No doubt, as he grew older, the mountains of Washington state reminded the aging Vandiver of Choestoe Valley and towering Bald Mountain, the highest peak in Georgia near which he lived from 1878 until he left in 1895 going west.

c 2007 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published May 17, 2007 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Continuing the saga of Vandiver's life in the West

On May 3 my column focused on the memoirs of John Joseph Vandiver who left Union County, Georgia with his parents, John Floyd Edward Vandiver and Lucinda Souther Vandiver in 1895, making a stop for awhile in Drake's Creek, Arkansas, and then moving farther west.

By way of explanation, I wrote about this family in February, 2005. This is not an effort to repeat that story, nor is this account written in exactly the same manner. Then, this column was not available online to many who have since "found" the weekly "Sentinel" newspaper online. I have had numerous requests from descendants of the Vandiver family to repeat those stories. That is why, almost two and one-half years later, in modified format, the memoirs of John Joseph Vandiver again appear in this column.

Between 1895 and 1898, jobs were scarce for a young man of nineteen in Drake's Creek, Arkansas. John Joseph Vandiver worked on his father's farm at the "Old Lollard Place" and supplemented his farm earnings by cutting railroad crossties and transporting them eight miles across a mountain to sell them for $1.10. In 1898, John Joseph's father bought his son a ticket to Greeley, Colorado. John's older brother, Bill, was already there. They worked for awhile at Charles Robinson's farm for $20.00 per month. Then the brothers launched northward to Laramie, Wyoming, where they heard "big game" was available for the hunting. Circumstances turned them in another direction.

At the Kuster Hotel in Laramie, the Vandiver brothers learned that a Mr. Thornton had been in town looking for ranch hands. Traveling 60 miles west of Laramie to the Thornton Ranch at Rock River, the Vandiver lads were hired and worked herding cattle and sheep.

Then it was off to become hands on the Union Pacific Railroad survey party, where they worked the whole winter of 1898-1899. In the spring of 1899, John Floyd Edward Vandiver sold out in Arkansas and moved his family to Rock Creek, Wyoming. Prospects for making a living seemed better there. In 1900 the Vandivers moved again to Little Medicine and the John J. Burnett Ranch. John Joseph Vandiver wrote in his memoirs: "It was hard going in those times. About all the work that could be had was herding sheep. I spent two winters making railroad ties in southern Wyoming near the Colorado line in about three feet of snow. I went down the Medicine Bow River on the tiedrive in the spring of 1902."

In June of 1902, John Joseph Vandiver went to Seattle, Wash., where he found work in a brick yard, at Moran's Sawmill, and at a logging camp at Moon's Canal.

In the fall of 1902, when it was too cold to continue outside labor, John found a job at the Fry-Brulm Packing House, driving a meat wagon, remaining there until spring.

In April, 1903, he made another move to Yakima, Washington where he signed on as a hand at the Bear Ranch. In the fall of 1903, he went to Okanogan, Washington.

John Joseph Vandiver's parents sold out at Little Medicine, Wyoming and went to Okanogan, again joining their son already there. The elder Vandiver paid $800 for some land in Pleasant Valley near Malott, Washington. The family lived in a log cabin on the land. In another log cabin, built for a schoolhouse, the Vandiver children still at home were enabled to attend school. One could wish that John Joseph had written more in his memoirs about who taught the school. He wrote only that those younger siblings still at home at the time were Sarah, Nell, Hartwell, Calla and Jess. In the fall and winter of 1903-1904, both John Joseph and Bill were at Pleasant Valley with their parents.

Then came "Last Chance." With a name like that, one would think "desperation!"

John Joseph and Bill Vandiver worked at the Last Chance mine about ten miles from Pleasant Valley. There they cut firewood for the mine, working about two months, a job that paid them about $3.00 per day.

When spring planting time came, the Vandiver brothers returned to Pleasant Valley. They helped their father on the ranch during 1904 and 1905, and got additional work at their neighbor's ranch (Mr. Malott) at hay harvest time.

By the spring of 1906, no doubt thinking that if he ever landed a significant career, he would certainly have to launch out on his own, John Joseph Vandiver went back to Seattle, Washington.

