Our Hours Upon The Stage
Volume 1: The Denman Family 1903-1951
Elmer Hoyle Denman
Samuel Marion Cox
Mary Isa Cline
Lela
Emaline Cox & Siblings
Mother,
Daddy, & Family
Epilogue
Elmer Hoyle Denman
I
n
the tiny community of Pine Log, in Bartow County, nestled among the tall pines
and red clay hills of North Georgia, Elmer Hoyle Denman was born on July 21,
1903.
Mary Ruth, Hoyle, and
Carolyn, about 1932, in Oliver Springs TN. Double click photo for larger
image.
He was the last child to be born to Judge Harrison Denman and Frances
Daniel Denman. Although several of his siblings died in infancy, two brothers
and two sisters survived. Of these, a sister, Olga, died with complications
from scarlet fever when she was only eighteen years old and a student at
Reinhardt College in Waleska, Georgia. His older sister, Flossie, married
Frederick Warren Meador, and they had four children. Flossie lived to a ripe
old age, and was blind for many of her later years. His older brother, Milton,
married Minnie Lipscomb. They had no children of their own, but had an adopted
son, Jack Lipscomb, who was related to Aunt Minnie, and who lived with them
from an early age. He died a few years ago in Atlanta, Georgia. Tom, the
younger brother, married twice, never had any children, and lived into his
eighties.
Dad, a red-head with hazel eyes, grew
up on a large farm which had been in the Stovall family for many years. Both
his parents had Stovall connections, and his mother did a lot during her
lifetime to accumulate neighboring land back into the original tract of land
belonging to the first Stovall who settled there, according to Rollo Stovall,
family historian. After the death of my grandparents, the farm was sold to a
cousin. There is an old Stovall Cemetery on part of the land which has stayed
in the family through the years. Some of us have visited this site, now
overgrown with trees, grass, briars, and weeds, since those who once cared for
it passed away long ago. Here Dad’s parents are buried, side by side, along
with other family members who died during the eighteen hundreds, or earlier,
to the middle nineteen hundreds. His parents lie near the top of the hill. On
the lowest part of the hillside are unmarked graves of several slaves who were
buried there before the War Between the States. Today the farm belongs to a
distant cousin, who replaced the old house with a brick home in the 1950s.
Down the narrow, dusty, red-clay road
which ran through the middle of the farm, the Bartow Cumberland Presbyterian
Church was founded, partly by the Stovalls, in earlier years.
Picture taken in 1995 of former Dayton Cumberland Presbyterian Church, then
the Dayton Revival Center. Double click photo for larger image.
This was the church my dad’s family
attended, where my dad first got his start in the ministry, and where his
brother Milton served as elder for many years. Today, this road is a busy
thoroughfare between I-75 and Highway 411 which goes by Pine Log into
Cartersville and Atlanta. The road is wide, well-paved, and passes the church,
which was replaced with a new, larger building some forty years ago. This
church is now one of the few Cumberland Presbyterian churches in Georgia.
Hoyle, Lela holding Leland, Mary Ruth,
and Carolyn in 1932 in Oliver Springs, TN. Double click photo for larger
image.
One of Dad’s favorite stories about
his childhood was about this same dusty road. One day he, his brother Tom, and
another boy were so frightened that they ran down the narrow dirt road, then
off into the grassy fields beside the road to escape the oncoming automobile,
chugging noisily along, and stirring up clouds of red dust. This new invention
they had never seen before! Their father always used a horse and buggy for his
transportation. . .
MY MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS
SAMUEL
MARION COX
S
amuel
Marion Cox, or "Papa," as we always called him, was born on September 23,
1877, in Cherokee County, Georgia, where he lived for most of his life.
Family home of Samuel Marion
and Mary Isa Cline Cox in Canton, Georgia, taken in 2000. In 2003, grandson
Lesley Cox and wife Linda are the owners. Double click photo for larger image.
