I have been at this digging up my roots thing for about a week because I was watching a show on DNA testing of Jewish immigrants and how they can determine where they migrated from and which tribe they were in. Fascinated, I started searching on google the Womack name, on the first page I found Womack Genealogy Network. First thing that pops out at me is Halifax Co Womacks, that's where I was from! Click on it and I see Robert Lemuel Womack and Pattie Roberts. They were my Grandfathers parents, I knew where they lived because my grandmother's father lived there.
After my parents Garnett McGuire Womack and Linda Galye Arendall moved to Manassas, Va in 1967, when we would travel home we would travel down 360 turn onto Mountain Rd, as soon as we hit the railway tracks my father would start singing "Welcome home, country road" song of John Denver. As we passed by Robert's land my dad would say "That's Uncle Will's Farm". It is a huge place, long flat driveway, with apple trees on each side of it. The house it self is a typical farm house of the 1800's. A two story, with very large ceilings, and odd shaped rooms due to add on's over the last 100 years. Around the house is a large group of trees. The tobacco fields were beyond it but you could not see it from the house, you had to walk some distance to it. This area of land is far superior to my grandfathers land Charlie Walker Womack b 1911, his is further down the road about 4 miles along the Wynn Creek. Papa's land is hilly very difficult to plow.
Well past Uncle Will's place on the left of the road is large abandoned house with ivy covering it, I have been asking my father and grandfather who owned that land since I was a little girl they did not know. Next to it is our church, Bethel Baptist Church, my parents were married there, I learned about Jesus there, and my grandfather is buried there. Now my Uncle "Tiny" Lemuel Womack is buried there, I cannot remember his middle name but I think it is Lemuel Robert Womack d 2008, But knew about this unusual name because I would often grill my grandmother Catherine White Womack about it, why she named him that and my dad too.
Up down up down the road, hence the name Mountain Rd, then at the top of the hill we can see the big one, just beyond that is "Home" There would always be excitement in the car as we ventured down the hill passed the creek we used to wade in as a kid, my sister and I, Marie Annette Womack, then we would crest the hill. To the right is my Uncle CJ's home, Charles Jackson Womack, he was born at home as was all of my Uncles with the exception of Uncle Tiny who was more than a month late and he was born a drawf. My grandfather use to tell me that Uncle Tiny was no bigger that his hand. He slept in a drawer on top of a pillow. They would feed him with an eye dropper. Well back to Uncle CJ, he almost died and so did my grandmother, he was born birch. Long, long delivery.
Take a very sharp right onto the driveway down a little bend in the drive way and there is the house. Little white house with a large front porch and a bright green tin roof. Over to the left are two barns. The back of the house is a shed, often he would be feeding a pig to be butchered then it would be taken to the front barn for smoking. In the distance, on the back of the property is a tobacco barn. I would go in there in the summer and be drunk with the smell. Today, if I am out shopping and I see a cigar room in a store I have go in it and I can just picture myself in the barn looking up viewing rows and rows of tobacco, strung on wooden poles filling the entire barn.
My grandfather was a tobacco farmer until the 1960's, he learned that tobacco caused cancer and he knew that his other family members that did not put money into social security did not have anything to live on. My grandfather went to work in a water plant on the Bannister River. He would often take us with him when he had to check on things. My grandfather was a good financial planner, he would tell us grand kids we needed to buy land. He began to rent out part of the land to horses. On that side of the land, my grandfather, father, and uncles planted rows and rows of white pine, he did this to block the wind from being so fierce on the home. As kids we would roam the place, eat the blackberries along the fence where the horses were. Later on though when the horses left, my grandad rented the land out to cow farmers. I can hear him calling the cows to feed them, they knew his voice.
Closer to the house, behind the house and along the other side are two fields for vegetables close to the kitchen my grandmother had beautiful flowers that you could see from the window as you washed the dishes. Inside the house as you walk in the door is a large fireplace to the left is a room about 15 x 12, can you imagine 25 to 30 of all of us in that little space for Christmas well we did it, My grandparents had 4 boys, I have not mentioned my last uncle Uncle Earnest Lee Womack. Altogether 9 grandchildren and my children and my cousins children 11 great-grandchildren all along with wives and husbands fitting into that little space. My grandmother would have a little Christmas tree.
That is a glimmer of my fondest memories. So as I am reading the post on WGN I am filled with emotions I have actually seen the places and walked on the land of Abraham, William, Henry, and Robert E. but did not know they even existed. What if when I was a girl playing at Bethel outside that land was Abraham's? I want to know this. I want to be able to take my kids home and show them this was William and Rebecca's place, that was Henry and Susan's place. I also want to learn as much as I can about them. I will be posting on this sight my feelings and hypothesis about what kind of persons they appear to be from the data that we have.
For know I am logging off my husband discovered a flat tire on the car and it has to be fixed I am going to Richmond in the morning for the inaugural of the next Governor of Va Bob McDonnell, I am a history buff and a political junkie, In Richmond I plan to go to the Museum to learn how to read ancient documents so that I too can be a researcher for the Womack family.
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