Why am I interested in my ancestors?

By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.

I was the son of a perfect mother. I was the little brother of a perfect, dead at nineteen, frozen in his perfection at nineteen, Bill. And I was not and am not close to perfect.My father wasn’t perfect either, nor was my brother Toney nor my sister Betsy. But from where I sit at my family’s table, we were all supposed to be. My father was strong and powerful. To me, Yul Brenner in the King and I personified him. My brother Toney was movie star handsome, 6 foot 2 inches, tanned, blonde and graceful in every movement that he made. My sister was born with Down syndrome and she had an excuse.

Me, I was born a mess. I played I’ll show you mine, if you’ll show me yours with Kay Epperson and Jean Ellen Hankins. I always went first and then the girls ran away. I knew it was wrong but that never seemed to have much influence on me. The abstract idea of “wrong” or “bad” to me were only words adults used for their convenience to keep me within earshot or to stop me from taking apart mother’s precious antique Ethan Allen clock. These words “good” and “bad” were used to get me to take naps I didn’t want to take or take a bath or go to the bathroom when I didn’t want to.I was not mean or insolent. I never intended harm or insult, but I was ambitious and impatient and still am today. These qualities and my lack of respect for authority seemed to create a history of mistakes. I was trouble for my teachers. My grades were barely acceptable in this McMillan/Taylor family. If you haven’t noticed most all of my cousins were and are very smart, beginning with Daphna Ann and her protests to the contrary. I had a certain intelligence but it was for mischief and fun. I had a flair for the dramatic.

The one thing that my family gave me that made complete sense to me was a heavy dose of Calvinism. I was comforted by the fact that at church, at best, everybody was a sinner, perhaps like me.But outside of church my family was filled with Saints. In my mind my mother was chief among them. Then there was my Aunt Margie. Then there was my powerful dangerous father who loved those whom he loved ferociously. There was the wealthy mysterious Uncle Arthur. Aunt Dot was a kind doting Aunt who needed quiet and rest. There were my grandparents, Bobbobie (Elizabeth) and Hipop (Toney) Daniel. Hipop was a staunch Baptist Deacon and Bobbobie was a properly dressed and perfectly behaved Southern lady. Then there was Aunt Selma who to me seemed as pure and as wholesome as her white angel food cakes. And it was the same on the McMillan side of the family, wonderful Aunts, cousins much better behaved than me and saintly grandparents.

As I grew older the myths of my family’s perfection began to unravel and my life mistakes became more costly, a failed law school career, a dropout from the National Guard, two failed marriages. There was nothing like this in the whole of my family on either side. I became a psychologist, in part to figure out why I was so crazy.I began to ask questions. I began to uncover my family’s underbelly. There was John Pattillo. Women seemed to like him, but a work ethic and honest dealing weren’t his strong suit, until much later in his life. There was Aunt Dot and Uncle Horace. Each had a stint in the psych hospital in Nashville. These revelations all made me feel better.Though I have never suffered from extreme bouts of depression, I’m too self-absorbed for that, I was comforted to hear Roland speak of the Taylor family’s depression. My grandmother, perhaps Aunt Elsie and their mother sometimes followed the Southern magnolia tradition of taking to their beds.Hearing these stories comforted me. Though my failures may have been more family newsworthy and more dramatic, I was not the only member of my family that struggled to manage life and myself.

It is my opinion that if we are to survive as a species, each generation must improve on the one before it. As I look inside my family, I can see that I got my impatience and flair for the dramatic from my ancestors. I share a sense of humor with Aunt Selma, perhaps George and certainly Rowland. Mine is just a bit more inappropriate. I love watching Roland tell a story that makes him the butt of the joke or in which he becomes the butt of the joke by insisting on telling the story. I recognize that in me. I have my father’s lack of impulse control and his flair for the dramatic, and I have a bit of his temper, but thankfully only a bit.As I look around at my family, I recognize the genes that I am carrying. They give me a cross to bear and a talent to share. I see the struggle I had in learning about myself and living with myself as common to others before me. It seems to have been most difficult for most of us in our thirties and forties. As my hormones have decreased, the battle has become a bit less intense for me and new problems have emerged. As I have learned about who I am and where I’ve come from, my assignments have become clearer and I am more effective at managing myself.

Our family history is not much different than many others. We have our share of saints and sinners. Perhaps it is unfair of me to place the saint label on people of my generation. Perhaps I am too far away to see anything but good when I see Jan, Jerry and Beth. (Jerry suggests that I would quickly get a clear picture of the devil in him, Jan and Beth by asking their mates Sherrylon, Fred and Jim.)

I apologize for being so short-sighted, because they deserve the same freedom to screw-up and be forgiven as this family has granted me. (I have one thing in common with John T., my uncle and Daphna Ann’s father; we both have a sir-name. His was Bless His Heart John T and mine is Bless His Heart David. I’m sure Jan, Jerry and Beth need their heart’s blessed too.)I know Daphna Ann and the Cole girls too well to grant them Aunt Margie, Aunt Selma or my mother’s sainthood, though Lisa was mighty kind to tend my mother, her mother and Sally Maude in their old age and dying time. I am quite fond of my nephews Carter and Kevin. Carter seems to need his heart blessed more than Kevin. I see Pappa Taylor’s John T.’s and Hipop’s good head for business in Carter and John Hand.I believe that with the exception of my mother, I have done my task. I have taken the character traits in the difficult genes passed to me and I have worked very hard on improving them. I think I can say that I am a better man than my father. (Jerry reminds me that my father was a towering man of character and accomplishment and that’s true. He cast a large shadow.) I can say that I have accomplished more than my mother, (but we all know how disadvantaged women of her time were). I don’t think my parents would be offended or jealous of what I have become and achieved. I think they would be very pleased that I can honestly make such a statement.

