Spirit of Moses
by W. Lee Tigner Jr.
Early American Furnishings
ee and Grant were preparing for conflict. The annexation of Texas would
hurl America into war with Mexico. The two men would soon meet on
the battlefield and march together in victory through the streets of
Mexico City. Lincoln was running
for office in the United States
Congress. John Muir was just a child
in Scotland; his writings of the
grandeur of the American west were
half of a lifetime away. Teddy
Roosevelt was yet to be born.
Baseball made its first written
appearance in the New York Herald
newspaper. Samuel Morse had been experimenting with his freshly patented telegraph,
but except for the preliminary line between Washington and Baltimore, the world still
only moved at the pace oxen could draw the cart or the river could push the skiff. The
year was 1845. The country was just another country, without much significance to the
world, aside from some documents born of great Enlightened minds and the exportation
of resources such as lumber, leather and whiskey. Manifest Destiny was a newly coined
phrase and many Americans began to subscribe to the notion that this land, this
continent, and all of her bountiful natural resources were indeed provided by the Creator
for their purposes.
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Moses and Miranda Kemp would be considered in the halls of American history to
have been average Americans, but ordinary they were not. It was their generation that
was the first to wear cotton garments, the first to see a paddle steamboat, a
locomotive, and the first to use pig iron turned to modern steel. As transformations
took place across a wide berth of American industry, 19th century Americans led
hardscrabble lives similar to their ancestors as subjects of the Crown of England. Rural
America was fraught with dangers. Malaria and Yellow Fever were common killers,
snakebites deadly, and a broken bone could spell tge emd ne nme’s trade sjhkk„ Children
were net reeerred tn as “okedfes” as tge hmeamt
mortality was staggeringly high. There was scarlet,
bilious and puerperal fever, lockjaw, hydrocephalus,
hepatitis, enteritis, dysentery, diphtheria, dropsy,
croup, consumption, cholera, apoplexy and bright
disease; and they would all put their victim in a
pine box. Georgia surgeon and pharmacist Crawford
Long had recently discovered the successful effects
of ether on suffering patients, but it would take the Civil War, a decade and a half
away, before the injured and afflicted had access to relief.
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But like most Americans, the Kemps possessed a quality greater than a modern
invention, more effective than medicine and in greater abundance than the vast resources
of their country. They had the American Spirit. Moses and Miranda Kemp were free
and independent, believing in their own ability, the founding principles of the Nation,
and the benevolence of their Divine Creator.
These are the people who built America.
Though the seeds of the Civil War had begun to be sown, the likelihood of
division seemed an impossibility on all sides. The rhetoric still encompassed reason, as
events like “|keedhmf Kamsas” amd the Brooks-Sumner affair were yet to take place.
Christian tenets were bedrock cornerstones of the culture as evidenced by the name of
Moses and his brother John Wesley Kemp. It was with this spirit of progress in mind
that they decided to move in 1845. Americans were heading west. The Cherokee nation
had been forced to the Oklahoma territory, due primarily to the discovery of gold in
the hamlet of Auraria, Georgia, creating the boomtown of Dahlonega. With the
removal of the Indians, the backcountry could be settled, and the pioneering spirit of
the Kemp family, and that of thousands of others, heaved a united American culture
further and further toward the setting sun.
There were nine of them in all. John Wesley Kemp was already in Cobb
County, travelling ahead of his brother as if to ensure suitable accommodations for the
excursion departing from the old homestead in Greenville, South Carolina. Moses and
Miranda came with seven children; Henderson, Richard, Jahugh, Mary Caroline, John
Washington, Nancy Elizabeth, and William Waddy Thompson. Henderson, the oldest,
was eighteen, with a strong back and plenty of muscle. The youngest, William, was
just an infant. Shortly after their arrival they were blessed with number eight, Wiley
Darius Green, but in turn, Richard, at age seventeen was returned to God the following
year. With his passing the family cemetery was founded where Richard was laid to
rest. The last child, Amanda Marinda Jane, was born before the close of the decade,
and the family was complete.
Work began immediately; forests
cleared for fields, root and rock bound earth
turned over to loosen the rich impacted soil. A
well was dug, livestock fenced, a barn, a
blacksmith shop, and a smokehouse built
alongside the main dwelling creating an
embracing homestead. Moses had a deep
relationship with God, and he recognized the
blessings bestowed upon him. There were his
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things; his land, his tools, his animals and his slave, but most thankful was he for his
family; his wonderful wife, his capable sons and beautiful daughters. He had attained
it; this enormous endeavor, the move from Carolina, the establishment of the farm, a
healthy strong family and a place in a Christian community.
