Preface
My
Grandmother, Jane Vardell Lawton Varn, kept a Journal from the time
she was a young woman until a couple of months before she died.
The oldest surviving entry is dated March 19, 1886, and the
last one was written on May 18, 1955.
She followed no particular pattern in setting down entries.
In her old age they tended to be almost daily, but earlier in
life she might skip weeks or even months without writing anything.
In between the record becomes even more erratic; thus, on
January 25, 1903 she wrote, "Not a single record for 1902! How strange that I should have neglected you, old
journal." The
longest gap of all stretches from 1928 to 1941, but I rather imagine
that the problem there is the loss of some of her notebooks.
From 1941 through 1943, for example, she kept her records on
loose "Statement" sheets apparently used for billing
purposes. The surviving
sheets came to me tucked into one of the lined Composition Books she
used for later entries. It
would be surprising if much had not been lost from records kept in
this fashion.
The
records that I have are in the form of six "volumes."
The three oldest are contained in 4 x 9-inch, lined memo pads,
originally leather bound, with a note, "For a duplicate of this
pad, ask for Congress Memorandum Tablet, No. 0801.
Patented December 4, 1883."
The covers are missing from the two oldest as well as one or
more pages from the front and back of each of those pads.
The loose Statement sheets referred to above comprise Volume
IV, and Volumes V and VI are contained in two soft-cover, lined
Composition Books. The
writing itself is still surprising easy to read, especially where
Grandmother used pen and ink. The
exceptions are in the Memo Tablets with the missing covers, several
pages of which are badly faded and brown and hard to read.
There are also entries written with an "unsharpened"
pencil; these, too, can be difficult to decipher.
However, I believe that I have been able to transcribe most of
the Journal reasonably accurately, while acknowledging that some of
the proper names, especially, may not be quite right.
Grandmother
recorded "events" in her Journal as would any diarist, as in
her description of Charleston's great earthquake in September, 1886
— "My God, what a time we did have Tuesday night a week ago.
An earthquake ..." But
the Journal was special to her and more important in other ways.
She frequently referred to it directly by name in the second
person: "... I have neglected you, old journal." In
times of stress she used it as a sort of catharsis, pouring out her
self doubts, composing desperate prayers and pleas for Divine help, as
well as heaping praise on or venting her displeasure at the actions of
her many relatives and acquaintances.
Despite the gaps in the story, one comes to understand the
insecurity and loneliness of a young woman struggling with a growing
deafness; her uncertainties as she faced the prospect of marriage but
the joyful fulfillment of married life; her satisfaction in
motherhood; her total and lasting anguish over the loss of her second
child and her search for the sin that brought down such awful
punishment from God; the healing and love produced
by the births of her other three children; her maturing
relationship with her husband; and finally the love, the frustration,
the residual sibling rivalry as she takes care of her spinster sister
and copes herself with the loss of her husband, her home, and the
encroaching infirmities of old age.
As
her first grandchild, I got to name her "Nammie." I
knew her as a grandmother, someone who dispensed love with a certain
reserve and who got respect without ever demanding it.
Someone who gave me her bound copies of Shakespeare's plays
without quite letting me know what reading meant to her. Having read her Journal, however, I am able to appreciate her
strengths and weaknesses, her many very human longings and human
foibles, her courage, and her deep love for her children and
grandchildren. I see her
more as a person than as a grandmother.
I think of her now not so much as "Nammie" but as
Janie!
Because
I reacted to the Journal in the way I have just described and because
the original Journal is much too fragile to be widely circulated, I
was prompted to make this transcription in hopes that other of her
descendants, now and in the future, will be interested in
understanding better one source of our commonly shared genes!
Reading
the journal of a person born a century and a quarter ago can be
confusing without a little background:
Jane Vardell Lawton was born on Feb. 7, 1863, the eighth of
ten children of Sarah Rivers and James Monroe Lawton, Sr. Five of the ten children died in infancy.
The survivors included two boys, Rawlins Rivers
("Brother" in the Journal) and James M, Jr. ("Nimmie"),
and three girls, Arabella Valeria ("Belle" or more often
"Sissie"), Jane ("Janie" to her sisters), and Anne
("Annie"). Arabella
was six years older than Jane, and Annie four years younger.
The
family owned a large plantation (40 slaves) on James Island near
Charleston, S.C. During
the Civil War the family moved to Charleston and eventually after the
war to Summerville, S. C., about 20 miles inland from Charleston.
As
with most southern families after The War, money was somewhat scarce
in the Lawton household, and Janie served as a governess for the
children of some of her many cousins for a time and also taught school
in several small towns, almost all of them close to Charleston.
The last was a place called Weimers in Colleton County, S. C.
not far from Charleston and Beaufort where she boarded with Miss Mamie
Varn. It was there,
apparently, that she met her future husband, John Varn.
They were married in August of 1892 and set up housekeeping in
Miley, S. C. (also in Colleton Co.) where their first two children
were born. Eventually
they moved to Beaufort, S. C. and after various false starts, my
grandfather became a prosperous truck farmer.
Financial calamity eventually overtook him, however, forcing
him to sell his house in Beaufort and move in the late 1920's to
Pleasant Farm a short distance outside the town.
There they lived until John Varn
suffered a heart attack in 1939.
The
heart attack left Grandfather in such a condition that it was deemed
he could no longer manage his farm.
As a result he and
Janie left Pleasant Farm and
went to live at Frogmore, S. C. on St. Helena's Island about 6 miles
from Beaufort where they stayed with their daughter Hazel Walpole and
her husband, LeRoy, and their two children, James and Jane until
John's death a few months later in January of 1940.
Janie eventually
moved back to Beaufort to help care for her blind, spinster sister
Belle ("Sissie") after Mary Lawton (Nimmie's widow) died. (Sissie
had lived with Mary Lawton ever since Mary's husband died in 1927.)
The two sisters, Janie and Sissie, were devoted pair but found
it somewhat difficult to abide one another, but that is a tale you can
read about in the Journal. Suffice
it to say that after Sissie died, Janie moved back to Frogmore where
she stayed until her own death in 1955.
That
is a thumbnail sketch of a life that took many a turn in the living of
it. I hope that it will provide a little framework as you wade
into the sometimes confusing world of cousins, aunts, and uncles and
numerous outsiders whose names will not be known to you. Persevere, however, and I believe that you will find the
effort a rewarding one.
John Varn
Cathcart
Knoxville,
Tennessee
December, 1993.
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