Next Up--Nannie

We're moving along at a much more progressive pace as we travel farther into the 1900s. Next in the line of sojourners is my grandmother, the one along the trail about whom I have the most extensive first-hand knowledge. We had many times together for over twenty-two years.  My awareness of life and of me formed on Moulton Street with my grandmother.

Introducing---

Mattie Gilmer Bibb (Edmondson)

June 26, 1882 - March 4, 1969

“Nannie”

Daughter of Dr. William George Bibb and Susanna Dunlap Porter Bibb
Married 1907
William Thomas Edmondson, Jr. of Anniston, Ala.

Oct. 24, 1880-Oct. 7, 1922

The photo shows four generations--in the center, again, Mamie, in her lap, my older brother, George, behind Mamie, my father, George Bibb Edmondson, Sr., and last, Nannie.
Time and staleness had taken their toll on the outside of the Bibb home and permeated the walls with decay by the time I started visiting Nannie's in the early 1950s. The antique furnishings original to the house, nursed by four or five Bibb generations, showed serious signs of malnutrition, as did the house. The floors had blackened with an oily covering that easily darkened my bare feet as I romped through the house. The exterior planks of pine grayed like their last breath had been drawn. Yet, for me, the mysterious house oozed magic, nothing less than a laboratory for my imagination. Who lived at the top of the creepy dark staircase? What secrets remained behind the locked doors up there where no one went anymore? What fate awaited if I fell off either side of the old brick path encircling the home?

Nannie personified her material soul-mate, the ancestral home, both characters deeply grounded in Southern history and loyalty to the Confederacy. My grandmother and the aging home exuded outmoded natures evidenced in their adherence to the old styles. A rare breed for the times, the house and Nannie readily attracted attention. Nannie’s caricature would have drawn a small woman dressed in a high-necked belted black dress covering sagging breasts, a black broad-brimmed hat over bobby-pinned bun, white gloves, black handbag, and dark penciled eye-brows.

What was Nannie like as a younger woman? Before I knew her? Next up, Nannie as a blooming youth.