Then there was tragedy. Sensing an irreversible illness he penned his Last Will
and Testament in May 1850. He began the testimony stating:
“I desire and direct that my body be buried in a decent and Christian like
manner suitable to my circumstances and condition in life, my soul I trust shall return to
God who gave it, as I hope for eternal salvation, through the merits and atonements of
the blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whose religion I have professed and I humbly
trust enjoyed for about twenty years.”
He passed into the care of the Lord on August 21st of that same year. Then
another “okedfe”, Mary }arnkhme, age sixteen, died the following January. Although a
devastating blow had been struck on the family, these were people adept at overcoming
hardship. Henderson was now the head of the household. He and four brothers, two
sisters, mother and one Negro girl pulled together that spirit of Moses and pushed on,
never losing sight of the blessing of life and their place in His grand plan. After all,
the country was whole, the land producing and the family still together. Then, at age
twenty-eight, Henderson died. The year was 1855.
The mild Georgia weather had
produced a bounty of crops since the family
had moved. Cotton and grains were the cash
crops, and livestock produced everything
from meat to sheep’s wool. The southern
economy was healthy, and the little
community of Marietta was helping to define
the American dream despite Miranda’s knss ne
her husband, two sons and a daughter. But the kettle on the stove was about to boil
over, as the farm was located in the heart of Dixie. About a day’s travel from the
Kemp homestead was a place on the cusp of monumental importance. The WesternAtlantic railroad ran from Chattanooga to a place at the end of the line dubbed
Terminus. It was determined that the Georgia Line should intersect here, connecting the
wealthy sea port of Savannah to the rest of the state. This peculiar spot, absent of the
usual river required for a town, bore a new type of city: a rail town. Atlanta was
founded in 1847, but this rail hub was of little significance as it had less than ten
thousand residents even by 1860. Jngm Weskey’s shde ne tge Kelo khme gad lnved nm,
leaving the widowed Miranda and children to face the coming of war.
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The news would have weighed heavy on the hearts of the
remaining Kemp family. South Carolina had seceded from the
Union, and with her their Georgia homeland would surely
follow. And then, the shots were fired in Charleston harbor.
The four boys, Jahugh, John, William, and Wiley were all of
age to serve the Confederacy, and the tide of war pulled them
away from their dear mother Miranda. William was killed almost
immediately, dying in a Confederate hospital near Lexington
Virginia. The matriarch waited for letters from the other boys
with overwhelming apprehension there on that front porch where
she and Moses once sat, listening to cicadas and smelling the
honeysuckle, holding the purest serenity the human condition
could offer.
Though the consternation over the war was crushing, the caring, benevolent,
maternal nature of Miranda shone through in all that she did. It was an early autumn
afternoon, the dust thick in the air from the long wagon train headed to the cotton
market. There he was, a lonely boy, lost in a world falling apart around him. When
Miranda and her girls saw him, they knew they could not leave him on the road. They
reached out to him, asked if he needed a meal, and he graciously accepted with a
flowing emotional story that gripped the women with sympathy. His name was
Andrew Roe. His parents had died and he tried to raise his little sister himself with the
only possession left to him, a frying pan. But she had died. Miranda was overcome. He
was a boy without a family, and she was a mother with sons off at war, one already
in the grave from a Yankee mini-ball. She asked if he wanted to be their little boy. He
had remembered the two questions his parents instructed him to ask as they prepared to
depart; “~n ynu knve tge Lnrd:” amd “~n ynu soeaj tge trutg:” With the satisfactory
answer the accord was made and he climbed aboard the wagon. Andrew looked at
Mhramda’s beautheuk daufgter {lamda amd sahd wgem ge “fnt frnwm ge was fnhmf tn
larry Mhss Mamdy”.
It was 1862. So much had been lost now. These war years, brutal in their
difficulty with rationed goods, food
shortages, lack of tools and farm hands,
had nothing on the pain and worry of
this widowed mother. It dragged on.
