I have been cleaning my office and was enjoying going through my old letters as I tried to refile them. I would love to publish some of them, but boy would they have to be edited. We were too honest sometimes. One of the statements I made in a letter is below:
I love to talk to anyone who tells me stories about their families. I enjoy talking to people. Period. I have so many on my list that I want to go see.
I wrote that to Irene in October 21, 1972. That is a long time ago, but it is still true today. I want to tell you about some of the people I did go see.
Irene Moench Gainesville, Ga. Her first letter to me said Dear Mrs.Parrish and was signed

Irene Moench
(Monkey with his tail cut off)

In one of her letters, she explained. My name is Bessie Irene and was called Bessie when they knew me, but have been called Irene since 1920. Before I married my first husband he asked me if I had any other name than Bessie and if I didn’t have he was going to give me another name. His step-mother was named Bessie and he also had two sisters-in-law named Bessie, so thought that was too, too much of Bessie. Irene was a dedicated searcher and shared many of her records with me including many Bible Records of Forsyth families related to her. These in turn, I have printed and shared.  

I met the Carruths at Hopewell cemetery one day and they invited me to come back to their house sometime. I went one day and Abi fed me her homemade apple jelly and some crackers. I took a portable copy machine, one of those old ones with a light bulb in it. They let me copy the Bell Bible Records that someone in the family had sent her from Alabama. The copy machine died and I finished copying them on a portable typewriter that their daughter had used when she was in school. Let me make it clear that she did not have the Bibles, just copies of the entries.
Mr. Carruth told me about his grandpa who went to California in the gold rush. He made his pile and came back to Georgia and bought a store at Five Points in Atlanta. The store caught fire and burned down leaving him penniless, so he went back to California and made another fortune.
This time he invested it in land in Forsyth County. Land doesn’t burn down.

I also met Leona Hughes at Hopewell. She walked around the cemetery with me and pointed out graves marked and unmarked and told me stories about the people buried there. When she was young, one of her duties was to accompany her grandmother around the cemetery every Sunday after church. Her grandmother had talked about the people buried there. They were her friends and neighbors. Leona remembered much of it and told me. I didn’t ask Leona her age, but I knew she was on the 1900 Forsyth census. I remember taking to Leona in 1987, when Forsyth County was under siege from the media. Leona wanted me to go see Joe Frank Harris with her. I’m sorry we never got to make that trip. (Joe Frank Harris was Governor of Ga at the time.)

I spent many hours at the Courthouse with Broughton Wallace (Ordinary of Forsyth County). Broughton was interested in Indian signs and is the first person who told me about the gold that was taken up out by Mount Tabor Church. He pulled out the Georgia Law Book and let me read about the case. Later, my mother and I met him at Mount Tabor one day and he showed me the rock with the markings on it, which led the boys to the gold. While we were there, we went up the road and he showed me where the big stone with the old markings used to sit. He showed me how it sat and then where they moved it to across the road, before it was put in a dump truck and taken to Athens to the University of Georgia Campus.

Mr. Wallace was a friend of many people including Forest Wade who wrote Cry of the Eagle. Anne and Bill Ferguson were good friends of Forest, but I have my share of stories about him. The last time I saw Forest was in 1974. I went by his house and visited some with him and Dorothy. He had a large rock on the table which was supposed to be a clue to the lost McIntosh treasure and he showed me what he had worked out so far. One of the last things Forest showed me was his letter from Walt Disney Studios, who were interested in making a movie of his Hummingbird story.

I remember going to visit with Gladys Bell down in Shakerag and on her mantel she had the original pictures of the Rogers brothers made in Washington, D. C. These pictures have all been circulated widely and I have a blow-up of one of them on my office wall that I bought at Garland
Bagley’s Estate sale. These were the mixed blood Cherokees that were signers of the treaty that ceded the Cherokee Nation East.

I worked with Garland Bagley over 10 years on his history books and the keepsake I enjoy most is a tape from one of the cemeteries where he forgot to turn the recorder off and is trying to get his sheepdog back in the car. I also used to meet Garland for breakfast at his restaurant where they served milk gravy with the biscuits. Garland had plenty of stories about the Big creek area. Wildcat and Shakerag were two of his favorite themes, but Sharon Church was his abiding interest.

Mr. Green and Bud Shadburn at the courthouse were two of my favorite people. They loved to tease and were always going on with something. When we caught crappie, I always used to carry a mess by to Mr. Green and Lizzie and I always came home with something from the garden. One time Mr. Green asked me if I could really find that family stuff in the records. I worked out the Green family as best I could from the records and took it to town to show it to him. He said, “You got it right. It matches the bible records I have at home.”: Mr. Green never lived over two miles from the courthouse in his life and had lots of stories of Cumming.

Tommy Henderson used to come in the store where I worked and talk to me as I opened up. Tommy used to drive a school bus and one of my kids favorite stories was of how their bus driver Doug used to try to back Tommy off in the ditch when Doug was a little boy and Tommy was his
driver.

The Turners on Shady Grove Road shared freely. Miss Carrie, as Mrs. Turner was known, was a teacher and told me of some of the schools she taught at. Street Turner, her husband, shared his tales of 1912 and the night riders with me.

Everett Nalley, who worked with Garland Bagley on his book, after I had quit helping was very interesting. He had patents on visual aid materials and was instrumental in the fescue industry in Forsyth County. He also had a fantastic rock collection.

Joy Clark was a dear friend who did so much research on Forsyth County and Concord Church. Her passion was the Concord Rangers in the Civil War.Joy shared freely with everyone and never got the credit she deserved for working to preserve Forsyth County History. Every now and then when I find something good on Forsyth County, I find myself starting to pick up the phone to say hey, guess what I found. I miss sharing with her. Joy found a fantastic book one time in an used book store in Dunwoody. It had original town plats in it including one that resembled Cumming’s. Looking at that book is what made me believe that the surveyor of the town of Cumming was left-handed.

I’ve rambled on long enough, and only mentioned a few, but this is what preserving history is all about - not just the records, but the people. The stories are what puts the life into the people that shaped Forsyth County. Whether I’ll do tapes or write stories to preserve what these people told me I haven’t decided, but I feel that I need to do something.

Forsyth County has had many impressive people and left quite a legacy for us.