The remainder of his story will be told in the next episode of this Union County native's call to the west to live and work.

[Source: John Joseph Vandiver's Memoirs written in 1959 and published in Watson B. Dyer's "Souther Family History," 1988, pages 266-268.]

c 2007 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published May 10, 2007 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From the Memoirs of John Joseph Vandiver

Several months ago I wrote about the famed Adam Poole Vandiver (1788-1877), a legendary man of the mountains of North Georgia known as "The Hunter of Tallulah."

Reportedly, Adam Poole Vandiver had a total of thirty-two children and three wives.

With that many children, he now has descendants from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to the Gulf Coast, and points beyond.

I recently have made contact through e-mail with a Vandiver descendant with a rather common name of Dan Smith who lives in Raleigh, NC. We have been exchanging interesting family information and he hopes to attend for his first time the Dyer- Souther Family Reunion to be held July 14, 2007 this year.

Adam Poole Vandiver is Dan Smith's fourth great grandfather. Dan's interest and relationship to the Souther clan is through his great, great grandfather, John Floyd Edward Vandiver (1849-1923), son of George, grandson of Adam Poole). Rhoda Lucinda Souther (1853-1947), twelfth and youngest child of John Souther (1803-1889) and Mary Combs Souther (1807- 1894) married John Floyd Edward Vandiver on January 9, 1872.

Rhoda Lucinda Souther Vandiver and her husband took up residence following their marriage in the home of her father, John Souther, near present-day New Liberty Baptist Church. In fact, Rhoda's father gave land for that church and cemetery site where his four land lots joined. Pictures of the couple show them as distinguished and handsome. They had thirteen children, twelve of whom were born at the old Souther homeplace before the couple decided to move west. The first of Rhoda and John's children was Mary A. Vandiver who married Frank L. Smith on May 7, 1894. This couple moved to White County, Georgia to make their home. New-found distant cousin Dan Smith of Raleigh, NC, descends through a child of the Smiths, Jesse Benjamin Smith. In seeking information for Dan Smith, I came upon a lengthy personal memoir written in 1959 by John Joseph Vandiver, fourth child born to Rhoda and John Floyd Vandiver. The memoir is valuable for the insights it gives about his early life in Choestoe and why that Vandiver family decided to move west.

John Joseph Vandiver was a New Year's gift, born January 1, 1878 at his grandfather John Souther's home. He was the fourth child born to Rhoda Lucinda Souther Vandiver and John Floyd Edward Vandiver. Old Bald Mountain (Enota) towered above the Souther home to the east. The major occupation of the family was farming the land along Town Creek, raising hogs to take to the market in Gainesville, and gathering chestnuts and chinquapins to sell.

John Joseph and his siblings, twelve of whom, like he, were born in the old Souther home, went to school at New Liberty that served as a schoolhouse during the week and a church house on Sundays. The teacher he remembers as being the best instructor was Rev. John Twiggs, "who taught us many good things." He recalled with sadness the death of his grandfather, John Souther, in 1889 and his grandmother, Mary Souther, in 1894. They were buried on land his grandfather gave as a cemetery at Old Liberty.

John Souther willed his house and a portion of his land to his youngest daughter, Rhoda Souther Vandiver. John Joseph wrote: "Our living was meager for we had to grow all that we had to eat on the farm. Apples were dried for winter, as were pumpkins and beans for winter use. Potatoes were piled in a heap on the ground, as were cabbages, and dirt rounded up on them to keep them from freezing. Kraut was made from cabbage and stored in large pottery churns. Green beans were pickled in churns for use in the long winters." From their sheep they got wool for socks and spun the thread to weave woolen cloth for clothing.

In 1895, John Floyd Eugene Vandiver decided to "go west." Others in the Choestoe Valley had gone west and found better paying jobs and more productive farm work in western states. By that time, John Floyd and Rhoda Lucinda had twelve children: Mary who was already married to Frank L. Smith; William J; Cordelia Jane who married Andrew Townsend on March 2, 1893 (son of Eli Townsend and Sarah Sally Dyer Townsend); John Joseph; James H.; Fankie Roseanne; Della L; Sarah Evelyn; Nellie May; Frank Hartwell; Calla B.; and Thomas Marion (born March 30, 1894), one year old when his family started west. Upon leaving in 1895, Rhoda Lucinda sold the old Souther homeplace to Eli Townsend who purchased it for his son Andrew, married to Cordelia Jane Vandiver. Rhoda Lucinda's child, then, was living in the place where Rhoda was born, and where Rhoda herself had given birth to twelve children. Cordelia Jane and Andrew Townsend had two children, also born in that house, before Andrew's untimely death at age 24 on November 27, 1897.