I also believe my parents improved on their parents, and their parents on their parents and if you read W. J. Cash’s Mind of the South; perhaps Papa Taylor and Mary Francis improved on their parents.So who were these people? We need to know because they are us.I’m not sure my picture of Pappa Taylor and Mary Francis is more than raw speculation. He owned a store and I believe a gin in Sparkman, which at that time would have placed him at the hub of a mean and sometimes usurious share cropping system that exploited poor farmers, black and white. That’s the worst that I imagine.Pappa Taylor was a strong Methodist. He attended church regularly and saw to it that his children did as well. He was constant host to his grandchildren in the summer. My mother spoke of her frequent visits to Sparkman without her parents. Roland has memories of such visits as well. And as you know, tending grandchildren is a lot of work and trouble. This genetic tendency to tend grandchildren seems to have been passed along.

Another is the tradition of Aunts and Uncles hosting nephews and nieces. Jane visited and stayed with Aunt Elsie and Uncle Gilbert when they lived in Philadelphia, Mississippi. That’s where she met her husband, Wilbur Cole. I and my brothers were the recipients of this tradition in our visits to Philadelphia during the summer for weeks at a time, and to El Dorado where John T. would give me golf lessons and a car to drive before I was sixteen and to Snyder where I was allowed to take the family car on a date with Vicki Mebane.

We are story-tellers. We tend to take our pain and put it into a story, turn it a bit and find a way to laugh at ourselves. I was recently bumming a night’s lodging from Daphna Ann and Phil. She told me this story about her father, John T.It seems that when he was a boy, age four or five, he wanted to make money so he and Hippop concocted a scheme for how he could. Hippop bought him a goat wagon and two goats. John T. named the goats Jim and Charlie. John T. used the goat cart to deliver eggs and milk. Surely the friends and family that received and paid for this delivery were impressed and charmed by John T.’s entrepreneurial spirit. Eventually John T. became too big for the small cart and too big for the goats to pull.

Hipop took the goats to his farm where John T. expected they would be cared for by the farm tenants that lived on the farm. One day John T. came home missing Jim and Charlie. He walked down to the farm to visit the goats. When he got there it seems that the tenants were having a party. Many people had come from miles around for a goat roast. Two goats were on a spit being turned over a fire.John T. walked home crying.

Daphna Ann may have the best memories of Aunt Elsie. Aunt Elsie was a well-cared for Southern Magnolia. She never learned to drive. Uncle Gilbert left work to take her grocery shopping or to the beauty parlor or to the seamstress or to the dress shop. He doted on her and indulged her in every way he could. He lost the love of his life when she died and he never remarried.

Three of us are not burdened by the Taylor genes. They are Susan Warner Morgan, Ashley Sloan Ross and Daniel Ross. These now almost forty year olds have been given the best of our family, the expectation that they belong and are welcome, the hope, faith and support that they will find their place in the world and our willingness to bless their hearts when they needed blessing.

So where did we come from. I think it is safe to say that we came from young people in their twenties and thirties who were having a tough time. They married hoping to find love. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. Hopefully in a fit of passion we were conceived and more trouble came with us. They discovered their capacity for love when we children came along. They, Pappa Taylor and Mary Francis discovered what love was as they loved Elizabeth, Horace, Elsie, Margie, Selma, George and Dorothy.

To hear mother tell it, Aunt Margie and Uncle Arthur did not have a beautiful romantic courtship. There was Uncle Arthur’s mother to deal with but my grandmother strongly advised this union and it was so. They discovered their capacity to love in Bill and Jack.I may have something in common with Aunt Dot, John Pattillo, George and Sallie Maude, and Porter Gammill that I think all of us regret. It is that we had no children. Most all of you here know that joy and what it has done for your soul to love your children like you were loved and as Pappa Taylor and Mary Francis loved theirs. Like Sallie Maude, I have done my best to steal children to parent.Our ancestors had trouble when it was time for them to do battle with their character traits in their twenties and thirties and some in their forties and at the same time raise their children. But they had lots of help. They were given a strong sense of family and because of this Aunt Margie took in Uncle Horace when he was depressed. She took in Dot as well. Uncle Horace paid for Dot’s treatment in Nashville. Aunt Selma knew to return to Arkadelphia to her sisters and my mother after her accident. My mother saw to it that my father got John Pattillo out of jail as soon as he could. My mother tended her mother, Aunt Margie, Aunt Dot and Aunt Selma as they grew old. She visited Phil and Corrine Taylor in Hotsprings weekly in their later years. And your mother’s and father’s did things for the family that I know nothing about.

As many as you know, my family, the McMillan family, has had its share of trouble. And in the midst of our pain the faces of the people in this family were there, present, tending, caring and sharing our pain. We are especially grateful for the many trips the Pattillo family made from Waco to Arkadelphia.

This sense of family and an understanding that there is some transcendent spirit that brings us together is what we got from these folks, along with our character strengths and weaknesses.I don’t know Bill Vestal II, but I do too. He is Jerry’s boy. I met him once. He is named for Jerry’s father. If he ever comes my way or ever needs my help, I’m there. I got this from my parents. You all feel some version of the same thing from yours. We are all in this together.I must mention of Fannie Taylor, Pappa Taylor’s second wife after Mary Francis died at an early age, sometime in her fifties. Fannie was not given the respect she deserved according to Roland and my mother. She dipped snuff and that was evidence that she was not a woman of breeding. Yet, she was kind to Roland and my mother when they came to Sparkman to visit. She was Pappa Taylor’s companion and caretaker for the rest of his life. According to Roland, she had a kind sweet spirit. She was a gift to our family. I never heard much talk about Mary Francis when I was a boy but I often heard of “Fannie and Pappa Taylor” as if they were one word.