[No, that is not his cabin, and that is not Mr. Frank. This HABS photo was taken maybe a ear before Mr. Frank arrived at Umbria. But I like to think that the cabin he occupied there looked like this one.]
I was only 4 when Mr. Frank died in 1943, but I do have a strong memory of him. He would come to my father’s post office in Sawyerville, Alabama to pick up any mail for the people living or staying at Umbria Plantation just to the east. Tall. Skinny. Old. I’ll stick with those last 2, but tall? To a 4-year-old all adults are tall. I knew that he had been a hobo who showed up in Sawyerville one day going from house to house asking to sharpen knives for a bit of food, and when he got to Umbria the folks there took him in and provided a home for him.
I was only 4 when Mr. Frank died in 1943, but I do have a strong memory of him. He would come to my father’s post office in Sawyerville, Alabama to pick up any mail for the people living or staying at Umbria Plantation just to the east. Tall. Skinny. Old. I’ll stick with those last 2, but tall? To a 4-year-old all adults are tall. I knew that he had been a hobo who showed up in Sawyerville one day going from house to house asking to sharpen knives for a bit of food, and when he got to Umbria the folks there took him in and provided a home for him.
That was the sum of what I knew about him. I assume that the basic facts of his tale had been told me many times by my parents, and they stuck. I think even kids of 4 in 1943 would know what a hobo was. We were still close to the Depression years. I had assumed (or was I told?) that he had arrived in Sawyerville by “riding the rails.” I’ll bet he stopped first at the kitchen doors of several of the houses in Downtown Sawyerville before making his way over to Umbria, set back well from the main road maybe a third of a mile away. The tale in my mind did not reveal whether he had had any success at those other doors.
Later I have been able to add some further details to the story of Mr. Frank. First, my sister had found in the “75 Years Ago” column in the Greensboro Watchman (the local weekly) the following: “Frank Williams, the elderly man who has stayed at Umbria, Sawyerville, for the past seven years, died Tuesday morning. Mr. Williams, 77 years of age, came originally from Ohio.” The paper was published on Thursday the 19th of August, and that tells us that he died on Tuesday August 17, 1943.
When the plantation was sold in the mid-1950s by the last Pickens owner, Eloise Pickens Lunsford, my mother helped Miss Eloise with the sale of the contents of the house. Miss Eloise offered my sister and me our pick of any small items. Our mother took us aside and admonished us to take just a few things because Miss Eloise would need to sell as much as possible to support herself. I took maybe a dozen novels, and my sister took personal items such as guestbooks and personal notes that Miss Eloise had saved. Among them was an unsigned, handwritten essay “A Visit to Historic Umbria,” enclosed in an envelope addressed to Mrs. Will Lunsford, Sawyerville, Alabama, and postmarked Tuscaloosa, March 29, 1939. This essay provided a few more details about Mr. Frank and Umbra:
“Thereby hangs a tale – how it is kept. Late one evening more than a year ago an old man who was an itinerant scissorssharpener stopped to ask for work. While one of the sisters looked up knives and scissors another of the kind hearted women engaged the man in conversation and asked where he lived. He replied that he had no home but came originally from the West. The man was old and the hour was late so Miss Juliet said “Why don’t you stay here with us?” Being unused to such trust and generosity he appealed to Miss Eloise when she returned repeating what her sister had said “Well, why don’t you?” she replied. The man looked up to heaven and said “God, help me to think. Do they really mean it?” God must have reassured him in a dream that night for “Mr. Frank” has been there ever since. It is he who keeps the grounds in such ordered perfection, mends the tools and serves as veterinarian for the stock. When they said that “Mr. Frank” built a chimney to the box house and lived in it I thought that this must be some such plantation adjunct as a smoke house. But it seems that some member of the family had a box complex and just couldn’t throw away boxes so this room of the old slave quarters had been set aside to house boxes.”
