I called my grandmother Mama just like my mother and all her brothers and sisters did. They called their father Papa but he died before my birth so I never would get a chance to know him at all except through the stories someone would recount, on one of the Saturday or Sunday coffee/breakfast/gab sessions that happened often when I was growing up. I won't get into that now though, since this is supposed to be about "Mama". I never really got to know her all that well either because she died when I was about seven years old. I do remember she used to take me to church in Beverly, NJ on sundays. I also remember she used to make jellies and jams and preserved vegetables from the garden and kept them in the cellar for the winter. One fond memory of Mama, was the time I had some little friends visiting and she prepared a snack of Ritz crackers with peanut butter and cheese, juice and grapes from the grapevine beside the house and served it to us on a large platter on our open air front porch. Alas I have no stories of hers about her youth or family life. I did meet
her sister my great aunt Daisy and her husband Bert, I called her big aunt Daisy because my mother also had a sister Daisy whom I called little aunt Daisy. Big aunt Daisy lived in New York which was far enough away that didn't really get to see her more than occasionally. I also heard the family talk about Mama's brother
uncle Willie and his wife aunt Sadie but I never had a chance to meet them. Now that I have become interested in my family history there is no one left to tell me much at all. My mother did tell me that Mama's mother was called
Sallie Ann Botts and that she was from Burkeville, Virginia. The only thing I could do to find any info on Sallie Ann was to start checking the US census around Burkeville which was in Nottoway county. I found her in the 1900 census in a household in which the head was listed as
Seely Jennings, Sallie Ann was listed as daughter, and three girls Melissa Botts, Daisy Botts and Mamie Botts were listed as grand daughters. How lucky was that? I'll follow up that 1900 census when I move on to Sallie Ann Botts.
Another thing that I know about Mama is that she attended A school called the Ingleside Seminary in Burkeville, Virginia.
Built in 1892 to educate African-American girls, the new school was named Ingleside Seminary.
It was funded by northern churches.
In 1894, Ingleside was recognized by the State Board of Education as a Teacher Training Institute. It prepared young women to teach all grades,including those at training schools.
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