The Mystery that Started It All (part 5)

 

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

On the evening of May 19, 2022, I was browsing the newly-released, newly-indexed 1950 census records on Ancestry.  I had already found all four of my grandparents, several of my great-aunts and uncles, two sets of great-grandparents, and one set of great-great-grandparents.  Because finding out more about my Grandma Eva and her first husband is always sitting somewhere in the back of my mind when I am doing family history research, I had a thought — I wonder if I can find G.W. Bryant in the 1950 census.  Maybe I could finally find out where he went after he left my grandmother and they divorced.

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.

The Mystery that Started It All (part 3)

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

The Old Seaboard Air Line Railway on the corner of Deadwyler Street and North Oliver Street in Elberton, GA.  Directly across North Oliver Street (to the left of the building in this photo) was where the Parham boarding house was once located.

As a preteen or very young teenager, my grandmother was sent by her mother and stepfather to live with her paternal grandmother in Elberton, Georgia.  Grandma Eva’s father, James David Parham, had passed away from a gastric hemorrhage caused by a peptic ulcer in 1937, when my Grandma was only nine years old.  Her mother, my great-grandmother, who I always knew as “Grandma Bobo” (Annie Mae Jones Parham Bobo) had remarried Snow Robert Bobo just shy of a year later on September 19, 1938.

The story that has always been told through the family is that Grandma Eva's older brother (James David Parham, Jr.) joined the military, and that shortly thereafter Grandma Eva was sent to live with her grandmother.  However, I have had some difficulty making that timeline work, as my records show that James joined the Navy in June 1944, which would have been well after Grandma Eva moved to Elberton.  At any rate, at some point between 1940 and 1943, Grandma Eva ended up living with her Grandma Parham in Elberton, Georgia.

The Mystery that Started It All (part 2)

Bonnie Rose Bryant, 9/30/46 - 7/28/47

Note:  This is a continuation from a previous post.  For part 1, click here.

For most of my life, I lived right next door to my paternal grandparents. My parents bought the house I grew up in when my mom was pregnant with my sister and I was barely five years old. When I was in elementary school, I would walk the block and a half home from school straight to my grandparents' house to stay. Even when I started middle school and became older and more trustworthy, I would first check in with Grandma (and get a snack, because, well ... she was my sweet southern Grandma and that's what sweet southern grandmas do!) before going next door to my house to do homework and chores until my parents got home from work.  But I almost always stopped in at Grandma's house first.