In his memoirs, John Joseph Vandiver did not tell how the large family traveled from Choestoe Valley to their first stop out west, Drake's Creek, Arkansas. It was after the Civil War, and the Vandiver family probably went by covered wagons, taking what they could of family belongings with them to the train station in Gainesville. From there they took passage to Arkansas. Neither does he explain why they chose Drake's Creek for their lodging place. Maybe other relatives had gone before them to that location.

"In 1895 there was a depression similar to the one of 1929, and we had to work hard to live," Vandiver remembered. "When Andrew Townsend died (in 1897), my sister Cordelia (Delia) came to Drake's Creek with her two children to live with us." The thirteenth and last child was born to Rhoda Lucinda Vandiver on March 17, 1897, with the birthplace listed as Asher, Arkansas. John Floyd Edward Vandiver found a farm on Lollard's Creek (the old Lollard place) for sale and bought it for $1,500. The family finally owned their own farm in Arkansas.

Whatever the size of the farmhouse, it was no doubt crowded with Rhoda and John Floyd, twelve of their children (after Cordelia Vandiver Townsend joined them), and two grandchildren, a total of 16 people.

But as was the custom then, they shared in the work and "made do" with circumstances.

(Next week: Continuing the saga of the Vandiver family's move west, we will trace their journey to other locations to find better work.)

c 2007 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published May 3, 2007 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Englands were early settlers - England families used Unicoi Turnpike and settled first in Habersham County

Many living today in Union County, Georgia descend from the England families that came along the Unicoi Turnpike and settled near present-day Helen in what was, about 1826, Habersham County.

The old England Cemetery is on a knoll above the Chattahoochee River that winds its way just south of Helen. Behind the Comer Vandiver house, under a giant beech tree, said to be the largest of its kind in Georgia, some dozen unmarked stones seem to be a part of the landscape, so settled are these stones in their hillside setting. I shall never forget the feeling of connection I had the day, several years ago, when Mr. Vandiver showed my husband and me the cemetery known as the England Cemetery. There, in two of the graves marked only by fieldstones, were interred my ancestors on my mother’s side, William Richard England and his wife Martha “Patsy” Montgomery England, my great, great, great grandparents.

Richard England and his wife Martha “Patsy” Montgomery England moved from Burke County, North Carolina with a general migration of settlers to the Nacoochee Valley about 1826. Richard was the youngest of ten children born to Daniel England (1752-1818) and Margaret Gwynn/Guinn England (1758-1847). In Burke County, NC, Daniel and Margaret England lived at Hunting Creek on their plantation located near present-day Morganton, NC. Daniel England operated an iron foundry there and rendered material aid in the Revolutionary War through supplying iron for weapons. His widow received land in Habersham County, Georgia in the land lot drawings. Richard’s oldest brother, Elisha, had settled at Mossy Creek about ten miles south of Helen in 1820.

When Richard and his family moved over the Unicoi Turnpike they brought with them his mother Margaret who went on to Mossy Creek to live with her eldest son, Elisha and his family, already settled into their cabin. With Richard and Martha were their children born in North Carolina: Jonathan Athan (1816), Daniel (1818), and Margaret Elizabeth (1819). The couple had four children after they made the move to Georgia, but evidently they went back and forth from Georgia to North Carolina, for one at least (as indicated) was born there: Jerome (1822, GA), Coleman (1826, NC), Mary Amanda (1828, GA), Mary Ann (1831, GA). With Richard on the move to Georgia in 1826 were his sisters, Nancy, who had married (and later divorced) Moses Harshaw) who settled at Sautee; and Isabella who married Groves Morris.

