Keeping the Dead Alive - Part 5
A little personal family history on the eve of my wedding anniversary
For a little over a quarter century, this was the view my father and mother and their guests enjoyed from the house on their 11 acres on the western slope of Tobacco Row Mountain in Amherst County, Virginia. My ancestors had settled just north of this property at Indian Creek where three generations of them carved out a living beginning with Jones Gill, a veteran of the Revolutionary War who served at the Battle of Yorktown near my hometown, Williamsburg, VA.
His son, Curtis, had established a comfortable living, apparently, and that house, last I heard still stands and is still a dwelling for someone. I have only seen it from a distance. Curtis had a number of children and I have a touching letter that he wrote to his son, S. Jackson Gill on May 23, 1882 just five months before he died of heart failure.
As I remember it, Curtis had a heart attack while out hunting in August of 1882. Jackson would have been about 21 years old, if my math is correct, when this letter was penned. He studied medicine at Vanderbilt University and went on to be a successful doctor in Roanoke, Virginia. His son, Elbyrne G. Gill, followed in his father’s footsteps and the Elbryne G. Gill Eye and Ear Foundation continues to this day. Such are the contributions that the family has quietly made over the course of our presence in Virginia. Descendants are scattered the world over, I expect, but recently, in 2013, more than a few of us came together to re-consecrate the graveyard where Jackson erected a monument to his parents and where his grandfather is also said to have been interred.
My father, Harold B. Gill, Jr, met “Uncle Jack” once on my great-grandfather’s porch. To put that in perspective, “Uncle Jack” was my great-grandfather’s uncle! This was in the 1950s when they met, and he delivered a strong message of the importance of learning the English language to my father who was going to William and Mary and struggling to get through freshman English. He would take it four times and end up making his living as a writer, in spite of a professor, to whom he went for help telling him, upon learning that he had gone to Orange County High School in Virginia, that he would “never pass English at William and Mary!” This was one of many blows the young Harold Gill would suffer but after graduating in 1955, he was soon a teacher at that same high school, teaching Math and Science.
This is the house that my great-grandfather bought sometime in the 1920s or 1930s:
On that porch that the conversation on the importance of studying English took place.
My father and I placed a stone and “Sons of the American Revolution” stanchion in the graveyard on Indian Creek in October, 2015, driving up there with my mother.
I haven’t been back to the graveyard since, but made an attempt to get there last October before visiting my Aunt Wilma who still survives in Charlottesville at the age of 94. In the picture below, she is shown visiting her great-grandparents with my Aunt Jayne.
This photograph was likely made some time around 1938 or 1939. Jayne would accompany my grandparents to the New York World Fair in 1939 and contract polio there. This left her with a withered left arm but she went on to raise three children. Her illness resulted in my grandfather, Harold B. Gill, Sr.’s early release from service at personal orders from Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II. He received training in electrical engineering during his time in the Navy, however, and leveraged it well to establish the Gill Electric Company which operated into the early 1960’s.
Gill Electric Company
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Before the war, Harold B. Gill had worked with his brothers as part of C.C. Gill and Sons Hardware Store that maintained a presence on Main Street in the town of Orange, VA into the early 1990s.
The hardware store was a central focus of life in Orange and supplied the neighboring counties. A number of touching stories have filtered down about my great-grandfather’s wit and charm. Some are repeatable, others, not so much, but he was well-loved in the town, so much so that an adult Sunday School was named for him at the Trinity Methodist Church a block or two from the store. He was fond of animals as is evidenced by the following photograph, which was one of the family portraits that I had displayed in the Tabard Inn Dining Room at my wedding reception on May 3, 2008.
A few words about Hog Camp:
It is a group of three cabins built in the 1950s to replace the original Hog Camp which was purchased by the C.C. Gill and Sons Hardware as a hunting and fishing lodge some time in the 1930s or so. Two of the three structures on this property are still in the family. The one built by my great-grandfather is called Maple Lodge:
The second structure was built by “Uncle Willie” who was William Stanhope Gill, my great-grandfather’s brother.
These days, I understand that my father’s first cousin, Charlie Gill’s son Curt Gill maintains Maple Lodge while Lena Gill, Billy Gill’s daughter had the one built by Uncle Willie. The third structure was built at a 90 degree angle to the others, facing a branch of the Piney River that went on up toward the ridge, by my grandfather, Harold B. Gill, Sr. and my father in the late 1950s but sold by my grandfather in the early 1960s without my father knowing it. This has turned into something of a family tradition, selling properties without telling other close members in the family who might have wanted to know. As I heard it lately from Lena, the same family who bought it still maintains it. I was very happy to learn that. Someday, I hope to get back up to Hog Camp. It is a place like no other. A log book there has some very funny entries, as I remember it. They invariably end with “a good time had by all” and many are those who have been guests there. The last “family reunion” we had there led to a portrait taken of the attending great-grandchildren of C.C. Gill, Sr. I detect a hint of family resemblance:
This location is a fairly long drive up a pretty narrow road in the George Washington National Forest. It feels like home to me though. I first went there, as I remember it, when I was probably just about 9 or 10 years old,. The Piney River’s North Fork running next to Alahambra Road is probably one of the most beautiful things I have seen. It is not too far from the gravesite of Jone and Curtis. There is another Gill Family Cemetery near Indian Creek also where William Samuel Gill, C.C. Gill Sr.’s father is buried. Here is a picture of William Samuel Gill with his siblings probably taken around the time of the death of their mother, which happened in 1903 as the stone above notes.
It’s notable that these folks are the grandchildren of a veteran of the Revolutionary War. One other photograph is particularly special to me as it depicts four generations down to my own father who was, at the time, just a babe in arms.
We come from sturdy stock to which our long-lives attest. If we don’t smoke ourselves to death, that is! As noted in the story on the Gill Electric Company, my grandfather abjured physicians. Further, he had a habit of tearing the filters off of his Raleigh cigarettes which he consumed at a prodigious pace. My father kicked that habit in his late 60’s and made it to 91, besting a lung cancer at 89 although the treatment left him requiring supplemental oxygen in the last year and a half of life.
This was a nice way to spend the afternoon of the day before my 17th wedding anniversary and I hope more than a few of my followers will enjoy a walk through the personal family history. There are many tales to be told and, as is the nature of Harrowings, I have but scratched the surface.
I find it interesting in what you are doing. Years ago, people kept track of their family, many don't any more. And what is so sad about that, is some of the people never get to meet, all of their family. I personally, have never met all of mine, on either side.
What an interesting genealogy and research you have compiled. I have been researching for years, because I believe it is important for us to honor those who came before us.