![]() I can’t pinpoint the farm’s exact location, but odds are it was on or near Eltonhead, a tobacco manor along the instep of the county’s watery foot, tracts of which had belonged to Bournes since the late 17 th century. The Census of 1850 valued his property at $2,500, equivalent to about $150,000 today, making his a healthy if small farm for its time. Born in 1825, Thomas Blake Bourne descended from a long line of tobacco planters in Calvert County, Maryland, a leg of land that kicks out into the Chesapeake Bay. None of the faces matched exactly, but they favored, as my mother would say.Īt once piercing and playful, my second great grandfather’s gaze seems especially, hauntingly, familiar. I fished out Weezer’s frames to compare and contrast. When a grainy image of one of my great-great grandfathers popped up, I knew immediately it was-you got it-a daguerreotype. It was fun, by 2020 standards, learning how to create profiles for my long-lost blood kin and search for relevant documents and photos. Where did these people-certainly family-live? What did they do? My curiosity piqued, I tucked the least fusty samples into a fresh plastic bin beside far too many of Weezer’s letters and photos and family trees, and moved on.ĭuring the pandemic’s endless, vacant shut-in hours, I fetched up those family trees, rebooted my membership, and typed in name after name. I ran my finger along the hammered tin frames, eyed the elaborate clothing, the formal, sometimes severe gazes. The 1860s! And there I sat, a hundred and fifty-plus years later, with several in passable shape. An early form of photograph produced by “fuming” mercury vapor onto silver-plated copper, the daguerreotype was introduced in 1839 and became obsolete by the 1860s. ![]() Set in a fictional town on the Gulf Coast of Florida, the novel follows Tessa Girard, seamstress for a struggling baseball team, as she navigates an unplanned pregnancy amid the unraveling of a dark family secret, one that ultimately helps her make peace with her haunted past. She recently completed her second novel, Girl of Summer. Payne’s first work of non-fiction, Put Him In, Coach! A Mother’s All-Star Memoir (iUniverse, 2007), was a 2008 recipient of a Mom's Choice Silver Award. Educated at UNC-Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University and a graduate of the Sewanee Writers’ Workshop, her fiction and poetry have appeared in such journals as Snake Nation Review, the Alabama Literary Review, and The Reach of Song. A former columnist for ChopTalk, the Atlanta Braves’ official magazine, Payne has also served as a feature writer and assistant editor of Augusta Magazine in Augusta, Georgia. ![]() Little wonder then that she writes stories that probe the dynamics of family life while also celebrating the thrills and heartaches of the world of athletics. Martha Mattingly Payne was born in Atlanta and raised by a father who loved sports and a mother who loved books.
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