"Echoes Of The Past - Part 5"
(NOTE: The following appeared in the 1985 Odum Homecoming program and was written by Hazel Dean
Overstreet. It is being reproduced here for the Odum, Georgia website....KH)
Mrs. Susie remembers the thin strips of wood they used to split and use for
staves in their bonnets. She remembers distinctly how they had to make soap,
going to the woods and cutting down green oaks and burning the wood until
it was clear white ashes. This was then used in the soap making process.
Occasionally, Mrs. Susie made another batch of 'home-made' soap,
just to keep in practice the old custom of soap making.
Another interesting remembrance of Mrs. Susie's is when she used to watch
her parents strike flint (rock) with steel to get a spark. A wad of cotton was
laid close to catch the spark and fat splinters of wood were handy to transfer
the flame onto.
Her papa, Thomas Dent, also made his own bullets. Over a hot fire, he
melted hot lead and then poured it quickly into molds.
Mr. Melton Boyd, as a boy, remembers playing in this vicinity with some of
the boys of the old families Mrs. Susie mentions. Mr. Boyd said he had many
a time being told by Allen Spence (later judge and lawyer in Waycross)
that if he would get up on the old Indian Mounds there in the Altamaha
Swamp and stomp up and down and holler "What are you doing?" the old
indians buried there would say "Nothing." Mr. Boyd says he used to stomp
'til he would be purple in the face but he could never make the old Indians say
'nothing'. That is, he says, until he learned the joke!
Another group of early settlers were the Aspinwall family. Coming here in
the early year, they have many descendants numbering in today's
population. The former Willie Mae Aspinwall has spent many hours and even
years compiling the Aspinwall family history, searching out old records at
the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and many other places, and has
unearthed many interesting lights. The family, in England, were shipbuilders.
Today, the Aspinwalls are lumber and timbermen, barbers, landowners,
farmers, etc. It has been stated that the Aspinwall history is connected with
the history of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who served several terms
as President of the United States. It is hoped if a complete history of Wayne
County is compiled, this complete family history can be recorded.
By the turn of the century, 1900, progress was coming to Odum. Activity
began humming. Doctors were settling in the town. Families from the
outlying farms (or children of these old families) were marrying and moving
to Odum.
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