Are you familiar with the phrase: “it hit me right in the feels”? According to an online urban dictionary, the meaning is: to induce an emotional reaction in someone.
A few weeks ago, I shared an old photo that Bacon’s Castle had recently posted on their Facebook page. If you missed that, you can read about it here.
This weekend, they shared another vintage picture. The date on this one is 1937, and it shows the barnyard behind the Castle. And just like the one that was posted a few weeks ago, this one hit me right in the feels. This was taken when my maternal grandparents and their children lived there. (Mom was already married.)
Just look at all those old buildings….and that mule cart in the center. There looks to be another wagon there, and maybe some animals….horses, cows, mules?
It makes me smile just to think of my granddaddy, uncles and even my aunts helping work that land. The eldest of the twelve, my Aunt Mattie, wrote in her autobiography that she could hitch a mule to a cart when she was a young girl.
And I have to wonder who the photographer was? How long had it been since one of my relatives walked through that barnyard? Were some of them working just out of the camera view?
At the time, there was no running water in the house, so water had to be brought in from the well, probably several times a day. That chore fell to the children as soon as they were strong enough to ‘tote’ a bucket.
The building to the far right in the photo is the slave quarters, and it’s been recently renovated. The building beside it is no longer standing.
The third building is one of the oldest barns in the state, built (I believe) in the 1700’s. This is a photo, taken in 2012, of Marshall and my great nephew, Ray, standing in front of that barn.
The barn in the very back of the 1937 photo had a bell in the ‘tower’. The former site director at Bacon’s Castle (and a dear friend of ours) said that she heard that bell ringing for no apparent reason one day when she was on the property. That barn was destroyed during a storm probably in the 1980’s.
I have this old family photo of my grandmother and her six daughters. My mom is standing on the far left. In the background, on the far right of the photo, you can see the old barn with the bell tower.
Roughly twenty years of the Ellis family living there and working that land left all of them with so many memories. In later years, they shared those stories whenever they were together. Oh, if I had only known to make note of them all.
They moved from the Castle many years before I was born, but most of you know of my love for Bacon’s Castle. (If you’re new to the blog, just click the Bacon’s Castle category on the right to read more.)
These old (not seen before by me) photos are so very special. I hope Bacon’s Castle has many more to share.
~These Days Of Mine~
these days of mine 