Finding Home in John Edgar Wideman’s Homewood

During my three week stay in Pennsylvania for the NEH Summer Institute on Contemporary African American literature, I decided to take the opportunity to visit the home of my paternal grandfather in nearby Pittsburgh. As some families are wont to do, mine took the liberty to write my father out of my personal narrative. It has only been in the last five years that I have been able to recover that history—discovering aunts, uncles, and cousins along the way. I’m especially proud to claim relation to Jazz Psalmist Todd Ledbetter—my “connect” in the steel city. 

Interestingly, the week leading up to my excursion Trudier Harris and Shirley Moody-Turner lectured on family folklore and Shirley even played a clip of a Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter recording—whom, it has been passed down through family lore, is a relative of my grandfather Louis Ledbetter.  I had intentions on exploring this connection in Pittsburgh, but you know what they say about intentions. My main purpose for visiting Pittsburgh was to visit my grandfather’s resting place—an item that is on my “bucket list”. 

 

Louis Ledbetter, WWII

                                  
In true fashion, my Uncle Todd gave me the grand tour of black Pittsburgh.  We started in the Hill District—he pointed to homes of famous black folk, old jazz clubs, and to my surprise—the YMCA where my grandfather worked as a young man and the family home of some cousins.  I, of course, was interested in the Hill from a literary perspective.  I recalled the day August Wilson died—I heard the news as I made the drive to campus to begin my comp exams. The possibility of having a family connection to this area had never occurred to me.  But I was in for quite a bit more—next stop: Homewood.

My grandfather, as it turns out, is buried in Homewood Cemetery. He owned a business in the neighborhood that John Edgar Wideman illuminates in his Homewood Trilogy: Damballah, Hiding Place, and Sent for You Yesterday. I was enthralled by all the literary connections I was making to my own genealogy. I had no idea my Ledbetter family was so connected to Black Pittsburgh. It was really gratifying.  I assumed my mission had been accomplished and I was content to spend the rest of my time getting better acquainted with my uncle. The Ancestors, however, had something else in mind.

Grandfather's headstone in Homewood Cemetery

                            
We visited a cousin, who had a wealth of information on our family tree. I spent hours at her home listening and recording names, dates, and hilarious tales about my pistol-toting great grandmother and my “man about the town” grandfather.  I recovered photos of ancestors in whom I could discern some of my own features.  Then cousin Val dropped a whammy on me. She recited the notes she had taken from her grandmother, my great, great Aunt Laura Lizzy:  “…they were married in 1883 in Kingstree, South Carolina…..Pero’s father was Calvin Cooper, his father was Cane Cooper…and they lived on Troublefield Plantation and each son was given a piece of the land…”.

I had one of those moments where you hear the record being scratched to a halt.  Come again? Did you just tell me the NAME of the plantation where my paternal ancestors were enslaved??? I felt like I was in a Toni Morrison novel. I could lay claim to my family’s own “Sweet Home” and the rememories that go along with it.  I was absolutely perplexed. I wanted to know how this tangible piece of our slave past survived? What was it about their experience at Troublefield (and the name is just ripe with irony)that made it a story to be passed on? My spirit was full and overwhelmed with all the information that was now at my finger tips.  I couldn’t wait to get home and begin a new line of research!

That was just the tip of the iceburg.  Our last stop was Uncle Todd’s childhood home.  I met my grandfather’s widow and moved through the intimate space of his home. Uncle Todd pulled out a scrapbook my grandfather made when he was 37 years old. It had all of his high school pictures (Class of 1937)—often the lone spot of color. But he was the star of the show! There were pictures signed with admiration and respect by his white football teammates that intimated a very different narrative than what I expected his experience to be. I can see the charisma and heavy swag he carried in this (one of my favorites) photo:

South Hills High School Boys Glee Club, 1937

                        
Uncle Todd also pulled out a “life mask” my grandfather made either in high school or shortly thereafter.  I could see every line and contour of his face. I could see how my nose is a tiny replica of his. I could put my face against his and steal an intimate moment between grandfather and granddaughter that I believed was lost to me. It was all so much to bear—heavy. I couldn’t contain everything I was feeling in one body.
                         
I discovered more than I could have imagined in Pittsburgh.  I didn’t even get around to asking about Leadbelly, but I came away with a real sense of connection to black Pittsburgh, literary Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh that gave my ancestors a home during the first wave of the Great Migration.  I am enamored by the city and have an even greater appreciation for its history—a history I can share as part of my own.

Geechee Relatives????

