Womack Home: Christmas In The Old South by Martha Eliza (Marnie) Hatchett Bason

 Christmas In The Old South: Yuletide Season Brings Nostalgic Thoughts Of Joyous Event At Famous Womack Home

By Mrs. Sam Bason [Martha Eliza Hatchett (1896-1993)]

Yanceyville, Dec 14 -- The old farm house sets empty and forlorn by the side of the road as those of us who knew and loved it for so many years pass up and down the highway. The very sight of it brings to us a feeling of nostalgia for the old days, especially at Christmas time!

This old house was the home of one of Caswell County's most illustrious sons. The marker in front of the house reads, "Bartlett Yancey, congressman, state legislator, political leader, died in 1828 at the age of 42. His home and grave are here."

Wonderful Days

Bartlett Yancey's grandson, Thomas Pancoast Womack and wife, Mattie Hatchett Womack, later owned it and lived there. It was during this period that we shall do a bit of reminiscing.

Days of preparation for Christmas Day itself and the holidays themselves were wonderful days at "Summer Hill." "Aunt Mat" and "Uncle Tom" had no children of their own, but there were always some of the many nieces and nephews around. Christmas was the time, and "Summer Hill" the place for gathering of the clan.

For days before Christmas the kitchen with its big wood range was a busy, good smelling place. Aunt Mat and Cousin Jence (our old maid cousin whom we adored) were cooking cakes, pies, cheese straws, beaten biscuits, etc. Often this cooking went on until far into the night. The children shelled walnuts and hickory nuts, grated cheese and coconuts, of course tasting as we went along besides scraping bowls from cake batter and icings -- humming Christmas songs as we worked.

Yanceyville Baptist Church Building Final Services 1950

Final Services Will Be Held Today In Yanceyville's Old Baptist Church; To Give Way To Modern New Building

By Tom Henderson

Yanceyville, Jan. 28 -- The walls of Yanceyville's historic Baptist Church will echo some weepings and wailings, along with paeans of thanksgiving, Sunday morning when the pulpit is preached from for the last time and the doors officially locked, preparatory to tearing down the old building and breaking ground for the new, whose architectural magnificence and magnitude will more fittingly eulogize the living God and more lovingly express the denominational loyalties of a growing membership.

Perhaps those who are yet unrelentingly loyal to the ancient landmark, satisfied with its size and imposingness and loath to see it razed will find some consolation in the knowledge that the costlier edifice will arise in the same setting of the grove of oak and hickory donated by Thomas Graves in the long ago.

Many Noted Sons

Through the years this church has been the home-base shrine of the Kerrs, Poteats, the Graves and the Yanceys. From the portals have gone out into state and national life many who have become eminent in the professions of life. Senator Bartlett Yancey, Dr. Edwin McNeill Poteat, Dr. William Louis Poteat, Miss Ida Poteat, Judge John Kerr and Representative John Hosea Kerr, to particularize, learned much of their Bible beliefs from the teachings here.

It is no reflection on either the Primitive or the Missionary Baptists to tell that the founding fathers of the Yanceyville church were mostly Primitive Baptists who had pulled out of the Country Line Church, whose foundation rocks are yet to be found on this side of the creek near the nascent mill site of the late William Graves, now in the possession of the heirs of the late Billie Martin, an ardent and orthodox Primitive Baptist.

The late Dr. Billie Poteat once "commissioned" this humble scribbler to "search the records and find out the historical facts incident to the splitting-off of the Missionary church from the Primitive." Unfortunately, these irreplaceable records have either gone up in smoke or "gone with the wind."

Caswell County Visual Artists

Caswell County Visual Artists*

Cadmus, Shirley

Compton, Nancy Jean Poteat (1934-2023)

Ellison, Mary Elizabeth Moorefield

Gatewood, Maud Florance (1934-2004)

"Blue Lady" by Maud Florance Gatewood (1986)

Guthrie, Charles Edward, Jr. (1942-2018)

Rawi, Sayed Hussein (1954-2008)

Roberts, William Anderson (1837-1900)

Shell, James Allison, Jr. (1944-2019)

Smith, Yancey Gwendolyn Moorefield

Thomas, Willie Carolyn Ellerbe (1925-2004)

Watlington, Russell Carter

Williams, Benjamin Forrest, Jr. (1925-2017)

Williams, Margaret Ann Click (1930-2017)

_____

*Caswell County natives and those associated with Caswell County.

Caswell County Historical Association and M. Q. Plumblee Recognized 1980

 "The Caswell County Historical Association will receive an Award of Merit for a record of outstanding accomplishment in the areas of local historical publication, documentation and preservation.

"The award carries a special commendation for M. Q. Plumblee, its president during the six years in which the association has sponsored two acclaimed publications -- William S. Powell's When the Past Refused to Die and Ruth Little-Stoke's An Inventory of Historic Architecture of Caswell County.

Both books were done by scholars with funding from the association. The Powell book is now in its second printing.

The association helped sponsor the first county-wide historical survey in the state, and a considerable number of county properties have been placed on the National Register of Historical Places.

Plumblee, a retired school principal, is cited for his "quiet but determined leadership" which prodded the association into a series of successful ventures, the most recent being the establishment of a museum in the historic courthouse.

By Dr. H. G. Jones (For The Associated Press). Published in the Durham Sun (Durham, NC), 20 November 1980.

_____

Millard Quentin Plumblee (1906-1987)

Click image to see a larger version.

_____

Dr. H. G. Jones