Dear Editor,
It is not right to judge those who lived in a different era by today’s standards. Our family has ties to Ole Miss that go back to the late 1800s. Several generations of cousins have attended Ole Miss, including twin sisters, all from Mississippi. After the War Between the States, my family was too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash; they spent the next hundred years trying to survive and put food on the table for their families. These people were school teachers, one grandmother taught just a few miles from Oxford in a one-room school house at the turn of the century, farmers, carpenters, and country store owners. I feel very fortunate they thought enough of education to want us to attend college, and even more grateful that the University of Mississippi was nearby, dear to our hearts and offered the resources needed to succeed in the workforce.
The point is they lost husbands, cousins, brothers, uncles and sons in the War Between the States. It took the ladies until the late 1890s to save enough butter and egg money…. 5 cents and 10 cents at time to put up markers to honor those they lost – many having no tombstone to mark their grave as they fell, died and were buried many miles from home in unmarked graves. These were the days when shoes were passed down from the oldest to the youngest, clothes mended, and every Saturday it was not the football crowd on the Square, but families who came to town to replenish essentials they needed to survive, salt for the table and for the cows, farmers selling produce to have enough money for electricity and taxes. If something broke it was not thrown away, it was mended, welded, repaired to be used another day so those nickels and dimes were very precious. A family pie safe had a rat hole in the back of a drawer, and it was mended with metal from a Prince Albert Can. We are proud of that piece of furniture and just as proud of the Statue of the Soldier that stands looking out toward home. The statue that my grandmothers thought enough of to ensure it was erected to honor the men they lost.
Respectfully,
Nancy Goodman Mikell and Benjamin Jenkins Johnson
Chapter #2690 United Daughters of the Confederacy
University of Mississippi
Class of 1975