He and
his young wife, Mary Isa, moved to the Sequatchie Valley of Tennessee soon
after they married. However, they returned to Georgia about a year later
because Papa’s parents kept urging them to do so. At first they moved into a
house on the Carpenter farm where their first three children—Clinton, James,
and Lela Emaline—were born. Then in 1906, the farm on which they settled for
the rest of their lives became available. The owner of the farm who sold it to
them was an uncle of Mama Cox. Here they lived for more than sixty years.
After their deaths, one of Cora Lou’s sons, Sam Bishop, bought the farm,
remodeled the house, and began a Christmas tree farm. He and his wife, Candie,
sold the farm to Lesley Cox, one of Glenn’s sons in 2001. Since that date, the
farm has again been in the Cox name. . . .
MARY ISA
CLINE
M
ary
Isa Cline was born on August 3, 1880, and died on June 22, 1968. She married
Sam Cox while she was still in her teens. They soon began their family of ten
children. Mama was a tiny woman who was always busy. She had long brown hair,
which she always kept brushed back into a bun on the back of her head.
Usually, Mama wore long dresses of cotton print, most of which she had made
herself. Also, she wore a bibbed apron almost all of the time. When she went
outside to work, she always put on a cotton print sunbonnet, to protect her
face from the sun. Of course, on Sundays, she wore more subdued colors in her
"church clothes."
If Mama ever sat down to chat when
visitors were there, she was busily doing something with her hands—darning
socks, tatting lace, embroidering linens, quilting squares, shelling beans or
peas, peeling fruits, etc. The only exception to this I can remember was on a
rare visit to our home in Kelso, Tennessee, when Mother insisted that she just
sit! Mama awoke when the roosters crowed before dawn. Whenever we were
visiting there, she would usually go out to the chicken yard before dawn,
catch a couple of squawking chickens to prepare and fry, then go to the
smokehouse to get sausage or country ham. By the time we awoke and got
downstairs, aromas of fried country ham and freshly-perked coffee filling the
air made us aware that a delicious breakfast would soon be ready. Mama would
usually be kneading her biscuit dough, and rolling out the biscuits as we
headed for the kitchen. After hurrying through the hall and dining room, we
would then sit around the blazing fire in the large stone fireplace—or on the
wooden benches on each side of the long harvest table in the large kitchen.
There we would wait for the hot, fluffy biscuits to bake while Mama related
the community’s recent happenings and gossip to Mother and Daddy. At
breakfast, along with the meats, eggs, and grits, she always had sorghum
molasses to go with the biscuits. Papa made the molasses every fall. There
also was a choice of honey from his bee hives, or jam, jelly, or preserves
which Mama had made from the fruits on the farm or the wild blackberries which
were plentiful in the summertime.
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LELA EMALINE COX AND SIBLINGS
L
ela
Emaline Cox was born on May 1, 1904, in Cherokee County, Georgia, near the
town of Canton. She was the third child, and the first daughter, of Samuel
Marion Cox and Mary Isa Cline Cox. Her oldest brother, Clinton, was born in
1899. He became an attorney and later a judge in Atlanta, married Eleanor
Ward, had two daughters, and died on February 14, 1972. Mother died four
months later, on June 12, 1972. They both had Parkinson’s disease. Mother’s
second brother, James, was born in 1902. He also became an attorney in
Atlanta, married Winnie Brown, had no children, and died in 1977.
The Life of Mother
N
ow
that I have recorded the names of Mother’s brothers and sisters, let me return
to the life of Mother. Most of what I know about her early years has been told
to me by her younger sisters. Some of these tales go through her teenage years
to shortly after her marriage. I enjoyed hearing these stories, as I hope you
will like reading them. Other stories are memories I have of Mother in our
home.
