Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

We live within circles of family and friends. Happiness and wellbeing depend on the quality and endurance of those circles. Our ability to learn and grow is effected by those circles. The gospel hymn borrowed for the title of this post asks the universal question of whether our circle will remain unbroken when we pass into the next life. The hymn expresses our imagination and faith.

We seek a circle of pleasure, learning and stories - a circle of people who share and build a common history.  We become more and more as our circle grows and endures.

Tell me a story.

Teach me.

Listen to my story.

Let me teach you.

We can be friends.

Maybe forever.

I’ll remember you.

I am because of you.

Family Cemetery in Montford Cove

We stood in the old family cemetery in Montford Cove looking over the layers of hills, ridges and mountains toward a distant range of mountains. We were supposed to be working with the crew cleaning up the cemetery.  Rodney’s chainsaw buzzed at the edge of the tree line. He and James tackled a big pine hanging over the graves. Rodney manned the saw and James pulled a rope to keep the tree from falling on the graves. I was more interested in browsing the encyclopedia of Don’s 90-year-old mind.

“Is that Hickory Nut Mountain, that biggest one there?” I pointed toward the mountains to the west.

“That first one, the little one closest to us, is Oak Hill.” He said, then went to naming others to the left and right. “That most distant mountain, that’s the Hickory Nut Range, runs from Lake Lure up to Black Mountain.  I used to hunt deer all over that range.”

“Oak Hill, wasn’t that the name of the school down there?” I pointed toward the intersection of Bill’s Creek Road and the Cove Road.

“Yea, but the first Oak Hill School was right down there,” Uncle Don pointed to the base of the hill below the cemetery.

Uncle Don is my access to the circle of ancestors. He is a son of my great-grandfather, George Hosea had 13 children, seven by his first wife and six by his second. Don’s grandfather and great uncles were veterans of the Civil War. Hugh and Fritz, two of his half-brothers, helped write the family history, a big circle that intersects about 100 other circles of in-law families. Mind-boggling is the mathematics of our genetic lineage. It spreads like a giant web across the centuries. But that’s just math and has nothing to do with the important circle. The stories make the circle vital to us. We keep the circle unbroken by preserving the stories.

Lydia Louisa, was the two year-old child who survived being scalped by Cherokee Indians. When the Indians returned to her father’s farm a few years later and found the girl missing half her scalp, they knelt in a circle around her, asked her to stand on a warrior’s hands and began a chant to channel her strength and endurance.

Elisabeth was the wife of James who was off with the colonial militia when British Major Patrick Ferguson marched his troops through their farm.  Elisabeth stood up to the British major and kept his troops from butchering her sheep.

Lydia Louisa’s granddaughter and namesake married John Hosea Hemphill. In 1846 they established the farm in Montford Cove that is the site of our family’s pilgrimage.

Israel Leander, the oldest son of Lydia Louisa and John Hosea, was the lieutenant who gave his chaplain a watch and a letter for his mother when he foresaw his death leading his Confederate soldiers across the battlefield at Mechanicsville, Virginia.

John Posey (J.P) was Leander’s younger brother who joined the Confederate army in the desperate days after Gettysburg, left home and disappeared into an unmarked graveyard for prisoners of war.

Posey, named for his deceased uncle (J.P), was a skilled carpenter working on George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate, who loaned Mr. Vanderbilt 50 cents so he could buy some eggs offered for sale by a woman employee.

Francis Emma, a granddaughter of John Hosea and Lydia Louis, was a young woman skilled in gymnastics and music. She joined the circus and worked as juggler, acrobat, clown and musician.
George Hosea, a grandson of John Hosea and Lydia Louisa, raised two sets of children and kept the family and farm together through the Great Depression.

Uncle Don

My great Uncle Don was George Hosea’s son who survived the European campaign of WW II and then survived a deadly fire in 1956 when he rescued the driver of wrecked fuel tanker. He, his wife, daughter and son-in-law maintain the family farm and the old cemetery.

These are just a few of the memorable stories that go on and on, most existing only in oral history. The web of stories and personalities is the circle that defines us. If we are inclined to worry about the endurance of the circle, we need to worry about a modern culture trending toward the dispersion of children across a much broader landscape where aunts, uncles and cousins are fewer in number and prone to get lost in the distant masses.

The failure of our schools has less to do with pedagogy and curriculum and more to do with the fragility of our circles. Posey, the skilled carpenter, as a younger man, taught school in the log building below the family cemetery – one teacher for students, ages 6 to 18, hardly a school we would duplicate today.  But his students belonged to a bigger and more local circle than most modern day students.  Posey’s students had many other teachers – mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and neighbors. Learning was face-to-face, hands-on and centered on facts and skills related to a smaller world.

We still sing the old hymn because we yearn for what we know we are missing:

There are loved ones in the glory 

Whose dear forms you often miss.

When you close your earthly story,

Will you join them in their bliss?

Will the circle be unbroken

By and by, by and by?

Is a better home awaiting

In the sky, in the sky?

Will the Circle Be Unbroken is a popular Christian hymn written by Ada R. Habershon with music by Charles H. Gabriel.