I was interested to learn that it was one of her sisters who first invited Mr. Frank to stay, something that Miss Eloise confirmed when she returned. This would have likely been in 1936, the depths of the Depression, when so many displaced people were wandering the national landscape. Mr. Frank was, it sems, the most fortunate among them to be taken in and given a home and food for the rest of his life. Knowing the generosity of Miss Eloise I assume he was given a substantial wage as well. It appears that Mr. Frank was a hard-working man who earned his keep, and the fact that he was able to build a chimney suggests that he had some talent in construction. Apparently, he made a significant contribution to life at Umbria. He was valued, and he gave value.
Recently I asked my Cousin Billy if he would search for Mr. Frank in the 1940 census. I have the ability to do that, but not the ability to read the old handwritten records. Billy did turn up the listing for Mr. Frank, and that aided a few more details to his story.
He was 74 years old in 1940, suggesting that he was born in 1866. Place of birth was given as Ohio, but no town. He had no formal schooling. Country boy maybe? If he lived in a town of any size, he would likely have had some schooling. In 1935 he had been living in (or passing through?) Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His role was listed as servant, his occupation or trade as gardener.
Those 3 documents and the childhood memories of my sister and me provide all that we are ever likely to know about Mr. Frank. One more detail that we believe is fact: he was buried just outside the fence surrounding the Pickens family graveyard. There is no marker for his grave. Was there ever one? I don’t know.
An interesting little fat: Will Lunsford, Miss Eloise’s husband, had died on August 9, 1943, only 8 days before Mr. Frank. Losing both White males on the plantation so close together with one her husband of many years and the other so important to its upkeep must have been a heavy blow for Miss Eloise. I find myself wondering if these 2 White men surrounded by so many women living or visiting for long period in the main house might have bonded and become close companions. Mr. Will’s plantation office was in the lower semi-basement part of the big house, and Mr. Frank’s little house would have been just across the dirt road leading back to the Pickens cemetery. Mr. Will died a lingering death from cancer, something I know because my parents saved their liquor ration stamps for him, alcohol being one of the few things giving him any surcease from pain. My guess is that Mr. Frank would have been much involved in taking care of Mr. Will during the last months and weeks. Could Mr. Frank’s death have resulted from the toll of heavy caregiving on a 77-year-old man? Could his grief over Mr. Will’s death have been a factor? I’ll never know. I can only speculate.
And speculate I do. So much that we think we know about even our best friends are the result of speculation and extrapolation from what little fact we think we know. At heart we are all writers of fiction. In my own writing I try to clarify what is seemingly factual form what is my own extrapolation. I think there is a great fiction in Mr. Frank’s life based on what little is documented. A movie, perhaps? Bruce Dern would be great. So would Richard Gere. John Hawkes, maybe?
It amazes me even yet that someone I knew so very slightly and so long ago has always remained a big part of my life.
Later I have been able to add some further details to the story of Mr. Frank. First, my sister had found in the “75 Years Ago” column in the Greensboro Watchman (the local weekly) the following: “Frank Williams, the elderly man who has stayed at Umbria, Sawyerville, for the past seven years, died Tuesday morning. Mr. Williams, 77 years of age, came originally from Ohio.” The paper was published on Thursday the 19th of August, and that tells us that he died on Tuesday August 17, 1943.
