Ta k i n g a L o o k B a c k , L o c a l l y
RETROSPECTIVE D SECTION
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J A N U A R Y
13, 2011
F e a m h t i
THE MORGAN COUNTY CITIZEN
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n the turn-of-the-century South, Anna Charleston, a woman, an African-American born a slave, died the owner of 172 acres in Morgan County. Forward three generations and, in 2010, Anna’s land, the Charleston-Allen Farm, located at Jordan and Bethany roads, was granted a Centennial Family Farm Award. This award, given by the state’s Centennial Farm program, commemorates farms owned by members of the same family for 100 or more years. Seated in her living room, the giant TV blaring daytime soaps then muted juxtaposed with pictures of family – new and old – on the coffee tables and educational honors covering the walls, 91-year-old Odessa Allen Hall and her daughter, Sandra Cummings, who is there readying her mother for a trip to Atlanta, recount the more than 100 years of history that have brought their family to this place – or the years that have brought this place into their family. Anna was born in Morgan County in 1860, three years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. In all, she had six children. The first, Alameda Charleston, was born in 1880, 10 years prior to Anna’s second child. Alameda was the child of Anna and a wealthy, white, Morgan County landowner who had a wife, but no children of his own. The nature of her parentage meant Alameda kept her mother’s last name. Because she was his only heir, Alameda’s father deeded her 365 acres. He left the set of deeds with Anna when Alameda was only 5 years old. The land became Alameda’s when she reached 18 and was thought to be mature enough. But Alameda was frivolous, Hall remembers. She took three or four husbands. “Those men were marrying her because she had that property,” Hall said. She married first in Morgan County, a man named Jim. They had two children, who Jim kidnapped and took to Texas. To this day, neither Hall nor Cummings knows what happened to those children. She moved to Atlanta, married again. She moved to Indianapolis. She took housekeeping jobs “because she was immaculate,” Hall said. Housekeeper to a wealthy man in Indiana, he left Alameda his house. She died in the 1950s and is buried in Indiana. But this story isn’t really about Alameda. It’s about Anna. Sensing her daughter’s frivolity, Anna had Alameda deed her 172 of the 365 acres in 1902. Alameda’s remaining 193 acres were lost or foreclosed on, but Anna was able to turn her acreage into a prosperous farm, growing cotton and corn and raising cattle and pigs, among other things. Her brother and her own children helped her maintain the property. In fact, according to the Centennial Farm Award application, Anna’s daughter, Ola, became the plow hand after Anna’s son, Sam, left to join the Army and serve in World War I. Anna’s second daughter, Mattie, married a man named Wesley Allen in 1917 – these are Hall’s parents. More than Anna’s son-in-law, Wesley helped to manage Anna’s farm. He was also a skilled business man. Upon Anna’s death in 1918, her land was divided among her five children, not including Alameda. Wesley made the three sisters (there were four including Mattie, who Wesley was married to) and brother a deal, and was able to purchase all of the shares of Anna’s land save for one; Cora Charleston Pettigrew didn’t sell her share to Wesley (and that land, about 25 acres of the original 172, is still owned by Cora’s family; however, when Cora died and her land was split among her three children, one of the children didn’t want her share, so Hall bought it and now owns a stake in Cora’s acreage). A sole clue to who Alameda’s father was surfaces here, with the division of Anna’s property. “According to a division of property recorded in the records of 1918 in Morgan County, upon Anna’s death this division was mediated by the [Orrs] who also owned the surrounding property of Anna’s 172 acres. This leads us to believe that one of the [Orrs] was Alameda’s father but we are still trying to locate his will because we do not know his first name,” according to application for the Centennial Farm award, written by Cummings. This left Wesley and Mattie with 147 acres of Anna’s land. Wesley then bought 52 surrounding acres from the Orrs, for a total of 199 acres. Upon the death of Jim Orr, Wesley received another 52 acres. “My daddy (Wesley) had taken care of Mr. Jim,” Hall remembered. “Mr. Jim was afraid of the thunderstorm. He would come over to the house and stay until it would blow over.”
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T H U R S D A Y
A story of generations, families intertwined, a farm and race relations in Morgan County STORY BY KATHRYN SCHILIRO
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MANAGING EDITOR
Odessa Hall (left) and Sandra Cummings pose on the family's Morgan County land while holding the Centennial Farm certificates for both the Garfield Hall farm (Leo Hall's family farm in Bulloch County) and the Charleston-Allen farm (the Morgan County farm located at Jordan and Bethany roads.) Photo by A. Bellebuono
See FAMILY Page 2D