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Chapter 2 Jello: The Girl, 1910–1929 Child Rearing Hazel Tatnall Pierce was filled with excitement and anticipation as she neared the delivery of her first baby. In fact, although she did not know it at the time, Hazel was to be her mother’s only child to bear grandchildren for her. But just like her mother, Hazel experienced the death of an infant. In 1910, during the home birth, Hazel and James’s first child died when the neck was broken in the delivery.1 On March 5, 1911, Hazel successfully delivered her next infant, a daughter named Geraldine Inez Pierce, whom her father affectionately called “Jello” throughout his life, followed by a second daughter in 1912, named Viessa. A few years later, on December 21, 1915, her son James was born and nicknamed “Bubba,” a name that stayed with him until he reached his teen years. Like most families of this era, important dates such as weddings, births, and deaths were all recorded in the family Bible.2 The Pierces proved to be loving parents who often traveled out of town with the children to visit with relatives, especially their maternal grandparents in Brunswick. Aside from traveling with their parents or their mother, many times their Grandmother Tatnall would come to Orangeburg to take her grandchildren back to Brunswick for visits. At first she had no choice but to leave Brunswick early in the morning in order to arrive in Orangeburg by night. She made the three-hundred-mile trip by horse and buggy via the dirt roads since there were no throughways at that time. Other times, she took the train to Orangeburg to pick up her grandchildren. Either way, she had to take Jello: The Girl, 1910–1929 14 a barge down the Savannah River toward the Beaufort, South Carolina, area to cross over from Georgia into the South Carolina border. Eventually, the Tatnalls purchased their first car, a Dodge, and one of the sons would drive Matilda Tatnall to Orangeburg.3 During their many trips to Brunswick, the children enjoyed spending time visiting with three generations of maternal family members, including a grandmother, a great grandmother, and a great, great grandmother. These visits proved rewarding, as the “old folks” would share stories with their “grands.” Jello’s elderly great-great grandmother Buggs would tell her many stories of how she was reared by a Boston family who proved to be very “tough on her.” She shared stories with her regarding how, as a girl, she had to wash vegetables, cook, and do other chores. What Jello remembered most from these talks was how her great-great grandmother Buggs always “emphasized their toughness and how particularly picky the Boston family was about her performing her tasks.” Whether these Bostonians were actually relatives was unclear, but evidently they played a major role in raising Jello’s great-great grandmother.4 The other grandparents, the Tatnalls, lived in Thalman, a small community west of Brunswick and deeper into the interior of Georgia. To get there, they traveled by train and did so in the most unusual manner. Since there was only one set of railway tracks that entered Thalman, the train had “only one way to get in and one way to get out.” Once the train entered the town, there were no means for it to turn around; hence, when it was time for the train to leave, it literally had to travel backward to Brunswick, Georgia, for the entire return trip, which at that time might have been thirty or more miles. Their grandfather, Harry Tatnall, had accumulated substantial land during the marriage; unfortunately, after the Tatnall children were grown, the couple separated and eventually their grandmother Matilda took control over the property, collecting rent monthly from the tenants. When she had her visiting grandchildren, she always took them along with her to collect the rents. By this time, their grandfather Harry had retired from his stevedore work and spent his time at a friend’s small neighborhood store. In his old age, he looked forward to the occasional visits from his three grandchildren—Jello, Bubba, and Viessa, to whom he enjoyed giving candy treats. When their elderly grandfather Tatnall moved to Savannah to live with other Tatnall relatives when he was too old to work, the family would travel there to see him.5 Unfortunately, in 1918, little six-year-old Viessa contracted diphtheria during a summer visit at her grandmother Matilda’s in Brunswick...

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