"Mother, my dear mother passed over when I was barely four. She died two weeks after Sister Mary's birth in the fall of 1810." A deep hurt showed in his eyes as he blinked at the wetness his memories evoked. "Henry and Martin tended me during her lying in, and during that terrifying exigency we all cried from the screams coming from her bedroom. Father paced in front of the door as the mid-wife helped mother. I can still hear the pitiful screams and feel Martin's arms around me."
With that, my ethereal traveler looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. "Well, sir, I believe I must go now. Pray, shall we continue our conversation here in the morning-about five suits me." Without my leave, he awkwardly slid out the booth seat. With his banged up hat in one hand and cane in the other, he walked out the front door into the thick morning fog, unnoticed by the other mortals. My eyes followed his movements. Through the large plate glass window, I saw him solemnly put on his old top hat and find his stride with the cane. He'd turned left-west-toward Tan Yard Creek and Rose Hill Cemetery.
I spent the rest of the day, some eight hours of daylight, tramping along the research trail in the Lincoln County Courthouse for deed and will information and the county archives for an estate inventory of my subject. I traversed the town, imagining the busy-ness along Tan Yard Creek one hundred and seventy-five years ago. In the early years, that area around Town Spring was Fayetteville's working district.
At the local library, I found George Washington Jones items in the microfilm records of The Fayetteville Observer newspaper. Mr. N.O. Wallace, Sr., founder and editor of the weekly from 1850 until the 1890s, published several articles on Mr. Jones. He ran a long memorial story after Jones died in late November 1884 and a speech by General John Morgan Bright eulogizing Mr. Jones. Former congressman Bright persisted in calling him Colonel Jones. It would appear that G.W. Jones was the victim of a quaint southern practice in which all prominent men were given the rank of colonel regardless of military service. My Jones was never a soldier. Given the occasion, Mr. Jones could hardly protest General Bright's graveside promotion.
While at the library I surveyed several of the resources on my home county history. I've learned in trying to see the past, a great deal of searching is required. Good and not so good records require study.
I had a brief visit with Don Wyatt, a local lawyer. Mr. Wyatt is county historian and owns a magnificent antique shop. Mr. Jones had spoken of him earlier in our interview. I suppose Mr. Jones had monitored our conversation. Mr. Wyatt's wares are of highest quality and offer the eye and heart a view of the things of the middle class and well-to-do of the mid-south in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. His elegant late nineteenth century steamboat-gothic home houses his collection and his residence is on the second floor. I checked in with him to get a clearer view of the where and what of researching Mr. Jones.