Richard England owned two large tracks of land in the valley. One was located where Helen’s present-day water-treatment plant lies, and the Gold Mine tourist site. Then he bought a large valley lot at the base of Hamby Mountain at present-day Robertstown. There he built up a good farm.

Richard became very ill in 1835 and immediately made his will, evidently thinking that he would not recover. He did not. He willed his estate to his wife with a distribution of a child’s part to each of their children as they came of age. Martha England never remarried after Richard’s death in 1835. Their place in the upper Helen valley at Robertstown became known as “The Widow England’s Place.” He was buried in the England Cemetery that overlooks the Chattahoochee River. Other graves there are those of Joseph, Martha and Coleman England and Priar Pitner and perhaps some young children of the early settlers.

Several of the Englands traveled across the Blue Ridge from the valleys along the Chattahoochee River and settled in the new county of Union. The old Choestoe Indian Trail left the Unicoi Turnpike about three miles north of Helen and crossed Low Gap. The Tesnatee Trail was west of the Choestoe Trail and crossed the Tesnatee Gap. This latter trail became the Logan Turnpike. Daniel England, second son of Richard and Martha England, went “across the mountain” and built a cabin about 1834 near the Nottely River. The old England cabin still stands today where it was originally built. In bad repair and showing the ravages of time and neglect, it is near Georgia Highway 129 about seven miles south of Blairsville.

c2005 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Oct. 13, 2005 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Union County Native John Joseph Vandiver Makes His Way in the West

John Joseph and Lula May Estee Vandiver and children

Ada Margaret and John Henry Yakima, Washington, 1918

The memoirs of John Joseph Vandiver give insights into how hard families who left their familiar homeland of Choestoe, Union County, and moved west had to work in order to make a living. Going west was not an easy landfall for jobs or security.

John Joseph remained in Drake’s Creek, Arkansas from 1895 until 1898 where his father had a farm and John Joseph worked an extra job cutting railroad ties. When he was twenty, he boarded the train in Arkansas to travel to Greeley, Colorado where his older brother, William J. (known as Bill) had moved. The young men worked on the Charles Robinson farm for $20 per month. But when the harvests were in, the jobs were out.

They heard jobs might be available in Laramie, Wyoming. Checking into the Custer Hotel there, they learned that a Mr. Thornton at Rock River sixty miles west of Laramie was looking for ranch hands. The two Vandiver brothers boarded a train westward to Lookout and then walked twelve miles to the Thornton Ranch. They were hired to feed the stock and herd sheep. For about a year they worked on the Thornton and the William Taylor Ranches near Rock Creek.

During the rough winter of 1899, the Vandiver lads worked with the survey crew for the Union Pacific Railroad. Things were not going so well with John Joseph and Bill’s parents down in Arkansas. John Floyd Edward Vandiver and his wife, Rhoda Lucinda Souther, loaded up the family remaining at home and in the spring of 1899 joined the two older boys at Rock Creek. In May of 1900 they relocated to Little Medicine, Wyoming, to the John J. Burnett Ranch.

John Joseph writes of this period: “It was hard going in those times. About all the work available was herding sheep. I spent two winters making railroad ties in southern Wyoming near the Colorado line in three feet of snow. I went on the tie (railroad ties) drive down the Medicine Bow River in the spring of 1902.”

John Joseph’s next move was to Seattle, Washington in June, 1902. There he got what work he could at various labor, among which was in a brick yard, at a sawmill, at a logging camp, driving a meat wagon for a packing house, and working on the Bear Ranch. It was not that he was inept at any of these jobs and was fired only to have to find another. Jobs were scarce. His determination to make his own way always seemed to land him in another job.

His parents followed John Joseph’s lead. In the fall of 1903, J. F. E. and Rhoda Vandiver sold what stock they had at Little Medicine, Wyoming and moved to Okanogan, Washington, where the elder Vandiver paid $800 for a lease on some land that had a log cabin and a school house between Okanogan and Malott at a site called Pleasant Valley. It was a good move, as the children still at home—Sarah, Nell, Hartwell, Calla and Jess—had a place to attend school. Older brother Bill joined them at Pleasant Valley. Bill and John Joseph worked about ten miles from home at the Last Chance Mine during the winter months, cutting firewood for the mine workers, batching in an old log cabin and doing their own cooking. In the summers of 1904 and 1905, they helped their father with the ranch work at Pleasant Valley.

