What a day, huh?! If you follow me on Twitter (@OurGeorgiaRoots) you know today I received an AWESOME surprise — an email from the Great, Great Granddaughter of Madison Derrelle CODY, the 1st owner of my Catie and other members of my CODY family from Warren Co.

So for the newbies, any search on OGR for the surname CODY produces a TON of genea-history, but here are the milestones:

• 1998. I knew this about my Warren Co. lineage  — Catie left a Sister Allie in 1859-60 when she was sold and she spoke of being on the plantation with Master CODY. Really — that’s it! See my Top 10 Mysteries list from 2008.
• Sept 2009. Discovered Catie’s owner was Madison Derrelle CODY
• Sept 2009. Discovered the Claude Cody Collection (Madison’s Son) at Southwestern University, only to learn later that the extensive collection contains no references to the family’s earlier slave holdings, which were considerable.
• Feb 2010. Identified our Allie! She’d been hidden by a blemish on the 1870 census AND a surname change to DORSEY by 1880.
• March 2010. Confirmed Allie and family! I gained their parents Elbert (uncovering the mystery behind the long standing family name) and Allie – my 5th Grands, Rachael CODY – my 6th Grand AND a 1/2 Brother to Catie, Pierce CODY from the WPA Slave Narratives!

So literally the email from Alexis blew me away and speaks to the many reasons why it’s important to be online with your genealogy research and the necessity of PATIENCE. You did see my time line right?!:-)

It also reflects how descendants on both sides of slavery’s history can and do heal the present.

With permission, I am posting the communication from Alexis. I pray it serves as motivation to take the leap of faith and connect when a connection is possible. It can be life changing!

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05 June 2010

Dear Luckie,

First, I congratulate you on your discovery of your many greats-aunt Allie’s eventual whereabouts.  I can imagine how very exciting that must be to know, at last. Also, I am sending a copy of this letter to William B. Jones as he so kindly prompted me to communicate with you after I first made contact with him a few days ago.  I wouldn’t have known about him if it had not been for your blog.  I have meant to communicate with both of you for a very long time.  I was so excited to read about you.  I hope that I have something to offer you.

I am the great-granddaughter of Claude Carr Cody,  son of the Madison Derrell Cody who “owned” your four-greats-grandmother, Catie.  First, I wish to apologize to you for taking so very long to correspond when I knew of your quest as of 10/15/09.  My 20 year old daughter, Anna Cody Dell, happened upon your blog while idly researching the Cody’s.  My excuse is that I’m a full-time physician, mother and medical director of my group.  Finding the free time to do anything personal has been and is very challenging.

If I had found any thing that would have assisted you in your search, you can be guaranteed that I would have gotten in touch , long ago.  Also, be assured that if, in the future, anything emerges that would be of interest to you, I will share it, immediately.

I did diligently search for all I could find about your family.  Claude Carr Cody  created a family journal for his 3 sons in 1916, long after he moved to Texas.  He described many of his childhood experiences growing up in Covington and in Warren county.  He listed only a few slave names.  The ones I have are Reddick and Aunt Alice. He recalls several slaves fondly but they do not have the same prominence in how he writes as others do.  However, there is some glimmer in his expressed thoughts that ” the Negroes” have importance, outside of financial commodities.  His thoughts were probably no different from most white people in his position.  I’d like to believe that had he developed in a different era, his attention and perception to the issue of believing that one can own other humans would be quite different.  Of course, after he was 10 years old, the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted. He was not a slave-holder.  He describes his father informing all the slaves on the plantation of the Emancipation – Juneteenth.  You must remember that his memories are the memories of a child ,  recalled in adulthood.  He was 4 years younger than your many greats-grandmother.  They must have known each other.

If you would like me to make a copy of what he wrote and send it to you, I will.  Frankly, my instinct is to hide parts of it and to expurgate everything that could vaguely be hurtful to you or to anyone else.  Yet I know that honesty is more important than anything, no matter what the consequences.  I understand him in the context of the times in which he lived. I hope that you do.  I believe that he was a man of huge character.  Like all of us, he was limited by the times that he lived in.  His parents were even more limited.  Yet I like to believe that they were wonderful people.  I have his parents’ portraits, painted in the 1850’s.  My mother has his portrait, painted as a 4 year old at the same time.  What a possession!  I know that you would like to have portraits of your own ancestors.  Who wouldn’t?

