Published Monday, August 18, 2008
Pensons-Pinsons return to ancestors' plantation
The Times-Herald
Editor's Note: In this first person account of a visit by the Penson-Pinson Family Reunion to Cedar Hill, the home of Walter and Sara Jane Skinner near Moreland, Winston Skinner reflects of the connections between black and white people in the past and today. Most of the visitors, who are black, spell their name "Penson," while early white settlers used "Pinson."
Slavery is an ugly word.
Yet it also is a part of our history in Coweta County and across the American South, the backdrop for today. On Saturday morning I was reminded of how the stories of folk -- black and white -- are entwined.
Elizabeth Beers, Newnan's historical tour lady without peer, invited me along as she met a busload of people -- the Penson-Pinson Family Reunion -- headed to Cedar Hill, the rural, antebellum home where my parents Walter and Sarah Jane Skinner have enjoyed living for the past 30 years or so.
Cedar Hill was built for William Boyd "Buck" Pinson, an early Coweta settler and planter. It was my mother's dream house. When she was a girl, one of her dear neighbors was a Pinson granddaughter, and Mom was invited to visit the house and select a bedroom suit from an upstairs room used for storage.
That bedroom suit was always a part of our lives when I was growing up. I remember snuggling between my parents in the large bed before my brothers were born.
On that girlhood visit, Mom saw more than the bedroom suit. She saw the house -- the massive central portico with its fluted columns, the panes of wavy glass in the front sidelights, the massive doors, the high ceilings. Cedar Hill -- though we did not at that time know it by the name given to it by the Pinson family -- always dwelt in a soft, gentle place in the back of Mom's mind.
When it went on the market when I was in high school, Mom's dream came true. She and Dad bought the house and began the process of restoring it. I well recall the day that Roberta Lyndon Mayes, a fellow journalist and great-granddaughter of Buck Pinson, and her daughters, Sallie and Lyn, came to Cedar Hill to sign some paperwork associated with the sale.
On Saturday, I joined a bus filled with people who were seeing Cedar Hill through a different lens. Their ties to Cedar Hill went back much further than mine, but theirs were touched by slavery -- by the preposterous inhumanity that entertained the myth that one human might own another.
I talked to James Scandrick, the Penson descendant who organized this year's reunion of the Penson-Pinson family. I asked him about this particular sojourn -- a coming back to a place where his ancestors were enslaved.
"Things are what they were," he said, explaining that he did not worry about things "over which I had no control." He said he did not want the visit to Cedar Hill "to be a negative" but saw it as an opportunity "to build bridges."
Mr. Scandrick shared a bit of philosophy with me. "What am I doing with the opportunities I have?" he asked.
We began our tour at the Newnan-Coweta Chamber of Commerce. I took a seat, and "Miss" Elizabeth began by asking where people were from. There were several from Tennessee and others from Ohio, Michigan -- even Bermuda. "We've got California back here," someone near me said.
Soon we were headed down Newnan's Pinson Street just east of downtown. "Go slow," several people shouted to the bus driver as we approached intersections. Photos were snapped with road signs with "Pinson Street," and several were eager to capture an image of the sign at the corner of Pinson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
In just a few minutes we were passing through Moreland and then trundling down the familiar path of Bexton Road.
About 60 descendants of Sam Penson, who had lived in Buck Pinson's place before the Civil War, gathered on the gravel drive outside Cedar Hill's north porch. Mom was waiting for us. "It's my joy to welcome you to Cedar Hill, the Pinson-Skinner home," she said. Labrina Penson from Dalton presented Mom with a stunning bouquet of fresh flowers and said the Pensons had come to learn about "where we come from" and "who we are."
I then shared a bit of the history of the house -- that it is one of the three in the immediate area built between 1847-1853 which still stand, that its designs were likely taken from a pattern book -- something often used by builders in that day.