With some earlier experience on a survey team, John Joseph went to Seattle, Washington in the early spring of 1906, where he worked with the Oregon and Washington Survey Crew, working on the line that paralleled the Northern Pacific from Portland to Seattle. That job was finished in the fall. His next employment was surveying for a rail line and terminal at Catalla, Alaska. Seven feet of snow were on the ground when he arrived there in March, 1907. With that job finished, he returned to Yakima, Washington where he got work with the Reclamation Service surveying for canals: the Tieton and Ellensburg.

He decided to further his education. He took a three-month course in the Seattle YMCA School and following that was admitted to the University of Washington in February, 1910. He wrote of the keen competition with younger, better-prepared students. His education helped him to gain better employment with the Reclamation Service where he oversaw various engineering projects in the Tieton Canyon, on Rimrock Dam and elsewhere.

While he was a student at the University, he met and fell in love with Lula Mae Estee of Gibson City, Illinois. They were married in Yakima on May 23, 1914. To them were born two children, Ada Margaret (1915) and John Henry (1916).

When World War I stopped progress on the Reclamation Service dam and canal projects, John Joseph Vandiver started work as a carpenter, with little experience in this field. However, with his determination and willingness to work, he was able to progress and provide for his family.

Sometimes we put an aura on the idea to “go west, young man,” as if the adventure will be laced with success and prosperity. The life story of John Joseph Vandiver and his family who migrated from the Choestoe Valley in 1895 to find their way in Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming and Washington state shows that it was not an easy road but one requiring hard work, ingenuity and adaptability. These characteristics he had learned early in life as he worked on the farm settled by his grandfather J. John Souther in the shadow of Bald Mountain. They did not disappear in mountain mists but remained as guiding principles throughout Vandiver’s life.

c2005 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Feb. 10, 2005 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

John Joseph Vandiver Writes of His Life

John Joseph Vandiver with sisters Sarah Vandiver and Della Vandiver.

All three made the trip west with their parents about 1895 to settle there.

John Joseph Vandiver was the fourth of thirteen children born to John Floyd Eugene Vandiver and Rhoda Lucinda Souther Vandiver. John Joseph was born January 1, 1878 at his grandfather J. John Souther’s house near New Liberty Church, Choestoe District. In 1959 he wrote an autobiographical sketch of his life from his home in Yakima, Washington. The account gives insights into how life was for him in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This great grandson of the famed Adam Poole Vandiver continues the saga of the Vandiver family.

John Joseph Vandiver remembered his grandparents, John Souther, who died February 2, 1889 when this grandson was eleven, and his grandmother, Mary “Polly” Combs Souther who died May 1, 1894 when he was sixteen. John Joseph stated: Grandfather and Grandmother Souther taught me many things as a child. Grandmother would tell me about going to muster with her parents in 1812 when they were collecting our army for the War of 1812 against England. She must have been about five years old at the time, as she was born in 1807 and Grandfather in 1803.” The elder Southers were laid to rest in the Old Liberty Baptist Church Cemetery on land willed by John Souther for a church and cemetery.

He recalled that the old homeplace was willed to his mother. Consulting the last will and testament of J. John Souther, this item indicates the behest: “And behoof—8th: I give bequeath and devise to my daughter Rhoda L. Vandiver, to wit – Lot of Land No. 161 in the 16th District and 1st Sec., valued at one thousand and fifty dollars; it is my will that this be deeded to the Church of No. 161 one acre of land where the Church House now sits – with the privilege of wood to lands belonging to the estate to have and to hold the same to her own benefit and behoof—“. J. John Souther’s will was signed January 24, 1889, about a week before his death. Rhoda lived with and looked after her parents until their deaths.

In his memoirs, John Joseph Vandiver recalls life at the Souther place. “Our living was meager. We had to grow all that we had to eat on the farm.” Their industry and prudence taught them to put up food for winter use: barrels of kraut and pickled beans and corn; potatoes and cabbage buried in pits in the ground to protect them from freezing; apples, green beans (called leather britches), shelled beans and peas and pumpkin were dried for winter use.

