Wordless Wednesday: Cecilia Allen Roberts, 1899-1984

My maternal grandmother
Cecilia Allen Roberts 1899-1984
"Nana"

Sunday's Obituary: Cecilia Roberts Leslie (1924-2006)

Mom

Sunday's Obituary is another daily blogging prompt from GeneaBloggers.com. This is an obituary that I wrote for my mother, Cecilia Roberts Leslie after her passing in 2006:

Cecilia Allen Roberts Leslie of Indian Trail, N.C., was called home to God on Thursday June 29, 2006.

She died at home after an illness.

She was born October 19, 1924, in Columbia, SC, the daughter of the late John Cornelius Roberts of Columbia and the late Agnes Cecilia Allen Roberts, also of Columbia. She graduated from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor's degree in journalism. After a brief career in radio and newspaper journalism, she married the late William Stewart Leslie of Birmingham, Alabama, and largely devoted herself to providing a loving and secure home for their six children. They were married for 55 years. For nearly 20 years, Mr. and Mrs. Leslie operated a retail business, Clocks & Crafts, in Murrells Inlet and Pawleys Island, SC.

Mrs. Leslie is survived by her six children: Susan Leslie of Charlotte, NC; John Stewart "Jay" Leslie of Dallas, Texas; William Farley Leslie of Chapel Hill, NC; Edward Allen Leslie of Indian Trail, NC; Mary Grace Leslie Davis of Little River, SC; and Neil Roberts Leslie of Marion, SC; five grandchildren; and two great grandchildren, She will be remembered for her unfailing wisdom, compassion, sense of humor, and strength of character, and will be sorely missed by all who knew her.

A memorial service for Mrs. Leslie is scheduled for Monday July 3 at 11 AM at St. Luke Catholic Church in Mint Hill, NC. The Rev. James F. Hawker will officiate.

I still miss her. Love you, Mom!

A Gem From My Files

While organizing my paper files and records this weekend, I found a gem that I had previously overlooked: a photocopy of a newspaper article from 1899 describing a heroic act by one of my ancestors.

According to my mother and my uncle, my maternal great-grandfather, Joseph R. "Pappa Joe" Allen (born about 1866) was the auditor for the city of Columbia, South Carolina in the 1890s and a Major in the South Carolina Militia (which later became the National Guard). A fire on the evening of 30 March 1899 destroyed the city hall, but Pappa Joe went into the burning building and risked his own life to retrieve valuable city records. To see a photo of Columbia's Main Street as it appeared some time before 1900,  with the old city hall in the background, click here. The explanatory notes accompanying the photograph mention the fire that destroyed the old city hall. The image is part of the Richland County (SC) Public Library Flickr stream and Local History Digital Library. I'd like to thank Debbie Bloom, Manager of the Walker Local History Room at RCPL for being so courteous and enthusiastic in granting permission to post the link. You can find her blog, "The Dead Librarian," newly added to the blogroll over there on the right

 In 1999, my uncle Eddie sent me a photocopy of the original newspaper story about the fire (probably from a microfilm reel) as reported by The State, Columbia's leading newspaper, in their morning edition of 31 March 1899. I found the photocopy hard to read, so I put it aside and largely forgot about it—until Sunday.

I still found the photocopy hard to read for a variety of reasons: parts of it were illegible, and the original newspaper broadsheet must have been much wider than standard, U. S. letter sized sheets of paper, making it difficult to copy the story legibly. I decided to read and transcribe as much of the article as I could, and  once I started, I found it a fascinating and sometimes unintentionally amusing piece of cultural history. Even though the events it described were tragic, the highly overwrought, florid, and sentimental 19th century language and writing style sometimes make it hard for a modern reader to take the story seriously. Here, for example, are the original headlines and the opening three paragraphs. I retained the original spelling and punctuation:

FLAMES SPREAD WITH SPEED OF PRAIRIE FIRE.

–

Columbia's City Hall and Opera House Totally Destroyed

–

DARING CITY OFFICIALS SAVE SOME OF THE VALUABLE RECORDS

–

Telegraphic Communication Cut Off for Several Hours—Firemen's Splendid Work Prevents a General Conflagration in the Heart of the City—The Complete Story.

Columbia is today and for the time being a city without her electric fire alarm and police headquarters, fire alarm bell, opera house, Postal Telegraph office, armory, veterans headquarters, lodge rooms, public library and police courtrooms, not to mention the business houses lost. For a time last night it looked as if the most important section of the business centre [sic] of the city was to be laid in ashes despite the heroic and untiring efforts of the firemen to check flames that spread with the startling rapidity of a prairie fire. At times it seemed inevitable that hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property was going to ascend in smoke, for the wind blew strong south by southwest and the shower of red hot embers was continuous and alarming.

Not since the historic visitation of Sherman to Columbia has the capital of South Carolina seen such a conflagration as that which cast a lurid glare over the heavens for two hours last evening and sent millions of glowing embers hundreds of feet into the smoke-filled air, only to descend with the picturesqueness of one of Pain's most beautiful fiery showers. There have been fires here, perhaps resulting in as great a money loss, but none have equalled [sic] the display of last evening.

Columbia's city hall building at the corner of Main and Washington streets has been completely destroyed by fire: it is now a great heap of ruins and in the smouldering [sic] pile are the ashes of many valuable records and plenty of other costly property, including a collection of theatrical scenery that it has taken years to accumulate. As a result the city is temporarily without her fire and police systems and many other inconveniences to the public will result.