Then the letter came. Wiley too had
been felled at Petersburg and died in a
Confederate hospital, surely lacking the
snntghmf eeeects ne ~r„ Lnmf’s etger, as
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the south at this late stage of the war had been brought to her knees. The bad news
kept coming. That once irrelevant rail intersection had become a critical crossroad for the
Southern cause, and Sherman was bearing down on Atlanta after the successful Union
victory in Chattanooga. Lying directly in his path was Miramda’s gnlestead amd tghs
farm she built with the American Spirit. Sherman was not anti-southern, nor was he an
abolitionist, but he was a fierce warrior and staunchly opposed secession. Understanding
what total victory in war would require, he would burn a swath of earth as wide as his
army could scorch.
Rocky Face, Resaca, Adairsville, New Hope,
~akkas, amd Phcjett’s Mhkk‟ they all fell in succession
as Sherman relentlessly pressed the entire weight of
the Union Army upon Georgia„ Jngmstnm’s exgausted
Confederates dug entrenchments at Kennesaw
Mountain in an effort to protect Marietta, but the
beleaguered Southern cause was falling apart.
Sgerlam’s army prepared the onslaught while
camped at Lost Mountain, near the land of Solomon
Kemp, an uncle to John Wesley. By July 3rd
Marietta had been overtaken. The homestead was
spared from fire. Reasons are unknown but this was
a personal war; distant to modern understanding,
these troops knew their opponents, understood their
hardships and felt the pain of war everywhere they marched. Perhaps it was sympathy
for Miranda that spared the farm from the torch.
The war was lost amd Lhmcnkm, tge snutg’s best
friend north of the Mason-Dixon Line, had been
assassinated. Now Miranda was left with fragments;
broken, and in need of that spirit Moses had to put it
back together. The two boys who were left, Jahugh
and John Washington, walked home from POW camps
in Ohio and Illinois to their remaining sisters Nancy
Elizabeth and Amanda Marinda Jane, and foster
brother Andrew Roe. Mother rejoiced. Jahugh walked
on crutches, without a left leg, torn away by an
artillery shell at The Battle of The Wilderness in May
of ’64, while serving in Colonel Phillips Legion of
Georgia Volunteers.
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Jehugh and Elizabeth
Now back home, they picked up the plow and moved forward, as if Moses were
there showing them the way. The family stayed, never splitting apart as so many did
following the War. Jahugh married Elizabeth Reed, and John Washington to Mary Ann
Brooks. Andrew Jackson Roe, ever determined and committed, indeed married his
“Mamdy” hm 1883. He and Amanda Marinda Jane had two daughters, Alice Edna Roe
and Laura Miranda Roe. Dear Miranda lived out her years on that same porch, listening
to Moses whispering to her through the cicadas and honeysuckle. After 83 years of
service she passed her life back into the Hands of the Lord on August 3rd, 1893; fortythree years after Moses had departed to hold a place in eternity for the two of them.
Their work here was complete.
Jahugh and John Washington stayed on the farm and worked the land that
they knew, that they had defended, and that they had sacrificed so much for. John
Washington and his wife Mary Ann followed the Biblical instruction to go forth and
multiply, and Mary Ann bore twelve children; with the first three dying as infants.
The close of the 19th century was extraordinarily difficult all over the South. The
economy sagged, crop prices tanked, and industry seemed to stagnate. The largest
migration of people in recorded history took place with the settlement of the American
West, creating more ghost towns in the Old South than all that ever appeared in the
West. But Marietta hung on. The Kemp family persevered and endured the ugliest the
human condition could offer. They had a son, William Walter Kemp, and like the
others he had a deep connection to the old homestead and felt his sense of place in the
Grand Plan. After seeing other parts of the country he moved back home around the
turn of the 20th century to take care of his aging parents John Washington and Mary
Ann. In 1917, John Washington died as American Doughboys were headed off to fight
in The Great War, a conflict whereby the tactics of trench warfare had been conceived
in his generation and executed with his own shovel. His beautiful obituary defined The
Kemp character by stating: “Sucg chthzems are tge stremftg ne state, mathnm amd cgurcg„”
William
Emma
William Walter raised his family there at the
homestead with mother through the roaring
twenties. But although the rest of the country was
in a boom, economic woes from the cotton bust put
Georgia in an early depression. The crash of the
stock market in ’29 was merely something new in
headlines of the newspaper, as poverty was a staple
they had come to count on. One of the few
industries to experience healthy demand was by this
time an old American tradition. Moonshine poured
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out of the hills just north of their community during prohibition, and Marietta was a
refueling stop for the runners on their nightly routes down to Atlanta. Aside these
anomalies, life centered on subsistence farming, much the way it had been for those who
first came to clear the fields in Cobb County.