With such a large family of children to provide for, his mother, Rhoda Lucinda Vandiver, was kept busy knitting socks and weaving cloth for clothes from the wool sheared from their sheep.

About his early school days he wrote: “We usually had about six months of school in the winter with poor teachers who were paid about $25.00 per month. A farmer and a Methodist preacher, John Twiggs, was the best teacher we had, and taught us many things. When I was about five, the New Liberty School was built.”

His parents continued to live on Land Lot 161 until after his grandmother’s death in 1894. Then, in 1895, his mother sold the house and land to Elisha Townsend, father-in-law of John Joseph’s sister Cordelia Jane, called Delia, who had married Andrew Jackson Townsend on March 2, 1893.

Unfortunately, John Joseph Vandiver’s memoirs do not include how his family packed up belongings and moved west. By 1895, train service was available from Gainesville or from Blue Ridge, Georgia or Cleveland, Tennessee. We can only imagine that they moved by covered wagon over the Logan Turnpike, probably to the more familiar Gainesville depot. There they probably sold the mules and wagon and loaded whatever household and personal goods they took to be shipped by freight westward. Then the parents and nine children boarded the train for their destination, Drake’s Creek, Arkansas.

John Joseph wrote: “In 1895 there was a depression similar to the one of 1929, and we had to work hard to live. Father bought the old Lollard farm on Lollard’s Creek about six miles from Drake’s Creek for $1,500.00. As a lad of 18 or 19, I sometimes earned a dollar a day making railroad ties. I would take them eight miles across the mountain for another $1.10.”

Those moving to Drakes’s Creek, Arkansas with John Floyd Eugene Vandiver and his wife, Rhoda Lucinda Souther Vandiver were children John Joseph, 17 at the time of the move; James Harley, age 15; Frances Rosanna, age 13; Marion Thomas, age 11; Della Lucinda, age 9; Sarah Evelyn, age 8; Nellie Mae, age 5; Hartwell Franklin, age 4; and Callie Buenaulsta, age 2. Two years after they settled at Drake’s Creek, Arkansas, Rhoda Lucinda Souther gave birth to her thirteenth and last child, another son, Jesse Edward Vandiver born in 1897. They had left behind in Georgia married children Mary A. Vandiver Smith, William Joshua Vandiver who married Ida Hilderbrand; and Cordelia Jane Vandiver who married Andrew Jackson Townsend.

Death claimed the young Andrew Jackson Townsend on November 27, 1897 and he was buried at Old Liberty. Delia joined her parents in Arkansas, with her two young children, Mary Margaret Townsend (b. February 1, 1894) and Andrew Jackson Townsend, Jr. (born December 1, 1896).

Note: Rhoda Lucinda Souther (August 21, 1853 - June 24, 1947) married on January 9, 1872 to John Floyd Edward Vandiver (October 3, 1849 – September 26, 1923) in Union County, Georgia, with Charles Crumley, Minister of the Gospel, performing the ceremony. Both were interred in Riverton Heights Memorial Cemetery, Seattle, Washington.

[Next: Another migration of the Vandivers from Drake’s Creek westward. Sources for this article: Memoirs of John Joseph Vandiver written in 1959; will of J. John Souther; and “Souther Family History” by Watson B. Dyer, 1988, pages 241-268.]

c2005 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published February 3, 2005 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Some Descendants of the Famed Adam Poole Vandiver

Several have commented that they particularly enjoyed my column of January 13, 2005 entitled “Adam Vandiver—Truth or Legend?” In it we traced facets of the stories Adam Poole Vandiver (1788-1877) told to a Mr. Lanman and collected in his book entitled “Letters from the Alleghany Mountains.” The legendary “Hunter of Tallulah” was, indeed, a living, breathing mountain man whose exploits are still kept alive through family history.

