Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Way Back Wednesday
Last week I posted pictures of my great grandpa and his sisters. So thought I'd start by writing a little about that family as well. I'll start with his youngest sister. Her name was Zetta Mae Veal. She was born Oct 6, 1888, daughter of Andrew Jackson Veal and Anna Elizabeth Roberts Veal. Her father ran the delivery stables and loved horses. As the story was handed down there was a bad storm, and he spent the entire night with the horses in the rain taking care of them and making sure they were ok. He got sick shortly after that and it turned into pneumonia. He died 4 months before she was born. She had two older sisters Claudia and Maude Veal, and the oldest her brother Elton Veal, my great grandfather. Her mother remarried to Jordan David Rawls, from the stories that were told he wasn't a very nice man. She also had three other half sisters from her mom's marriage with him. She met Jacob Patrick Murray and married him and they had three sons, my Papa's first cousins, Jacob Patrick Jr. Elton, named after her brother, and James Edwin Murray, who I rmemember well, I always called him uncle Jim, and he would always show me pictures of his mother Zetta, who I always thought was beautiful. Jim got a purple star in the Korean War, I'll probably write an entry on him another time. So this one is about his mother.
Many houses back in the day were boarding-houses, limited only by its capacity to spread mat-tresses in every room, including the dining-room, and on the broad piazzas where the only room each sleeper was entitled to in return for his quarter was as much as he could lie in sardine-wise.
There was big eating and much coffee-drinking for the week, and the price was only a quarter. Few boarding-houses made money, for the visitor usually regarded the quarter as a tax and tried to get the worth of his money-and succeeded. My great great aunt Zetta ran one of those boarding houses. She ran it from the 30's up to 1969. Many boarding houses closed, and her's was one of the last boarding houses of Ocilla, Ga. Towards the end it became a boarding house for the homeless. I'm not sure how much she charged or if she even charged. Many people in the town had harsh words, because the homeless and stranded, not the kind of people they wanted in that town in that time. Any other time it seems. Uncle Jims asked her why she continuted to run it, that she wasn't making any money, that only the homeless were staying there. He told her he was scared something bad was going to happen to her. She answered with "But what will they do without me". I think she was an angel. She gave them a hot meal, a place to shower, and a clean place to stay. I think she was special! She did it up until her death Feb 28, 1969