By reading your blog, so long ago, you led me to even more information about my ancestors.  I am the same as you.  They call me and direct me, serendipitously.  I have my own epiphanies.  Maybe one day, I can share them with you, if you’re interested.  I thank you for the role that you’ve played in my own search.  I wish that I had more to give you.

I feel for your struggles to know your origins more fully.  Oddly enough, I have been interested in the search of the descendants of slaves for their ancestors for at least 10 years.  I went to an exhibition in Drayton Hall in Charleston around that time.  On the floor was an attempt at tracing the lineage of the slaves that had lived on that plantation.  It really touched me for reasons that I did not fully understand.  I then discovered a book by Edward Ball, Slaves in The Family.  You must be aware of the myth that is alive in all southern families descended of plantation owners.  That myth is that “we were good to our slaves.”  Edward Ball was from an old Charleston family.  He set out to determine whether there was any truth to that family creed of “goodness”.  He got quite the education.  He also wrote a book, The Sweet Hell Inside:The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the Segregated South.  I love it.  If you have not read these books, I would enjoy sending them to you,as gifts, from across the centuries.

I’ve been a little wary of contacting you.  I understand some of your anger and frustrations.  I’m cowardly enough to not want them applied to me.  I suspect that you’re growing deeper than that.

I’m very interested in your developing Buddhism and where it’s leading you.

I would love to hear from you.  I know that you’re retiring from your blog as of Juneteeth.  I hope that you might feel like writing me back.

If you would like to receive those books, please send me an address that I could use and I’ll send them right away.

Sincerely,

Alexis Dell

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As I said to Alexis earlier, when the Ancestors have something to say, they will open the path. This tells me, the CODYS are not finished talking. They have more of their story I need to tell and I am listening.

Thanks for sharing the joy with me today family!:-)

Luckie.

I confirmed this afternoon that my researcher {thanks Janet!:-} will head over to Southwestern University’s Special Collections department on Monday to begin identifying the M.D. CODY specific artifacts contained in the Claude Carr CODY Collection!

Even though I’ve been forewarned by those close to the collection that outside of the Stephens letters, there is little to no mention of slaves, I am still hopeful that M.D.’s meticulous record keeping practices will hold & that I’ll be able to gain insight into the emancipated CODY slaves that remained on property after the war’s end.

Fom the 1870 Warren County Census I know that MANY freed CODY & related Ancestors, including my Aly DAWSON {Catie’s believed Sister}, remained on CODY land as farmhands, living amongst M.D.’s Brother Marion M. & other relatives. 

I am so anxious to see what history has to reveal — hoping I’ll be able to sleep & concentrate on work over the next few days!

I’ve also emailed William in regards to living CODY descendants that he may be aware of because the obvious question for me — WHERE ARE THE CODY SLAVE DOCUMENTS, omitted from Claude’s Collection?

Yes, I know it’s possible that these valuable artifacts could very well have not only been excluded from the collection but disposed of altogether.

I am prepared to accept that if it is the case — I think.

Nevertheless, I’m committed to chasing the needle in the haystack, because I am convinced 100% that the Ancestors make no mistakes & that my Catie would not send me down this path if there was no purpose.

If I never find physical evidence that M.D. CODY sold and/or loaned Catie to James DICKEY in 1860 or that the Aly DAWSON living just a few dwellings away from Marion M. CODY in 1870, is Catie’s Sister, it will be alright.

In my heart, I know that this week, I can check-off the two BIGGEST family mysteries on my list & feel at peace with moving on to the next.

Bless you Catie & Allie for the relief, yes my heart is a wee bit lighter!:-)

Luckie.