Marietta held to tradition into the 20th Century, and the Kemp homestead sat in
a timeless cloud amidst the paving of roads and the stringing of electrical lines. The
fields were plowed, the color of the sharecropper remained the same, and the timber
was still squared with the broad axe. Then once again, the Provider decided when the
work was done, and William Walter and his mother Mary Ann succumbed to influenza
just a few weeks apart in 1929 on the eve of the Great Depression. He was 55 and
mother 93.
Of the original pioneers,
only one was still alive, the child
born the year prior Moses’ deatg,
Amanda Marinda Jane. In strange
coincidence to her brothers
Henderson and John Washington,
she passed on the eve of another
great national conflict. It was
November 1941, and Japan was
planning the most dramatic aerial
assault in history. This Second
World War would create radical
change in communities all across
America, and Marietta, Georgia
was no exception. Like a bomb igniting, the industrial might exploded on the city,
unleashing a pent up American Spirit held back by
depression, the cotton bust, and the seemingly
unending reconstruction of the Old South. Industry
roared. B-29’s churned out of the new Bell
Bomber plant beginning 1943. There was no
looking back now. Modern advances had overtaken
Marhetta iust as Sgerlam’s enrces gad dnme mearky
a century before. Farms were cut up, subdivided
and laid out amidst a bisecting interstate, and the
early Cobb County began to vanish into antiquity.
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Surviving the influenza on that eve of the
Depression was John Marvin Kemp, son of William and
Emma. With his bride Christine Waits; two children,
Stanley and Pam, who provide living memory of
grandma Emma smoking hams in the smokehouse: “with
her pecan wood smoke fires going on for many weeks
umthk tge leat was cured tge way sge khjed ht… tge bekk,
used to call people in from the fields when the meals
were ready, and the cured meat from that smokehouse was often a part of the flavorful
dishes she would make.” Emma died on January 6th, 1959, just before the last corn and
hay crops were harvested on the family farm. The early ways were gone now,
evaporating into memories.
|y tge 1980’s tge nutbuhkdhmfs were hm
disrepair. The blacksmith shop had long since
burned down and the barn reclaimed. Only
the old smokehouse, stained from that pecan
cinder, remained alongside the main dwelling
as the gentle reminder of the Spirit of Moses.
The old Cobb County was vanishing, and the
small subtle remnants of the early years were
now just a whisper on the landscape. Most of
the old buildings from this original era were long gone, reclaimed by the sultry Georgia
weather. But a few remained, only for the foresight and skill of their original
craftsmen. These buildings stood the test of time as the decades and centuries weighed
mightily upon them. Their wood fiber, fantastic in strength and durability was matched
with equal talent in construction. Logs were hand-hewn with an almost artful grace,
then notched, ship-lapped, and pinned together with a masterful touch. Emma had a
smokehouse which was the finest in the South, if not the country; for it was made
with the loving care of those who came before her.
As the modern world overtook the building, it was realized this last tangible link
had seen its use through, and now it was time to be repurposed. The material used to
construct the smokehouse was white oak and longleaf pine; irreplaceable, as old-growth
timber is only available in America through reclamation. This, the finest of all American
old-growth lignum, produces the most striking visual characteristics, and there is no
better way to honor the Spirit of Moses and those who came from his line, than to
create a family heirloom from this last remnant of his era.
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While the wood fiber reclaimed has
produced fine heirloom quality furnishings, the
treasure is in the story this family has to
offer. These were Americans of sterling
character and it is fitting that their mark left
upon our hearts is as indelible today as it was
on those whom they knew in their day. Their
contribution to this generation is beyond
value, for even though we may not have
known Moses and Miranda personally; their
spirit has transcended time and has become
the resplendent legacy we have today.
Written by W. Lee Tigner Jr.
Craftsman of Fine, Reclaimed Heart Pine Furnishings
Early American Furnishings
740 Smith Circle
Dawsonville, GA 30534
770-344-8920
[email protected]
www.earlyamericanfurnishings.com
Early American Furnishings is a registered trademark and is incorporated with the State of Georgia. Our
name, logo, photography, and research documents are not to be disseminated or reproduced without express
written permission. Permission may be obtained by contacting Lee Tigner.
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