Mr. Theodore Thomas who moved in 1996 to Union County following his retirement, and who is involved with historical research and preservation, called to tell me that Adam Poole Vandiver was his great, great grandfather. Ted Thomas, as he is better known, was delighted to read an account of his ancestor’s notable exploits. Readers of “The Sentinel” will recall an article on May 6, 2004 about the restored turbine from the old Souther Mill of Choestoe having been donated to the Union County Historical Society in memory of Ted’s mother, Frances Rosanna Vandiver Thomas. His grandmother was Rhoda Lucinda Souther (1853-1947) who married John Floyd Edward Vandiver (1849-1923). Rhoda Lucinda was the daughter of John Souther (1803-1889) and Mary “Polly” Combs Souther (1807-1894). It was John Souther’s brother, Jesse William Souther, who built Souther Mill on Cane Creek, Choestoe, in 1848. The mill operated for almost 100 years.

John Floyd Edward Vandiver, Rhoda Lucinda Souther’s husband, was a son of George Vandyman Vandiver (1812-1910) and Frances Wheeler Vandiver (1816-1915). George was the second child of the famed Adam Poole Vandiver (1788-1877) and his first wife, Martha Whiting Vandiver (1794-1840).

John Paul Souther of Gainesville, Georgia, whose grandfather, Jesse William Souther founded the mill, and whose father, Jeptha, continued the milling tradition, and Ted Thomas are combining their historical interests and expertise to plan a marker placement at the location of the Souther Mill. The historical program is set for Saturday, April 30, 2005. Please watch for further announcements about this observation.

Rhoda Lucinda Souther was the twelfth and youngest child of John and Mary “Polly” Combs Souther. Her parents had purchased and settled about 1836 on four lots where the New Liberty Baptist Church is located today. In fact, Rhoda’s father gave land at the intersection of the four lots to build the church and cemetery. Both her parents were born in Wilkes County, NC, but had migrated to Rush County, Indiana before deciding to move to the Choestoe District of Union County, Georgia.

Just how Rhoda and John Floyd Edward Vandiver met is not known to this writer. But it was not that far from the section of White County, Georgia where Vandiver’s mother and father, George and Frances Wheeler Vandiver lived across the mountain to Choestoe. Rhoda and John very likely met at New Liberty Church and their courtship blossomed. They were married in Union County, Georgia January 9, 1872.

They lived at the old John Souther homeplace, she being the youngest of the twelve Souther children. Rhoda and John Vandiver had thirteen children, twelve of whom were born at the John Souther homeplace. The youngest was born in Asher, Arkansas, after the Vandivers moved west in 1895. From Arkansas the family moved to Wyoming and from Wyoming to Washington state.

Here is a listing of their children and birthdates: Mary A. Vandiver (1873) married Frank L. Smith; William Joshua Vandiver (1874) married Ida Hilderbrand; Cordelia Jane Vandiver (1876) married Andrew Jackson Townsend and Carl Sieverts; John Joseph Vandiver (1878) married Lula Mae Estee; James Harley Vandiver (1880) married Mae Larsen; Frances Rosanna Vandiver (1882) married John W. Thomas; Marion Thomas Vandiver (1884-1900); Della Lucinda Vandiver (1886) married Joseph McDonald, Chaney Canning and Carl Zieske; Sarah Evelyn Vandiver (1887) married John Durham; Nellie May Vandiver (1890) married Frank Whitley; Hartwell Franklin Vandiver (1891) married Ella Hazel Blackwell; Callie Buenaulsta Vandiver (1893) married Barr Patton, ? Peabody, and Hans Peter Walloe; and the last child, Jesse Edward Vandiver (1897) was born in Arkansas and married Ella Frances Bielby.

The sense of adventure continued to succeeding generations from Adam Poole Vandiver as evidenced by the challenges and changes his descendants experienced.

[Sources for this article and the January 13 column on Adam Vandiver are the book “Souther Family History” by Watson Benjamin Dyer, 1988, pages 241-268 and a monograph by Cornelia Vandiviere Barton of Sorrento, LA on the Vandiver family: “Pedigree Chart” and “Adam Poole Vandiver Descendancy Chart.” -EDJ.]


c2005 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Jan. 27, 2005 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Adam Vandiver - Truth or Legend?

In stories that have been passed down through the generations, it is sometimes difficult to separate truth and legend. Such is the account of one Adam Vandiver, supposedly the progenitor of many of the Vandivers in Union County and other counties of the North Georgia mountains.

