Traveling Home

    In the last several years I have posted many blogs about the Sacred Harp Singings. I attended my first one in August of 2006 best of my memory. Kiri  Miller of Brown wrote Traveling Home and has a picture about midway through the book near my home giving directions to the Piney Grove Singing where Bud Oliver, one time mayor of Collinsville, Alabama and a first name acquaintance of both President Bush 41 and JFK Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was a legend. He passed away a couple years ago.

If you can't click on this link, copy and paste for grand review of Kiri's book though I do take umbrage at the phrase "ignorant Hillbillies" though folks from Yale and Brown and Princeton who I've met in ten short years at the singings will profess is not the case now of the folks, some bunheaded they now sing with in DeKalb County , Alabama

   http://www.curledup.com/travhome.htm

    He and double first cousin S. T. Reed kept the Singing going for the last 60 some years. The two are double first cousins and I'm kin to all of them and ST's three sisters.

   Here is how I had it explained to me Sunday by one of the sisters at Jacks in Collinsville.

    The graves are in the Rocky Mount Cemetery if anybody wants to check.

    My great grandfather John Sanders Jordan had a sister named Louisa Jane born in 1836. John was born in 41 and his son my Grandfather James Columbus in 81.

   Louisa Jane married Nathaniel Reed who had a son William Tell --I guess named after the overture. "Telly" 's sister was Bud Oliver's Mother and Telly's children were S.T. and the sisters.

   Here are ST's sisters:   Lula Wagner, Sue Wills, Eulene Dobbs and Ardell Turnure, four sisters it turns out. Sue is a member of the Ruhama Baptist Church where Momma's first cousin Luther and Geneva Reed son Scott is the choir director. Two of his children are pharmacists, one in Fyffe. I think that's right

   So that's how I'm bloodkin to the heart of the Sacred Harp community of North Alabama and the world, cause Bud was international, and the movie Cold Mountain.

    Bud told me a great story about 2010. Grandfather Jordan had a brother, Roscoe, Uncle Rock who was Momma's favorite. I asked in my direct ancestry was active in the singings before my time. Bud said my grandfather came to a few, but Roscoe was a regular, came about every year. Said he wasn't much of a singer but did have a reputation.  Said back in the 30s and 40s they  called him Cake cause that's what he liked about it best, the dinner on the ground.