[Image: Southwestern Faculty - Circa 1887-1890. Claude Carr CODY is the 2nd row; second image from the left]

Dear Ms. Daniels,

My name is William B. Jones. I am a retired history professor at Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas. Kathryn Stallard, the Director of Special Collections at Southwestern, has shared with me the correspondence you and she have exchanged. She did so because I have written a history of Southwestern University in which the Cody family figures very prominently. Claude Carr Cody, a native of Covington, Georgia, and a graduate of Emory at Oxford, was the first dean of Southwestern at Georgetown, and his son, Claude Carr Cody, Jr., was a prominent Houston physician and chair of the Board of Trustees for many years. Their names figure in Southwestern history from 1878 until 1969, almost a hundred years.

Your interest, of course, is in his father, Madison Derrels Cody, and his mother, Francis Carr Cody, whom you have very brilliantly traced as Catie’s owners. Though I cannot add to what you have done in that direction, I may be able to furnish some information that will give you an idea as to what kind of people M.D. Cody and his wife were. We can do this because we have four letters in our Special Collections from Alexander Stephens, who was Vice President of the Confederate states during the Civil war to M.D.Cody. These four letters came into the possession of Southwestern because Claude Carr Cody brought them with him from Georgia when he came to Southwestern as professor of mathematics in 1878. Claude Carr Cody was born in Covington, Georgia, in 1854. He graduated from Emory at Oxford in 1874. His father, M.D. Cody, died in 1875. The papers of M.D. Cody then fell to his heirs and his son, C.C. Cody, was so in tune with his father’s sentiments that he brought four letters from Stephens to his father with him to Southwestern when he was employed. Those letters date from the beginning of the Civil War to 1873, eight years after the war. Let me transcribe for you how I narrate the story in my book:

“Cody was born in Covington, Georgia, on November 5, 1854, the son of a prominent Georgia family. Its status is indicated by the fact that his father was a close friend of Alexander H. Stephens, a resident of nearby Crawfordville, who served as Vice President of the Confederacy during the Civil War. This friendship represented moderation on the part of the Codys rather than strong support for the Confederate cause, because Stephens was the most reluctant of the Southern leaders to enter the fray. Three letters to Cody’s father from Stephens before and during the war, bemoaning the radicalism of the Southern leaders, became a proud possession of Cody in Georgetown. They were resounding criticisms of the political strategy pursued by the South leading to the war. Cody gave at least one lecture on Stephens in Georgetown and published the three letters in the newspaper. A fourth letter from Stephens to Cody’s father eight years after the end of the war said: ‘Do you remember the letter you wrote me in the Fall of 1860 urging me to go to Warrenton to make a speech against secession? What sad, sad changes since then. I then thought we were in the Penumbra of the deep darkness which has come upon us since.’”

From these letters and the fact that the son, Claude Carr Cody, was still lecturing about Stephens and publishing the letters of Stephens to his father leads me to believe that M.D. Cody and his wife laid a strong foundation for Claude Carr Cody’s later views. While most of the South was moving in the direction of Jim Crow laws, Claude Carr Cody was saying that the South did wrong in seceding from the Union.

If you are interested in reading the copies of the original letters, I suggest that you contact Kathryn Stallard. She guards her material in Special Collections very carefully, especially letters as old as these, but she might find a way to duplicte them for you. The letters are found in the following places:
1. The four original letters of Alexander H. Stephens of November 9 and December 25, 1860, of November 16, 1861, and of November 7, 1873, are found in Claude Carr Cody Scrapbook #4.
2. The three letters reprinted in the newspaper are found in Claude Carr Cody Scrapbook #8.
3. The newspaper article referring to Cody’s lecture on Stephens is found in Claude Carr Cody Scrapbook #7.

Alex Haley lectured at Southwestern sometime before his death. I had been fascinated earlier by his “Autobiography of Malcolm X” and, of course, by his “Roots.” He made a tremendous impression on me at the lecture, and I remember he said that his next project was to write a book on John Newton, the slave trader who was converted and wrote “Amazing Grace.”

I know I have rambled on and on in this letter–perhaps I am Nat King Cole’s “Rambling Rose”–but I hope what I have said may be of some help. If you want to follow up on anything I have said, please do not hesitate to write me. I am an old man now, approaching my 81st birthday. After completing my history of Southwestern three years ago, I have a lot of time.

William B. Jones

[Note: published to Our Georgia Roots with written consent provided by William B. Jones]