The article goes on at great length to explain the history and condition of the building, and the way the fire was detected and fought, but only much later does the writer explain that the cause of the fire was unknown:

It may have been a cigarette stump thrown down by some of the stage hands, or it may have been a defective electric wire, or a match nibbled by a rat. No effort to ascertain the origin has been of any avail.

The paragraph describing my ancestor, Joseph R. Allen, has the subhead "A GALLANT OFFICIAL" and reads:

The difficult problem was the saving of the absolutely necessary city rec[ords?] . . . auditor deserves the thanks of the city. Mr. Allen got to the building before any water was thrown and immediately entered the auditor's office, got all of the auditor's books and papers and all of the city clerk's that were not in the safe, the tax books and minute books running back for a period of 10 or 11 years, carried them to the front of the building and threw them through a window of the council chamber. While there the smoke was almost stifling and the heavy weights from the bell tower fell tumbling within 10 feet of him, but nothing daunted he remained long enough to accomplish his purpose and crawled out the building on a ladder placed over McKay's back door. He was repeatedly urged to come down but he remained long enough to finish throwing the balance of the books out of the back window. But for Mr. Allen a great many valuable records would have been lost.

 Way to go, Pappa Joe!

So What's This Blog About, Anyway?

Castle Leslie in Abedeenshire, Scotland where my ancestors lived.

Statue of Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama, where my father was born.

And who's this guy writing it?

Hi, I'm Neil Leslie (aka Niall Mor, or "Big Neil" in Scottish Gaelic) and welcome to the blog chronicling my adventures in pursuit of my ancestors: the Leslie and Leatherwood families of south central Alabama; the Moffatt family of northern Florida; and the Roberts and Allen families of central South Carolina--along with whoever else might show up. The title reflects my preliminary or working assumption (perhaps I should call it a theory or hypothesis) that my family originated in Aberdeenshire in northeastern Scotland, immigrated to the United States, and somehow, over several generations, worked its way to south central Alabama, where my paternal grandfather was born. That mysterious "somehow" is the subject of my search.

I also blog over at "It's All Straw" on everything from Catholicism to comic books, but I'm starting this blog because I've become interested in family history and genealogy again and have decided to see what I can find out about the Leslie family. My ultimate goal with the Leslie family is to find out who came over on the boat. Who came over on the boat to America presumably from  Scotland? How did the family wind up in Alabama where my father was born, and where from what I can tell, the family had lived for several generations?

 As a more short-term but related goal (which may evolve into a separate project), I'd like to know more about my father's military service in World War II. One of my great regrets is that I never asked him more about the specifics of what he did. I've made inquiries a couple of times and tried to obtain a copy of his service record but come up empty. It's possible that I don't have enough specific information to locate his specific records, or it may be possible that his records were lost. Just as I'm going to try again to find information about my father's military service, I'm going to try again to find out more about my family.

 I say “again” because I've been interested in family history for years but never did any systematic or thorough research. My interest in family history probably started when I was a boy and I learned that Leslie was a Scottish surname and there was a Leslie family tartan. My older brothers received Leslie tartan ties from my parents, but I didn't. Jealousy can be a very powerful motivator! Each tie came with a little placard summarizing the history of the Scottish Leslies. I must have read that card a hundred times, but without any context for the people and place names, I lost interest and forgot the details. In 1985, I was fortunate enough to go to Scotland (and get my own Leslie tie) but I wasn't able to do any family history research.

My latent interest in family history revived in the 1990s when I got a computer with internet access and I found out about the vast quantity of genealogical and family history information that was gradually becoming available in cyberspace. Back then, however, most of the stuff that was available was posted by government agencies, individuals, or networks of genealogists working on their own. If I remember correctly, sites such as Rootsweb were still privately maintained, and aggregate sites for genealogical information such as Ancestry.com were just taking off. ("You young people have it so easy nowadays," he says in best grumpy old man voice).

The next goad for me to do family history research was my parents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1999. I met relatives I'd never met before and heard stories I'd never heard before. I started collecting scraps of information here and there, but nothing complete. I wish I had started collecting and compiling more vigorously because my parents were with us only a few more years after that – my Dad, William Stewart Leslie, passed away in 2005, and my Mom, Cecelia Roberts Leslie, passed away in 2006. (*See my policy on names over there to the right*). I lost access to their memories and recollections.

In the years since then, it's bothered me that I don't have a more complete picture of our family history. I've tried to construct a genealogy, but my knowledge is fragmentary, incomplete, and  unreliable. My older brothers and sisters have become aware of my interest in genealogy and recently my brother Bill offered to pay for a year's access to the Ancestry.com website as a birthday present. I've accepted that offer. I've also started watching the TV series “Who Do You Think You Are?” in which celebrities find out about their family histories. I finally decided that if celebrities can do it, I can do it. I'll have more to say about the show later.

I started this blog because I wanted a place to write down anecdotes, tidbits, questions, and scraps of information that might suggest directions for further research. I would welcome comments, queries, tips, tricks, and gentle corrections. For now, I've decided to focus my attention on the Leslie family because I honestly don't know much about them. My Dad's sister, my aunt Elizabeth Leslie LeCroy, was something of a family historian, but she passed away in 1984. She passed on some of what she knew to her daughters (and my cousins) Jeanne and Marie Ann. They have added to what Elizabeth knew and shared it with me, but I need to review what I have. We know a bit more about my mother's family, the Roberts, because my uncle Eddie has become something of a family historian and has a good bit of information about the Roberts and related families.

Thank you so much for visiting my new blog today. If you like what you've read (or even if you don't), please leave a comment. A blogroll and an RSS feed will be added soon, so be sure to check back with us often. Haste ye back!