Tallahassee family history through cemeteries

I underestimated how difficult it would be to think of things to blog about and to actually convince myself to do it (it's pretty time-consuming!) Furthermore, I intended for this blog to showcase many of my photos, which I could supplement with words about places I go and things I do. The problem is that lately I haven't been going many places or doing many things worth photographing, and I therefore don't have much to blog about. So I decided that in uneventful times like these, I should write about places that I went to in the past, when I wish I had had a blog to talk about them.

I was born and raised in Jacksonville, FL, just as my parents were (although my parents and I grew up on opposite ends of a huge city). One of my grandfathers was born there, as well, and his wife, my grandmother, has lived there since she was about three years old. She was, however, born in Tallahassee, and many of her family members lived or continue to live here. I had never even been to Tallahassee before my boyfriend (Curtis) started school here, but when I subsequently moved here last semester, I just had to visit the historic cemeteries and see the final resting places of my ancestors.

If anyone has driven from I-10 to FSU's campus, they've passed the Old City Cemetery on Tennessee St. Tallahassee's oldest public burial ground, established in 1829, holds many notable souls, including those of Thomas Brown (Florida's Governor from 1849-1853), Dr. William J. Gunn (Florida's first African-American to graduate from medical school), John G. Riley (a prominent African American in Tallahassee, whose house is now a museum) and Rev. James Page (Florida's first ordained black Baptist minister and founder of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church). The cemetery has a separate Black section, as well as a Jewish one, and has many graves of Civil War (both Confederate and Union) soldiers and yellow fever victims. It's an interesting place just to look around, and pamphlets are available at the entrance. Most interestingly for me, however, is that my great great uncle (Grandma's uncle she never met), his wife, and young child, are also buried there. I took this photo of their grave with expired film.


Hiram Lafayette "Fate" Atkinson born Apr 28, 1887 in Tallahassee; died Dec 10, 1932 in Havana, FL

Mable Annie Boatwright Atkinson born Feb 18, 1889; died Feb 8, 1975

I initially went to the Old City Cemetery thinking it was the one my grandma had told me about, where dozens of her family members were buried. Curtis and I searched it up and down, looking for family names until we found the Atkinsons above, but no others. When I later talked to my grandma and realized we had been in the wrong place, she was surprised that we had even found her uncle Fate because she didn't know where he was buried. She said he was the only one missing from that other cemetery, the Oakland Cemetery.

So, a few months later, I trecked a little farther away to the Oakland Cemetery, which is located on Brevard Street, is much larger in area than Old City, and holds probably 75 to 100 of my family members buried in its southwest corner. This grave search site lists 20 people in Oakland with the last name Atkinson (my grandmother's maiden name), and even gives information on the people and provides a picture of each of their graves! I enjoyed visiting the resting places of my family, but it was saddening to realize that I had never even met any of them. I plan on one day meeting up with my grandmother's surviving relatives to hear stories about the ones they knew. Family history and traditions are so important to me.



It was a wet day so my lenses were fogging up, but I still got a couple of decent shots. The next 3 photos I took with black and white film and developed them myself in a photography class at FSU.



Below is a really creepy mausoleum in the cemetery, built for someone I don't believe is related to me.



The Atkinson family marker in the cemetery



Here are William and Willie, my great great grandparents (that handsome fellow on the left was born in Tallahassee in 1854, died here in 1926. His wife's birthplace is unknown). Below their photograph are their graves.







Grandma's father, who was stationed in Alaska during WWII



More family:

Twin Peaks

Curtis and I just finished watching the Season One finale of Twin Peaks. Considered one of the best television shows of the 1990s, it was the brainchild of Mark Frost and David Lynch, who directed Blue Velvet (very similar in nature to Twin Peaks). It aired right around the time I was born (in 1990 and 1991), so I had never heard much about it until Curtis decided to order the episodes from Netflix.

I have to say, I have never seen anything quite like it. It combines aspects of crime dramas, supernatural thrillers, and soap operas. The characters in the show live in a small town, the made-up Twin Peaks, Washington, and seem to all be connected to each other through a complex network of love and money. When a high school girl in the town is murdered and FBI Agent Cooper comes to town to help crack the case, the inside story of Twin Peaks begins to unfold. The viewer slowly realizes that everyone seems to somehow be involved in Laura's death. Each episode, I let out several exclamations of "What the #&*%!? They are in this together?" or "Holy #$*@! Why did she do that?" The story is getting so complicated, we're wishing we had a flow chart. We might end up creating one, ourselves.

The other side of Twin Peaks that makes it so brilliant is the cheesy style in which it's made. The music, the acting, the love polygons, and the intense emotions in Twin Peaks are all signature traits of the dreaded daytime soap opera, but here they are used in a way that works. The show clearly pokes fun at itself whenever the characters are shown watching the outrageous fictional soap opera Invitation to Love, where over-the-top acting and unnecessary violence abound. I also sometimes feel like the show is making fun of me, the American viewer, for watching such garbage. But Twin Peaks isn't garbage. It takes the garbage of television and twists it into a beautiful synthesis of humor, suspense, endearing characters, and plot twists. Judging only from Season One, I would go so far as to say the show is very near perfect. Unfortunately, (according to Wikipedia) viewer ratings declined during the second season and the writers were forced to reveal Laura's murderer in the middle of it, with many loose ends left dangling when the show was cut off the air soon after. Another good show gone the way of Freaks and Geeks.

You can view the entire series (2 seasons, 30 episodes) for free (legally) here. The movie-length pilot isn't available here, though, and it provides a nice set-up for the story, so you might want to find it somewhere else or read a summary of it so you don't end up clueless.

bloggytime

I've been itching to start a blog for a while, mostly because I have recently been a regular reader of a few friends' blogs, and I decided that I want to write about my thoughts and activities, too. I guess that's the reason everyone starts a blog. The title I put up there was Curtis' idea, playing off of the title of a Talking Heads album. I intend to share stories of places I go and things I learn(I take mini-vacations every so often to learn about the place around me), which will include buildings and hopefully food. It's getting a little late for thinkin' and writin' tonight, but soon this thing'll be up and running.