American Legacies Organization, Inc.

The brigade boarded a train at Petersburg and departed for North Carolina. We stopped at Goldsboro and made camp just north of the town. Here, we witnessed the execution of three deserters. From Goldsboro, we went to Kinston on the Neuse River. We proceeded down the Neuse to New Berne, which was occupied by the Yankees.

Chelsey Smith, a 98-year-old descendant of the Carpenters of Columbus, GA, sits in my grandmother's living room as I prepare to speak with her about roots.

She's a tiny, white-haired lady with a gleam in her bright blue eyes.

Anyhoo, one Saturday as I briskly strode to the movies, this really old, old, old-looking, rag-clad lady approached me and held out her right hand...
Hey, my little naive generousity generating lovin' heart went out to the old gal and I joyfully handed her my quarter...and I felt so good and so proud...me, Howie, a Christian act of charity?

Remember When?

All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?

It took five minutes for the TV warm up?

Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?

Nobody owned a purebred dog?

We hitched up our horse and off we went, Mom and Dad in the front, my brother, my two sisters and me in the back. It was a great adventure and great fun. At the end of the day, we headed home, up the long, beautiful road with maple trees creating an arch to our simple farmhouse. The farm was beautiful and Dutch, our faithful collie greeted us with a happy wag.

This story was told to me by my grandmother, Sylva Beaumont Coonley, before she died in 1995.
My parents, Harry F. Beaumont and Pearl B. Beaumont nee Halleck, lived in a nice little white house on a corner, on Lake Street, in Pontiac, Michigan, where I was born, February 20, 1912. My earliest recollection is waiting on the steps every day for my father to come home from the Spring Works. He worked very hard hammering red-hot steel into springs.

Neal Gieske dressed up as a cowboy.

By William Gieske

Gruvers Farm:

After two years of city living we moved back to the country. Pop (William Henry Gieseke Sr.) worked with a Mick Gruver who lived with his mother. She had died and he did not want to stay at the house so he rented it out to us.

There was some discontent among the troops when they learned they would be receiving old flintlock muskets instead of Mississippi Rifles. I told my comrades that it was their duty to defend their home state even if they were armed with nothing but "rocks and sticks," and called each man willing to fight under present circumstances to follow me.

Our water came from a small creek that ran down the mountain from Papa's pond, although it originated higher up in the top of the mountain where it was actually a spring that bubbled out of a large crack in the rocky face of the mountain. We had hiked to that spring on numerous occasions, and as best I can remember it was between one and two miles up into the mountains, as we had to first walk down the holler and then head up by Walter's cemetery, following some old coal mining roads until they became nothing more than what was probably a mule path.

In Elementary Flying School in Canada, Keller learned to fly old biplanes called Fleet Finches. His instructor tied long red ribbons to the struts of his plane when he made his first solo flight. “I guess it was a warning for other planes to steer clear!” he notes wryly. He polished his training on Prince Edward Island, where he graduated to the powerful 450-horsepower planes called, ironically, Harvards.