Mother lived in the Sardis community,
about three miles from the academy and school. There were no school buses in
those days, so all the children in her family had the long trek across fields
and on red, dusty roads to school and back every day that schools were in
session – unless by chance they had a ride in a wagon pulled by horses. The
younger children, of course, were going to school at the time automobiles were
becoming more common, so occasionally they could use the new means of
transportation. They had to leave for school very early in the mornings and
were late getting home, after the weary trudge from Waleska. Daddy had to go
on foot to visit Mother much of the time when he was courting her, too.
When Lela and Odessa were teenagers,
during the Roaring Twenties and slightly earlier, shortbobbed hair became
fashionable, along with the short chemise dresses. Mother and Odessa decided
they would cut their hair to be stylish. After they finished and donned their
new chemise dresses, they went downstairs. When Papa saw them, he was furious!
Lela and Odessa were punished by having to stay home for some time for cutting
their hair without his permission!
First trip to Lookout Mountain,
Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1938. L-R. Leland, Rachel holding baby Jimmy, Carolyn,
Hoyle Jr, and Mary Ruth. Double click photo for larger image.
Mother met Daddy at Reinhardt
College, where he became smitten with her dark beauty, and they soon began
their courtship. In the Sardis community where Mother lived, the boys did not
like for outsiders—and Dad was one—to come in to date the girls who lived in
their area. Therefore, some of the boys did not appreciate Hoyle coming to
Lela’s house, especially since they were seeking Lela’s affection themselves.
One night a group of these boys planned to string a rope, with lanterns
hanging from it, across the road leading to the Cox house, by tying the rope
to two trees. They thought this would impede Hoyle’s progress to see Lela, but
she somehow heard about the plan and informed Hoyle about it. He foiled their
attempt by arriving at her house much earlier, before they had begun their
prank!
After finishing school at Reinhardt,
Dad went to our church denomination’s school, Bethel College, in McKenzie,
Tennessee. Mother boarded in a home in a different community not far from
Sardis, and taught school. But, they did not like being separated by distance,
and before too long, he went back home, and he and Mother were soon married. .
. .
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MOTHER, DADDY, AND FAMILY
D
ad
married Mother on June 21, 1926. Shortly before this, Papa had had an accident
on his horse and had broken his leg. He had returned home from the hospital,
but was still in bed recuperating from the accident at the time. Since Papa
ruled the roost in his home, he ordered that the parlor of the house be made
into a bedroom for Mother and Daddy after their wedding.
He said they could
stay there until they could afford a place of their own. On the wedding day,
Odessa made pies, Mama killed some chickens, and together they prepared a
wedding feast to celebrate the wedding of Hoyle and Lela. During that first
year they also lived with Daddy’s parents for a few months, and then they
found a house of their own in Waleska, where they moved before the birth of
Carolyn a year later. Daddy was preaching at a few small churches in the area
by then. They lived in Waleska until they moved to Oliver Springs, Tennessee,
where I was born. . . .
EPILOGUE
T
he
first twenty years of my life in the Denman family were behind me. During that
time, the curtain had fallen on many stages in our lives, and our candles had
burned brightly. Poor players, strutting and fretting along, and walking
shadows growing longer each day, were we all. Most of us had our share of
skeletons we wished to be left in the closets.
Many changes were beginning to take
place in the lives of my family. Leland left for the U.S. Navy and the Korean
War shortly before my marriage, when I left home. Two more of us were suddenly
absent from the household. Carolyn and Denny had been away for some time. That
left five younger brothers and sisters still at home. Mother and Daddy still
had years to go before they would have an "empty nest."
A new curtain was about to open in
the lives of Charles Russell Hankins and Mary Ruth Denman on their wedding
day, March 23, 1951. I was about to march into a completely new role, a wife,
and there would be many new characters playing in our hours upon the stage.
For a while during this period of making many lifelong decisions, I felt like
my candle was burning at both ends.
However, I have heard that "A candle
loses nothing by lighting another candle." We proved this fact during the
years that followed in the Elmer Denman and Charley Hankins families.
"My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night:
But, ah, my foes, and oh, my
friends—
It gives a lovely light.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay--
Figs from Thistles
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