About the time gold fever struck the mountain region of North Georgia (1828) a traveler whose last name was Lanman wrote an account of what he saw in the mountains and of interesting people he met. His book entitled “Letters from the Alleghany Mountains” told of his meeting Adam Vandiver whom he called “the great hunter of Tallulah.”

Adam Vandiver was small of stature but his exploits measured to giant proportions. He was sixty years old when Lanman met him. Vandiver was described as having “a weasley face, a long white beard, and small gray eyes.” Born in South Carolina, he had spent his early manhood in the wilds of Kentucky, but had been for thirty years in the wilderness of the Georgia Mountains.

Vandiver told Lanman how he had been a soldier in the Creek War, killing more Indians than any other white man in the army. Thrice married, he was living with his third wife. He had fathered thirty children, but at the time of Lanman’s visit, only five of his offspring were under the Vandiver roof, the others having died young or were “scattered to the winds.”

Vandiver had one mule and some goats, and faithful hunting dogs. His main occupation was hunting the mountains of North Georgia. At the onset of hunting season in November, he provisioned himself with steel traps, food for himself and the mule, his gun and such ammunition as was available to him at the time. He set out to undertake his “fire hunting” and “still hunting.”

He named his mule after a well-known tale “The Devil and Tom Walker.” He preferred deer for their hides, but saved the fur of almost any four-legged creature he could trap or kill. The largest number of deer skins he took home at one time was 600. He estimated he had killed over 4,000 deer in his lifetime.

He practiced ingenuity and cunning in pursuit of his wild prey. One day he spotted a fine gray wolf and aimed his gun at its head. The wolf escaped into a cave. Vandiver waited, but hearing nothing he went in, thinking the wolf had died. In the back of the small cave, the wounded wolf and Vandiver engaged in a life-or-death encounter, with the wolf receiving Vandiver’s knife to its heart. On dragging out the wolf, he discovered that his initial shot had broken the animal’s jawbone and because of that the hunter’s life was spared.

One day when Vandiver was completely out of ammunition, a large black bear assaulted one of his favorite hunting dogs and was about to squeeze it to death. Vandiver took on the bear and again landed his trusty hunting knife in the big bear’s heart. The victory was not without its price, for Vandiver lost two of his fingers to his own sharp knife. The bear weighed 350 pounds, a formidable enemy for the small man to wrestle.

Another battle was with a buck which Vandiver shot at the top of a 30-foot high precipice. Thinking the deer dead, he approached it, but was assaulted by the deer which pushed Vandiver over the cliff into a pond of water below. The deer got away, and Vandiver suffered no broken bones, thanks to the pool that somewhat softened his fall. About a month later, the mighty hunter killed a buck with a bad neck wound. He felt sure he had finally killed the deer that had pushed him over the precipice.

In Union County, on one of the loftiest mountains, Vandiver heard the howl of a wolf at twilight. He climbed upon an outcropped boulder to try to determine the direction of the wolf’s howl. While on the rock, it loosened and began its rapid descent into the ravine a half-mile below. As good fortune would have it, an oak tree grew beside the rock with a strong limb drooped over the rock. In desperation, Vandiver grabbed the limb and held on for dear life. The thunderous thud of the rock as it struck the ground in the ravine below was a vivid reminder of his narrow escape. He dropped from the limb to the very spot the boulder had vacated. He told Mr. Lanman that he did not care one whit for pursuing the finest game in the wilderness for one whole day after that incident.

Was this legendary “Hunter of Tallulah” a real person? Yes. Male children in the Vandiver family to this very day are given the name Adam to honor this progenitor.

In cemetery records of Habersham County, Georgia, I found listed in a very old unnamed cemetery in the Shirley Grove Community the name of Adam Poole Vandiver, born August 21, 1788 and died February 19, 1876. Whether this is the grave of “the hunter of Tallulah” who wandered over Union, Towns, Rabun, White, Lumpkin and Habersham Counties in pursuit of game, I know not for sure.* But the dates would certainly match those of the hero of the hunting escapades recorded by one Mr. Lanman in the nineteenth century.

[*Note: Later, I learned the grave is, indeed, that of Adam Poole Vandiver, the “Hunter of Tallulah.”]

c2005 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published January 13, 2005 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.