So many of my genealogical musings have centered either on navel gazing or on highlighting the sensational. When looking for ancestral bread crumb trails, it’s much easier to find a newspaper article decrying violence, drug use, or some other kind of debauchery. Occasionally there is a social note that reads like old-school Facebook (Mrs. So-and-so went to the neighboring town on Saturday for a picnic and a visit to Mrs. This-and-that). But the bits that have a little more meat to chew on are the series of articles about a shooting, or an arrest, or something along those lines with a point of debate. (Did it really happen that way??)
I’ve spent a lot of time gathering info on what happened to Andrew Holt, because it’s low-hanging fruit and plays into a true crime sort of interest, as well as an interest I have in understanding what it was like to live in Oklahoma’s Love County and Carter County in the early 20th century. What was life like on that part of the Red River straddled by Texas and Oklahoma? What led people to make choices or be impacted by a system that led them to be sensationalized in the newspaper?
The last few years of my personal life have been really packed with living in the present, so I haven’t had a lot of time to muse in the past lately. But I do have just a few moments now to pick up something I was working on a few years ago when I came across a whole series of newspaper nibbles that have an entirely positive angle. In the early 20th century The Marietta Herald had sections with local town news, including Greenville, Love County, Oklahoma. And in these pages I see a piece of an ancestor that I’ve heard so many stories about – yet there is still more to learn about who she was.
Nannie who had red hair and a love of flowers. Nannie who married and divorced my great grandpa twice, and then was buried next to her friend Woodrow. Nannie who sold Studio Girl cosmetics. Nannie who went to almost all my Mom’s basketball games growing up. Nannie who cared for everyone.
I have fuzzy childhood memories of visiting Nannie when I was young, before she passed away in 2003. Since then she’s lived on in stories from my own Mom and Grandma, and others in our family who also have living memories of her. But there’s also a part of Nannie, of Julia Holt, in the newspaper that is not sensational, but is also so us, in her work ethic, in her activities, in her organizing. And part of processing the complicated past is not only engaging with the family history true crime genre. There are past things to reckon with, but there are also people to love.
In the Marietta Monitor Greenville section, Nannie is listed as sophomore class Vice President in December 1928. She was also the basketball team captain for at least two years. Commenting on the captains, the Monitor said, “Good leaders mean much for any activity. It would be hard to find better sports than Sam [the boys team captain] and Julia.” (She was guard on the basketball team, which makes sense based on how tall our family is, hah!) The following year Julia was class Secretary, and as a senior she was once again Vice President.
As a kid I organized clubs in elementary school, then volunteered and ran for high school student government. Now I volunteer for professional society committee leadership. And here is my great grandma, doing this almost 100 years ago!
While Julia’s older brother Andrew Holt became tangled up with prohibition, alcohol, and law enforcement, his little sister led in student government and basketball. I won’t stop exploring the challenging dark parts of the past, but there is also a need to highlight the good. And know that nothing is absolute – acknowleding the good is not erasing the dark, and vice versa. Like most everything else, the past is complicated. There’s more of mine to mine in the Marietta Monitor, but that’s all the time I have to muse about the past today.
Illuminated Past 