In my secret, undercover life I am an amateur genealogist and have been working on compiling my family pedigree since I was about seventeen.  Recently, I discovered a familiar name in the most unlikely of places!!!  As I was preparing to teach my ENGL 3960 course, "The Gullah Presence in African American Literature by Women,"  I read as much background info to refresh my perspective.  I picked up the book Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among Georgia Coastal Negroes (1986) expecting to find some interesting folklore I could share with my class.  As I read the interviews from formerly enslaved persons and their descendants in Yamacraw, Georgia I was floored when I read the testimony of James "Stick Daddy" Cooper:

Out beyond Yamacraw, where the old brick and dirt streets of the community give way to the broad, paved Augusta road, an old Negro named James Cooper has for years conducted a miscellaneous business in a ramshackle push cart. 1 James sells lunches to the workers at the Savannah Sugar Refinery; he also cobbles shoes and repairs anything from broken pots to roller skates. Because of his skill as a wood carver, particularly of walking sticks, he has become known in the vicinity as "Stick Daddy." A decidedly original technique is evident in his carving, but he smiled when this was mentioned.

"I nevuh bin taught," he said. "I took up cahvin as paht time jis fuh the fun of it. Muh granfathuh, Pharo Cooper, he used tuh make things frum wood an straw, sech as baskets an cheahs an tables an othuh things fuh the home. I guess I sawt of inherited it frum, him."

One of "Stick Daddy's" canes is a slender, snake-encircled rod with a handle made from a large black and white die (24).

[paragraph continues] Another, slightly thicker, is carved with a single crocodile. The third, a heavy stick topped with a flashlight handle in which the snapshot of a young Negro girl has been inserted, is artfully decorated with a turtle, a large crocodile, and a small, sinuous snake. The chief characteristic of "Stick Daddy's" work is the boldness with which the carved figures, dark-stained and highly polished, stand out against their unfinished natural wood background. Very different is another stick that was found abandoned in an office building in the city. This has a man's head for a handle but the stick proper is so covered with minute, unpatterned crisscrosses that the little figure of a man upside down, a horned head also upside down, and an undetermined object which may be either man or animal, are noticed only when the cane is carefully studied.

"Stick Daddy," besides being a general repair man and carver, knows a few "sho cuos" for illnesses (25).

Pharo Cooper, you see, just happens to be the name of my paternal great-grandfather.  I only recently recovered "Pharo Cooper" as my relative and had done minimal research on him at the time I was reading.  I have since been on a whirlwind adventure trying to prove or disprove that the craftsman Pharo Cooper, referred to by "Stick Daddy,"  is the same Pharo Cooper from whom I am directly descended.

I have discovered, through the agency of Ancestry.com, that my ancestor was born between 1859-1862.  The earliest record in which I can locate him is the 1880 Federal Census.  He was living in Indian, Williamsburg County, South Carolina.  I researched the area to see if there was a plantation owner with the surname Cooper.  I discovered that William Cooper also lived in Indian, Williamsburg County, South Carolina along with more than one hundred people of African descent carrying the surname Cooper.  Now, logically this leads me to believe that William Cooper was the owner (former owner by 1880) of a huge number of slaves including Pharo's parents (Manassa and Nannie) and possibly had possession of Pharo during slavery.  Williamsburg County is one county inland from the South Carolina coast and given the historical fact that the enslaved population outnumbered the slave owning population, especially in South Carolina, I willingly assume that Pharo Cooper participated and was fluent in what we now refer to as Geechee/Gullah culture.

By 1900, Pharo had married and moved to Sycamore Town, Irwin County, Georgia.  He sired at least 12 children that can be documented in the census record.  I have run up against a brick wall in my next phase of research: trying to locate a direct connection between James "Stick Daddy" Cooper's parentage and Pharo Cooper's progeny.

While I am proud of my lineage regardless if my Pharo Cooper was a craftsman and furniture maker or not, I am certainly excited about the possibility of finding my ancestors name in a published book!  Before reading Drums and Shadows, I was uncertain where my paternal ancestry would lead me.  I was inspired to make a familial connection with the Pharo Cooper in the book and discovered a whole new branch of my family history that is connected to Geechee/Gullah corridor. I am continually amazed at how I am able to intersect my work with my personal life.  As some black feminist critics would say, "the personal is political."  I have always had an interest and profound respect for Geechee/Gullah culture; I see it as the origin of African American culture as we know it.  So to discover that I have ancestors that are more than likely part and parcel of this originating culture is profoundly humbling and satisfying.  I have a REAL, tangible connection to Geechee/Gullah Culture!!!!  This make my experience at St. Simons even more horrific (See my earlier blog), but it also fuels my passion for this part of the south and for the preservation/reclamation of the African American legacy.  I still don't know if "Stick Daddy" may be a distant relative, but I'm always working toward finding that answer! More to come soon!