A Quick Visit to the William Bankhead Home in Jasper

On our annual summer trip this past July brother Richard and I made a stop in Jasper, where we have ancestors buried in  Oak Hill Cemetery. You can read about some of them here. Also buried in that cemetery are members of one of Alabama's most prominent families, the Bankheads. As we were leaving Jasper we passed by one of the town's two Bankhead homes and decided to have a look.

More comments are below. 

The impressive stone below marks the final resting places for John Hollis Bankhead and his wife Tallulah. A Civil War veteran, Bankhead was variously a farmer, warden of the state penitentiary at Wetumpka, businessman, and a U.S. Representative for 20 years and a U.S. Senator from 1907 until his death in 1920. 

His son John also became a U.S. Senator for three terms. Another son William became Speaker of the U.S. House, and daughter Marie director of the state archives for many years. Granddaughter and actress Tallulah was named after his wife. Various other members of the family are buried in Oak Hill also.

John Hollis Bankhead's home built in 1910 is also in Jasper. His granddaughter, future actress Tallulah and her sister Eugenia lived in this house when John was not in Washington for Congressional sessions.

Source: Wikipedia

John Hollis Bankhead [1842-1920]

Source: Wikipedia

As the marker below notes, William Bankhead's daughter, actress Tallulah, was married in this house in 1937 to actor John Emery. Three years later Bankhead died and President Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and other dignitaries came to Jasper for his funeral and burial. 

If we had arrived a couple of hours earlier that Friday afternoon, we could have seen the inside.

William B. Bankhead [1874-1940]

Source: Wikipedia

This artwork is located on the walkway from the parking lot to the front entrance of the house.

This house is located on the Bankhead Plantation in Sulligent, Lamar County, where the Bankhead family settled in 1818 after moving from South Carolina. John Greer Bankhead built this house in 1850, eight years after son John Hollis was born. 

A Quick Visit to Posey's Hardware in Jasper

Each year my brother Richard and I take a trip together, usually through some part of Alabama exploring family and state history. This year's trip was short, but we still managed to get in a few places. This post is the second in a series about the trip; the first one is here. 

As we were leaving Jasper on Saturday morning, we stopped at Andrew Posey and Son, Hardware Plumbing and Gifts at the corner of Elliott Blvd. [Alabama 69] and 20th Street West. Cleaning out some files recently, I had found a 1985 newspaper article about the store, and we decided to check it out. 

The place needs its own historical marker. G.R. Posey constructed the building in 1919 and rented it to a grocer until 1924 when he bought that business. At some point I guess the groceries were phased out and hardware moved in. Son Andrew later took it over and then passed it to his son Hershel. At the time of the 1985 article, Hershel's son Randy had returned to Jasper to help with the business. 

The store has a wide array of kitchen and household items, tools, and so forth that you won't find at Home Depot or Wal-Mart. The place is stuffed to the gills with practical things, gift items and lots of plain silly stuff. I bought something, of course--a Posey's coffee mug!

I've made comments under a couple of the photos below. Here's the citation for that 1985 article:

Crowson, Bryan. 'The Last Place on Earth' Need a washboard? A new mule collar? Posey likely has it. Birmingham News 29 September 1985 

Many years ago we bought one of those red wagons to haul our kids around in the back yard. Dianne now uses if to hold flower pots in the back of the lot. 

Since I'm an Auburn fan, some of the products were not very appealing. 

One of my uncles worked at Coca Cola bottling operations for many years and collected much memorabilia. He would have appreciated this corner. 

Here you can see some of the variety of goods available. Throughout the store many old items not for sale are on display, like the glass bottles on this shelf. The place is thus both a store and an educational look at some of the many products humans have manufactured to make life easier.

Quick Visits to Bessemer & Jasper

Recently my brother Richard and I took one of our annual trips together seeking Alabama and family history. Last year's July trip took us to several places that I've written about: Aberfoil, Brundidge, Camp Hill, Tallassee and Union Springs. Once I scan some photos I have earlier years to discuss as well.

We've decided we're probably going to stop taking these trips in July. We're thinking more along the lines of January or February next time. 

As is usually the case, we started our trip this year on Friday with the Alabama Numismatic Society's annual show at the Bessemer Civic Center. Richard is the coin and currency collector in the family, an interest he picked up from dad. I've always been curious about coins and currency, though, and learn a few things each time we go. 

I have fond memories of dad's collecting in the days before he became interested in archaeology. He would often come home from work on Fridays with large bags of coins he'd gotten at the bank, and the three of us would go through them looking for goodies. 

The show also has dealers selling other items, and I've picked up old maps of Birmingham and Alabama there in the past. This year I spent some time going through numerous old Alabama postcards.

We left the coin show around 4 pm and headed on surface roads through Bessemer, Midfield, and Birmingham toward Jasper. We were looking for Green Top Bar-B-Q in Dora, where Richard remembered eating back in the 1970's. We had wonderful bar-b-q plates there; we always manage to enjoy such places on our trips. The restaurant has some history of its own, having opened when "Truman was President" as their web site proclaims.

Then we left for Oak Hill Cemetery in Jasper. My comments about that portion of the trip are below. The city of Jasper is not named after the semi-precious gemstone, by the way, but after a Revolutionary War hero from South Carolina named William Jasper. 

In the weeks to come I'll be posting more on places we visited on this trip. 

We have some ancestors buried in the cemetery, but we found a few other interesting markers first. Near the cemetery entrance is the gravestone above that marks the final resting place of William Haynes Bankhead Perry. Born in South Carolina, he died in Jasper in November 1915. His wife was Louise Bankhead; as we'll see Perry married into a prominent family in Jasper and Alabama.

His stone was carved by Giuseppe Moretti, the Italian sculpture responsible for promoting Sylacauga marble in many works and the iron Vulcan on Red Mountain. Moretti created only 14 cemetery memorials. 

The graves above and below mark various members of the Bankhead family, prominent in Jasper, Alabama, and beyond. A number of them are buried in Oak Hill.

 Below is the impressive stone for John Hollis Bankhead and his wife Tallulah. A Civil War veteran, Bankhead was variously a farmer, warden of the state penitentiary at Wetumpka, businessman, and a U.S. Representative for 20 years. His son John became a U.S. Senator, son William Speaker of the U.S. House, and daughter Marie director of the state archives for many years. Granddaughter and actress Tallulah was named after his wife. 

Some of our Shores and Samford ancestors can be found in a more modest section of the cemetery. The other side of this stone reads "Samford".

This area brother Richard is walking has a number of our Shores and Samford ancestors. 

My maternal grandparents Tempe and John Miller Shores are both buried in this family plot. My grandmother died two months after I was born; mom says she got to see me before her death. 

My grandfather served many years as a minister in the North Alabama Conference of the Methodist Church. 

Another Shores ancestor practiced medicine in Alabama for many years. 

Lydia Ann Edwards [1833-1879] was the first wife of James Wilson Shores [1828-1918], another long-serving Methodist minister in the family. In the early part of his career he was a circuit rider, and the state archives has his journal for the 1850's. An excerpt can be read here. He and his second wife are buried in Montgomery.

Lydia was originally buried in a Dallas County cemetery that in recent years had been abandoned and become overgrown. Eventually several members of the family and an archaeologist disinterred her remains and moved them to this location in Jasper. Very little actually survived, but the broken gravestone came with them. That's another story I may tell one day.