"I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in." ---Robert Louis Stevenson.
My infatuation with books began when I was knee high to a grasshopper. In the years before I could visit a bookshop or order on-line, the Washington Parish Library plied me with books. Fortunately, my mother and father introduced me to the library early on. I hear talk of present-day parents who, in a valiant attempt to limit screen time, suggest to their children, "Why don't you read a book?" Yet in my youth, my mother was forced to take the opposite approach, not only to get my attention but to get me to the supper table, "Time to get your nose out of that book." A bookworm, I religiously carried books on my person.
And the more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same. Check my tote. It was Thomas Jefferson who said, "A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools." Accordingly, these days I'm either reading a book or hunting for one.
And apparently, I'm not in the minority. Not that long ago, Cynthia McGehee, a Baton Rouge native, kindly contacted me about a book. The wife of Bogalusa native Michael McGehee, who retired from the U.S. Air Force, she resides with her husband in Washington Parish on, where else but, McGehee Road.
Cynthia, a retired teacher, was looking for renowned historian Dr. E. Russ Williams's book "History of Washington Parish, Louisiana, 1798-1992 The Story Of A Land And People On Three Rivers: The Pearl, The Bogue Chitto, and The Tangipahoa in Southeast Louisiana." Searching for her own copy, she wanted to know where I got mine.
Cynthia certainly wasn't the first to inquire about this invaluable resource, and I doubt that she will be the last. I came into the terrific treatise the easy way - I inherited it. On my mother's bookshelf, it was a resource to which she and my dad often turned.
Despite my mother's best effort to get me to look up from my books, both she and my father were voracious readers. They had a significant library of books that, extending far beyond genealogy, ranged from the Civil War to World War II, and all the time in between. Volumes on Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and Winston Churchill - the usual suspects - filled their built-ins which were chockablock with books. And my husband Rodney and I took them all in - our barrister, bureau, and breakfront bookcases are brimming with books.
While Dr. E. Russ Williams's books (more on this in a future column) are indubitably the most valuable for the purpose of research on Washington Parish, my folks had several other interesting works which migrated to my home. For example, after my mother passed away Rodney found, in the built-in bookshelves of her sitting room, volumes I and II of the "Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant" published in New York by Charles L. Webster & Company in 1886. We were astounded. "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.
Speculating about where Mama acquired these rare books, I figure that they came from The House of Many Gables, a local antique shop owned and operated back in the day by Victory Green and Barbara Carter. The exquisite shop was situated in the present-day home of my good friend Bonnie Green Pope (Ms. Victory's daughter), with whom I reconnected last year, and her husband. And it was there that my mother's close friends Victory and Barbara had special, old books for sale, scattered about period pieces. A customer, collector, and bibliophile in her own right, my mother would not have overlooked them.
If I were to connect my dad with a rare book on our bookshelf, it would be "Bogalusa Story" privately printed by C. W. Goodyear in 1950 in Buffalo, New York. Having both enjoyed his hospital career and served the military in the Magic City, the storied history of Bogalusa brought about by the Goodyear brothers was of great interest to the Mississippi native.
At this juncture, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the late, well known lawyer Richard Watts, a Franklinton native who owned a significant collection of rare books housed in floor-to-ceiling bookcases at his home in Fleetwood. It was in talking with his niece Sarah Watts - one of my closest friends with whom I grew up in Franklinton - that I understood the significance of the immense collection. I regret never having had the chance to admire it. Unfortunately, it's always later than we think.
Yet, it's not too late to acquire a great book. It was one recent summer that I came across a terrific find at the Varnado Store Museum in Franklinton. Tipping off Cynthia McGehee, I offered the details so she could acquire this particular publication - "Washington Parish, Louisiana Cemetery Census" published in 2011 by Joseph Woodberry Sumrall, Sr. It was available for sale at our local museum. An all-inclusive resource on local cemeteries (Ellis, Ponemah, and hundreds more) and their inhabitants, the book is a perfect tool for anyone conducting ancestry research in Washington Parish. I urge anyone interested in genealogy to add Mr. Sumrall's book to his/her library. You, and your heirs, will be grateful.
But before any of us are entered in such a "Cemetery Census," we continue to turn the pages. I was contacted late last year about just that by Bogalusan Dr. Evelyn C. Brumfield who faithfully follows my column - fan mail is my favorite. My piece on renowned author John Grisham struck her fancy; Evelyn is an avid Grisham fan, with a collection of his books. A kind, congenial lady, she was looking to read "Framed," a recent release of his, cowritten with Jim McCloskey, which addresses wrongful convictions.
While I also hope to read this book soon, I admit to having been preoccupied with "The Demon of Unrest" a recent work of Erik Larson. I highly recommend his excellent historical nonfiction books which I have read - "The Devil in the White City," "The Splendid and the Vile," "Thunderstruck," "In the Garden of Beasts," "Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania," and "Isaac's Storm." "The Devil in the White City" would be my top pick. Glued to the book, I was barely able to look up which my mother would find hardly a surprise.