When the plantation was sold in the mid-1950s by the last Pickens owner, Eloise Pickens Lunsford, my mother helped Miss Eloise with the sale of the contents of the house. Miss Eloise offered my sister and me our pick of any small items. Our mother took us aside and admonished us to take just a few things because Miss Eloise would need to sell as much as possible to support herself. I took maybe a dozen novels, and my sister took personal items such as guestbooks and personal notes that Miss Eloise had saved. Among them was an unsigned, handwritten essay “A Visit to Historic Umbria,” enclosed in an envelope addressed to Mrs. Will Lunsford, Sawyerville, Alabama, and postmarked Tuscaloosa, March 29, 1939. This essay provided a few more details about Mr. Frank and Umbra:
“Thereby hangs a tale – how it is kept. Late one evening more than a year ago an old man who was an itinerant scissorssharpener stopped to ask for work. While one of the sisters looked up knives and scissors another of the kind hearted women engaged the man in conversation and asked where he lived. He replied that he had no home but came originally from the West. The man was old and the hour was late so Miss Juliet said “Why don’t you stay here with us?” Being unused to such trust and generosity he appealed to Miss Eloise when she returned repeating what her sister had said “Well, why don’t you?” she replied. The man looked up to heaven and said “God, help me to think. Do they really mean it?” God must have reassured him in a dream that night for “Mr. Frank” has been there ever since. It is he who keeps the grounds in such ordered perfection, mends the tools and serves as veterinarian for the stock. When they said that “Mr. Frank” built a chimney to the box house and lived in it I thought that this must be some such plantation adjunct as a smoke house. But it seems that some member of the family had a box complex and just couldn’t throw away boxes so this room of the old slave quarters had been set aside to house boxes.”
I was interested to learn that it was one of her sisters who first invited Mr. Frank to stay, something that Miss Eloise confirmed when she returned. This would have likely been in 1936, the depths of the Depression, when so many displaced people were wandering the national landscape. Mr. Frank was, it sems, the most fortunate among them to be taken in and given a home and food for the rest of his life. Knowing the generosity of Miss Eloise I assume he was given a substantial wage as well. It appears that Mr. Frank was a hard-working man who earned his keep, and the fact that he was able to build a chimney suggests that he had some talent in construction. Apparently, he made a significant contribution to life at Umbria. He was valued, and he gave value.
Recently I asked my Cousin Billy if he would search for Mr. Frank in the 1940 census. I have the ability to do that, but not the ability to read the old handwritten records. Billy did turn up the listing for Mr. Frank, and that aided a few more details to his story.
He was 74 years old in 1940, suggesting that he was born in 1866. Place of birth was given as Ohio, but no town. He had no formal schooling. Country boy maybe? If he lived in a town of any size, he would likely have had some schooling. In 1935 he had been living in (or passing through?) Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His role was listed as servant, his occupation or trade as gardener.
Those 3 documents and the childhood memories of my sister and me provide all that we are ever likely to know about Mr. Frank. One more detail that we believe is fact: he was buried just outside the fence surrounding the Pickens family graveyard. There is no marker for his grave. Was there ever one? I don’t know.
An interesting little fat: Will Lunsford, Miss Eloise’s husband, had died on August 9, 1943, only 8 days before Mr. Frank. Losing both White males on the plantation so close together with one her husband of many years and the other so important to its upkeep must have been a heavy blow for Miss Eloise. I find myself wondering if these 2 White men surrounded by so many women living or visiting for long period in the main house might have bonded and become close companions. Mr. Will’s plantation office was in the lower semi-basement part of the big house, and Mr. Frank’s little house would have been just across the dirt road leading back to the Pickens cemetery. Mr. Will died a lingering death from cancer, something I know because my parents saved their liquor ration stamps for him, alcohol being one of the few things giving him any surcease from pain. My guess is that Mr. Frank would have been much involved in taking care of Mr. Will during the last months and weeks. Could Mr. Frank’s death have resulted from the toll of heavy caregiving on a 77-year-old man? Could his grief over Mr. Will’s death have been a factor? I’ll never know. I can only speculate.
And speculate I do. So much that we think we know about even our best friends are the result of speculation and extrapolation from what little fact we think we know. At heart we are all writers of fiction. In my own writing I try to clarify what is seemingly factual form what is my own extrapolation. I think there is a great fiction in Mr. Frank’s life based on what little is documented. A movie, perhaps? Bruce Dern would be great. So would Richard Gere. John Hawkes, maybe?
It amazes me even yet that someone I knew so very slightly and so long ago has always remained a big part of my life.
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