The Mystery that Started It All (part 4)

James, Annie, and Eva Parham

Note:  This is a continuation from previous posts.  To start back at part 1, click here.

It has been almost four years since I wrote my last blog post about my Grandma Eva's mystery life before she married my grandfather.  So for those of us (myself included) who need a brief recap, here goes...

The family story, and the starting point for my research, was that at a young age Grandma Eva was sent away from her home in Hartwell, Georgia to live with her grandmother Parham and work at the boarding house that Grandma Parham owned and ran in Elberton, Georgia.  While she was in Elberton, Eva met and married a young man and they had a baby together.  My parents thought the baby's name was Bonnie.  No one knew the name of Bonnie's father.  Eva's husband left her at some point, and afterward Bonnie got very sick.  Eva had no one to help her with getting medical care for Bonnie, and Bonnie eventually died and was buried in Elberton.

Well, that's part of the family story.  I will now share... (in my best Paul Harvey voice) the rest of the story.

According to the one and only marriage record I have been able to locate for them, my great-grandmother, Annie Mae Jones, married James David Parham on February 25, 1926.  James was 20, and Annie was 19.  Their first child, James David Parham, Jr., was born on May 17, 1926.

Wait...what???

Hmmm...interesting.  This would mean that Annie was about 5-6 months pregnant with James Jr. when she and James got married.  Oops.  In the marriage record that I located, James is misnamed as "J.V." Parham, but there is so much other correct information in the record (Annie's name and birth place, James's birth year and birth place, James's parents' names, Annie's parents' names, etc.) that I am willing to accept that this is a (mostly) accurate record.  And in this record, James's and Annie's marriage date is listed as February 25, 1926 in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. 

Marriage record for "J.V." Parham [sic] and Annie Mae Jones, as found on familysearch.org.
Click on the image to enlarge.

I have no idea why two people who lived and grew up in Georgia would travel to Virginia to get married, unless it had something to do with Annie's pregnancy.  That is a mystery I will have to chase down on another day.  At any rate, James and Annie got married, and their son James Jr. was born a few months later.  Then, on June 1, 1928, their daughter (and my grandma) Eva was born.

Eva Alma Parham and doll, ca. 1928

Unfortunately, James Parham died tragically on November 10, 1937, when James Jr. was eleven and Eva was nine.  James's death certificate lists his cause of death as "gastric hemorrhage from peptic ulcer," with a contributory cause of "chronic sepsis from low grade osteomyelitis and cellulitis."  In layman's terms, this means he had (1) a hole in his stomach (peptic ulcer), (2) internal gastrointestinal bleeding from that hole (gastric hemorrhage), (3) inflammation from infection in his bones (osteomyelitis), (4) a serious bacterial skin infection, usually located in the arms or legs (cellulitis), and finally (5) his body's response to these infections was causing it to attack and damage its own tissues (chronic sepsis).  In short, James Parham died a very painful and ugly death.  I do not know how long he was sick before his death, but it is likely that his children witnessed their father suffering terribly.

James David Parham Death Certificate
Date of Death:  November 10, 1937
Click on the image to enlarge.

After James's death, Eva's mother, Annie Mae Jones Parham, remarried only ten months later to a man who - according to family stories - she had dated prior to marrying James.  According to Grandma Eva, her stepdaddy was (to put it lightly) not at all fond of the children that Annie Mae had with her first husband.  By Grandma Eva's telling, her stepfather couldn't wait to be rid of her and James Jr.

Snow and Annie Mae Bobo
Date unknown

Before I go any further, let me just say this - I never knew my Grandma Eva's stepfather, Snow Robert Bobo.  He died from a self-inflicted shotgun wound at the age of 73 in March 1977, when my mother was about 3 months pregnant with me.  It is not my goal to re-open old wounds or to smear the names of family members who are no longer here to defend themselves.  It is, however, my goal to find out the truth of what happened so many years ago, and to understand, as best I can, my Grandma Eva and the tragedies that she experienced at such a young age.  So I'll just say that most of the family stories that I have been told throughout my lifetime do not at all paint Snow Bobo in a flattering light - and I'll leave it at that.

As of the census of 1940 (taken in the month of April), Grandma Eva was living in Hartwell, Georgia with her mother (Annie), stepfather (Snow), and brother (James Jr.).

1940 US Census, Hart County, Georgia

However, by at least November 1943, she was living in Elberton, Georgia, and working in her Grandmother Parham's boarding house.  On the twenty-seventh of that same month, at age fifteen, she married Private G.W. Bryant.

I have often wondered what event prompted Snow and Annie to send Eva away to Elberton, and when exactly that may have occurred.  While there is no way to know for sure, I do have a theory.  There are a few "big" life events that happened in the Parham/Bobo family between the 1940 census date and Eva's marriage to G.W. Bryant in November 1943.  On February 3, 1942, Eva's paternal uncle, Hubert Bulah Parham, left his mother and the Parham boarding house to enlist in the Navy.  This may have left Grandmother Parham needing help at the boarding house to fill the void that Uncle Hubert left.  On February 18, 1943, Eva's maternal grandmother and namesake, Eva Annie Clark Jones, died.  I don't personally believe that this would have had anything to do with Eva being sent to Elberton.  But there is one even more significant family event that happened between April 1940 and November 1943 - an event that I believe may have been the biggest catalyst for young Eva being sent off to live with her grandmother to work at the boarding house in Elberton.  On August 28, 1941, my great-aunt, my grandmother's half-sister, Robbie Ann ("Bobbie") Bobo was born.  Annie and Snow now had a child of their very own.

If Eva was sent away following Bobbie's birth, that means that she was removed from school and essentially became a maid in the boarding house at the young age of thirteen.  James Jr. then enlisted in the Navy on June 10, 1944, less than a month after he turned eighteen.  As I said in a previous post, the family story is that Eva left for Elberton shortly after James Jr. joined the military.  The story goes that Snow told Annie, "you've gotten rid of the one child, now get rid of the other one," and so Eva was sent to the boarding house in Elberton.  However, as I also said in the previous post, this timeline doesn't work.  Eva was in Elberton and already married to Private G.W. Bryant before James joined the Navy in June 1944.

Whatever the choices and events were that led up to this move for Eva, it proved to be the beginning of an extremely painful chapter of her life.

More on the new information I have uncovered about that in the next post.