I also told the little I knew about life for the black people at Cedar Hill long ago -- that they likely had soaked and curved the pieces of wood that continue to be part of Coweta County's only floating antebellum staircase and that some of the Pinson slaves worked on the Atlanta and West Point Railroad.
Penson descendant Richard Johnson from Illinois led everyone in a Family Litany:
"One: As descendants of our revered family patriarch Sam Pinson , one of the skilled slaves that lived on the William Boyd plantation, we gather today in memory of our ancestors and me rich family heritage they bequeath to us.
Many: We acknowledge and express thanksgiving for our strong family ties and the contributions of the Penson family members that have preceded us.
One: We declare our interest in and commitment to the survival of the family unit. We pray for continued faith, strength, and love for our family and families everywhere and for future generations.
Many: We pray for understanding, wisdom, and power for families around me world.
One: Remove from our minds hatred, prejudice and contempt for those who are not of our family, race or color, class or creed, that, departing from everything that estranges and divides, we may be brought into unity of spirit, in the bond of peace.
Many: Make us one. Lord, make us one. As we celebrate the bonds of kinship established through your love in the Penson family. Holy Spirit, make us one!"
Black and white, we recited the words of the litany and then prayed together words from James Weldon Johnson's stirring hymn of liberation -- "God of our weary years. God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way. Thou who has by Thy might, led us into me light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray."
Then the fun began. Most of the group moved into the parlor where James Scandrick played hymns while Mom, Dad, my sister-in-law Tracy and niece Rachel joined with our visitors in singing songs of our shared faith.
I lingered on the porch and chatted with Merryll Penson, a scholar who works with the University of Georgia's Galileo project, and Joe R. Penson, who lives in Louisville, Tenn. They related some interesting things about William Boyd Pinson and their ancestor, Sam Penson.
Buck Pinson "encouraged education," Joe Penson told me, relating stories passed down in the family. Buck Pinson wanted the black people on his place to learn to read, started a school for black children and -- Merryll Penson believes -- may have started teaching the ancestors of our visitors to read "before the Civil War."
She also told me that Buck Pinson paid the people who worked on the railroad.
Sam Penson was in Fayette County -- in what is now Peachtree City -- by the time of the 1870 census. Merryll Penson told me the census showed Sam Penson with property worth $300 -- a goodly sum in Georgia in those days. The roots of that wealth may have been in railroad wages earned while Sam Penson was still legally a slave.
In Fayette, a close friendship developed between the Pensons and the prominent white Huddleston family. Huddleston land became the site of Bethlehem Baptist Church on what is now Dividend Drive. The church was to be the final site on the family's tour Saturday, with expertise shared by Carolyn Cary, my friend and Fayette County's premier historian.
Most of the family reunion participants spell Penson with an "e" rather than an "i" as did Buck Pinson. Some feel the change was deliberate -- a way to connect with others who had been on the same plantation in earlier times but also a slightly subversive way of stating one's freedom and independence.
A few of the folks on the tour bus spell Pinson with an "i." Gwen Pinson Little related that her father, when he joined the service, had his surname's spelling "corrected" by the military recruiter.
As we stood in the dining room -- Skinners pouring up lemonade for our guests -- Emma Penson from Knoxville, Tenn., described the experience as not so much about history or genealogy but "very spiritual."
A group of little girls giggled and played on the steps of the curving stairs, just as my own daughters and nieces have in years passed. But these girls, I reflected, may be descendants of those who actually built the stairs.
Labrina Penson's 9-year-old son, John, had been working on a loose tooth throughout the morning. It finally came loose at Cedar Hill. Tracy Skinner, who knows all about mothering boys, gave him a comforting hug and helped him wrap the tooth in a napkin -- to be ready for the tooth fairy.
As the bus rolled away, I thought about my own genealogical searchings and discoveries.
I felt a kindred spirit with Joe R. Penson, who -- having made the trek to Cedar Hill -- now wants to know where the Pinson slaves were before they were at Cedar Hill. "Where ," he mused, "do we come from?"