CORRECTING HISTORY

Many years ago, in the early 1990’s, my Aunt Jessie and I were having a conversation about my mother and her sister Sarah’s (aka Johnnie Lee’s) father, Harry Carillur. Aunt Jessie told me that he had passed away in Philadelphia when we were living on Kay Avenue in Trevose. She came upon his death notice in the Afro-American newspaper back in the late 1960’s. She did tell my mother about this, but she stated that “Suh, just ignored me”.

So off Aunt Jessie and I went on a quest to find this news article. She and I traveled to the Philadelphia Archive located on Vine Street to scan the microfilmed copies of the Afro-American newspaper. We spent many hours browsing but we could never find this article. Reading down the next few lines you will be able to see why!

A few years later, while speaking to Uncle Izear, he told me that grandmoms’ first husband, Harry Carillur drowned, while crossing a river in Georgia, when mom and Sarah were little girls. He supposedly worked in Georgia at the time. Over the years, I think that this was quite possible especially after finding his WWI draft registration card at Ancestry.com. All men between the age of 18 and 44 had to register for this draft. Harry’s registration took place in Pierce County, Georgia on June 5th, 1917. At that time he was working for the Davis Zirkle Lumber Mill in Zirkle, Pierce County, Georgia where he resided.

Internet: Zirkle, Georgia does not exist today. Before 1926, Zirkle was the second largest town in Pierce County. It had a saw mill and more than 300 workers who processed lumber every day. There were stores and homes. In 1926 the saw mill closed production and the town was no more. Zirkle’s population went to zero. Slowly the community went back to nature as the vegetation took over the buildings and evidence of the town disappeared.

Money that was used to pay for items in the town

The registration record indicates that he was born on April 15th, 1894 in Union Springs, Alabama and that he had a wife and 2 children. Even more surprising at this time, is that he signed the card with his own name, which was quite rare. Most Black men signed with an “X”.

The reason why I am correcting history is because recently Ancestry.com loaded a myriad of marriage records to their database and I received a “leaf” under William Webb’s name. The leaf was for a marriage record for him and Hannah Corillus dated May 17, 1919. Uncle Izear did tell me that were never married. Not true!

Also, I can understand why mom ignored Aunt Jessie because at that time her facts were out of sync with the reality of the situation! Plus, mom did not like talking about the past and did not like to share information.