It was, of course, the name - Brumfield - that got my attention. A direct descendant of William Brumfield (1788-1850), I am not one to give ancestry short shrift. By 1814 my great-great-great- grandfather William Brumfield, who had been born to John and Margaret "Peggy" Kelly Brumfield - he was their firstborn - around the year 1788 in South Carolina, had moved west with his parents and family to what was to become Washington Parish.
He was part of the 12th Constitutional Regiment, Louisiana Militia during the Battle of New Orleans in the winter of 1814-1815 - you know, when "the British kept-a-comin'." (Johnny Horton) William Brumfield was part of the band of men from Washington Parish who journeyed to Ben's Ford where pioneers-turned-soldiers joined General Andrew Jackson, continuing on with him to New Orleans where they fought the redcoats.
William Brumfield was not only a soldier but also a politician. An influential individual, he represented Washington Parish in the Louisiana Constitutional Convention in 1825 and participated in the convention which provided the Louisiana Constitution of 1845. In addition, William Brumfield was the Sheriff of Washington Parish in 1829, serving for a second term in 1835.
He was married to Harriet Statham (perhaps Harriet Margaret Statham) by 1820, and the couple had at least nine children. Historically listed were Lucinda, who married Alexander C. Bickham, Sheriff of Washington Parish and State Representative; Louisa Anna Brumfield, who married Sanderlin Walker Bickham, Parish Police Jury President and Clerk of Court; George Yancy Brumfield, who married Martha Penny; Barksdale Wade Brumfield, who married Mary Brown; John Quincy Brumfield, who married Dorcas Magee, first, Mary Dillon, second, and Easter K. Grimsley, third; Thomas Colter Brumfield (my great-great-grandfather), who married Sophronia Magee; Ridley Brumfield, who was perhaps actually the son of the late Fleming Tynes Brumfield and wife Elizabeth - he may have been apprenticed to William who was executor of Fleming's estate; Martha, who has been listed as a known child but who probably was not William and Harriet's daughter (though the 1850 census for William Brumfield evidences a Martha, age 20, this was the wife of son George Yancy Brumfield); and William "Bill" Brumfield who married Sarah Lewis, with whom he is buried in the Beulah Baptist Church cemetery in Bolivar, Louisiana. Hold onto your hat for the rest of the story, in Part Two of this series.
The elder William Brumfield also was a Mason in the Franklinton Lodge, where he achieved distinction as a Master Mason in 1851. He died in 1868 and was buried on his homeplace which, with a storied history as a tavern, the Palestine Post Office, and even election precinct, subsequently became known as the Leon Bankston place. This was the William Brumfield that I knew, or rather had heard of, all my life.
But through my daughter Betsy, who took his course in Russian Art History as an undergraduate at Tulane some ten years ago, I became acquainted with another William Brumfield - Dr. William Craft Brumfield, Professor of Slavic Studies and Sizeler Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University.
An acclaimed historian of Russian architecture and the recipient in 2000 of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Russian History, Dr. Brumfield has amassed a mound of awards for his work in the field, too many for me to do justice. He has written a legion of books, with his latest "Journeys Through The Russian Empire: The Photographic Legacy of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky" a veritable masterpiece published by Duke University Press. A gorgeous book, I swooned when I saw it. Over six pounds in weight and over 500 pages in length, the ponderous product came out in the summer of 2020 - a miracle in light of the timing, if you ask me. Our autographed copy - a true treasure - offers insight to a place we will not have the courage to visit. And just as appealing is Dr. William Craft Brumfield's book "Architecture at the End of the Earth: Photographing the Russian North." Both works - an avenue for seeing Russia without going - are available on Amazon.
Dr. Brumfield's photographic exhibits have appeared not only at the New Orleans Museum of Art but also at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Duke University Museum of Art, the M.I.T Wolk Gallery, and at the Odegaard Library at the University of Washington in Seattle. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Humble yet virtuosic, Dr. William Brumfield has his own collection in the Department of Image Collections at the National Gallery of Art in our nation's capital - probably his crowning achievement. Desirous of collecting, printing, and curating his photographs, they approached him. And in 2000, at the behest of James H. Billington - the renowned, revered Librarian of the Library of Congress for almost thirty years - the Library of Congress decided to digitize Brumfield's entire collection. All of this, I learned in early March at The New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University where Dr. Brumfield spoke to a packed house not only about his prolific work but also about Russia's devastating invasion of Ukraine. Stay tuned for more on that and the Brumfield family, next week, in part 2 of this series.
Credit for the Brumfield history herein goes to two late renowned historians Dr. E. Russ Williams, Jr., and his 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" (1994), and my Mama Dell Magee Clawson and her "Fields of Broom" series," derived and updated from her book "Fields of Broom" book (1972), published in "The Tylertown Times" from 2014 to 2018.
