This section contains Family Stories, Tall Tales, and other information about people in the family tree.
A strong minded family doctor, he also wrote poetry.
During the first six months of 1942, German U-boats prowled along the Atlantic coast, taking a terrible toll on the American ships. Over 600 ships and 5000 passengers and seamen were lost. Rumors of landings -- "they say that German newspapers were found at the train station (the movie theater, the bus station)" -- were common.
Dr. Latham followed the news of the war in Europe, and talked to many fellow ham radio operators. He became convinced that Germany would invade the US, quite possibly on the North Carolina coast. To prepare, he started studying German, playing his Berlitz language records at full volume on the old Victrola.
In the days before air conditioning, everyone kept the windows open during warm weather, to catch any breeze. Imagine the alarm of the neighbors when they heard voices speaking German coming from the house!
Story from Janet Latham.
Back in the Thirties, some of Dr. Latham's patients paid their doctor bills in homemade corn liquor. He used it as a disinfectant in the office, and kept a small keg in the dining room, for the occasional drink with dinner.
One day, Mrs. Latham received an unexpected visitor-- a professor from the Ladies' Seminary she had attended. His bus had a several hour layover in New Bern, and he decided to visit a former student.
The professor was a well-known speaker for the Temperance movement. Mrs. Latham was in a quandry. The professor had invited himself to lunch, and there was a keg of moonshine in the dining room. She excused herself to speak to the cook, who sneaked into the dining room, and as inconspicously as possible, wrestled the keg off its stand, and rolled it into the kitchen. Mrs. Latham spread her skirts to block the scene, in case the professor had looked that direction.
(She was very glad when it was time for the professor to catch his bus.)
Story told by Marjorie Janet Morey.
The dry wind drones on, All day its planget whine Has hurried us, the plain A floor for dancing dust Which in whirling sarabands Pointed spears at Heaven's apse, At the sky's far edge The westering Sun sinks low, Night steals in to draw A dark and dusty veil O'er brown and barren hills, As far as eye can reach No living thing, but we Who onward plod with weary feet And tired nerve and bitter thirst That water quenches not. The beast that bears our pack, The patient one, coughs And shuffles on, as we; And straight ahead, a sentinel, A tree which marks our goal, Stands beckoning where water is. The Burro lifts a drooping head; The water smell is in the wind For him. He mends his pace And laughs his cosmic laugh, Journey's end in sight. Forgotten now by beast and men The toilsome weary day. The arid wind forgot. In velvet dark a tiny light Springs up; a beacon fire Lit by those who days ago Agreed to meet us here. A hearty hail, a well known face A smell of cooking food A sound of water running Ah, those the things to compensate For all the lonely trudging hours; Contrast alone gives zest to life.
Up in the sky Little woolly clouds Idly wander by Human-like they go in crowds Human-like they don't know why.
Phineas served in the Revolutionary Army. When he applied for a pension November 6, 1819, he said that he was in Beaufort County in 1776, in the company of Captains Nathan Keais, Second North Carolina Regiment. He was transferred to Captain Ed Vail's company and promoted to sergeant. Later, he transferred to Captain John Cradock's Company. He was captured at Stony Point and carried to New York, where he remained until General Wayne took Stony Point. Phineas Latham was then exchanged, and rejoined the Army at West Point under Captain Charles Stewart in the same regiment. The regiment marched to Charleston, South Carolina, where he was captured in the seige. He escaped and returned to Beaufort, North Carolina, where he enlisted again, this time in Captain William Welch's company. He was discharged after the Battle of Yorktown, having served six years, four of those years as a sergeant.
Back to Latham Family Tree - L
Aurelius Eugene Stevens, Mary Altana Mills, and their daughter Alice were living in Chicago at the time of the Great Fire. Mary, a strong-minded woman, ignored the smoke and the first warnings to evacuate. She finally yielded to good sense, and packed up Alice and as much of the household goods as she could into a buggy. Then she drove thebuggy out of town. According to her granddaughter, Marjorie Janet Morey, theirs was the last buggy to leave Chicago before the roads were closed.
Back to Mary Altana Mills.
In the 1930s, Mollie Davis was raising her grandson, Gene, on the family farm in the Missouri Ozarks while his mother, May, attended college. Every morning, they got up very early to milk the cows, feed the chickens, and gather the eggs.
They were alone in the farmhouse when it burned down in the dead of winter in 1939. When Gene, age 16, saw the flames, his first thought was for his newly acquired car, which was parked near the house. He jumped through the window to save his life (and his car). Mollie calmly walked through the house and out of the front door.
They were forced to live in the chicken house for some time, until a new house could be framed up and built.
As they left the burning farmhouse, Mollie grabbed a pair of silver candlesticks, which she had inherited from her grandmother, from the parlor, knocking one of them against a door as she fled. This was the only valuable they were able to save, and the only light they had in the chicken house. Unfortunately, times were very bad, and shortly after the fire, Mollie went into Unionville and pawned the candlesticks.
In 1998, Mollie's great-granddaughter, Kathleen Bardin, got married. Another great-granddaughter, Betsy Kent, found a pair of silver candlesticks in an antique shop in Cary, NC. When she described them to Gene over the phone, he was very excited, and asked if there was a scratch on the base of one of the candlesticks, that looked like it could have been made by a chicken. We believe that these are the very candlesticks that went out of the family so long ago, but are still trying to verify the provenance.
NOTE TO KATHLEEN: Well, the first three paragraphs are true. And the rest coulda happened that way--it would explain why your wedding present broke!
Back to Mary Ellen DavisDuring the Depression, banks foreclosed on many farms. If you had money, you could get a lot of farm for a very low price.
Ellis decided to buy a farm. It was only about 10 miles away from his mother Mollie's farm by road, and only 3 miles if you took the short cut through the woods.
Mollie was furious. Not because Ellis had left home, but because the farm was right next to a Dance Hall.
Gene was allowed to walk to his uncle Ellis's farm, but was under strict orders to walk on the far side of the road when he got near the place of evil. Mollie had warned him all about it.
He remembers trying to get to sleep, with the sound of the music and the pounding feet echoing through the air. He was waiting for the Devil to come any moment to take those evil square dancers away!
Elizabeth Kent's story
In July 1999, we learned that Alan was to be be ordained as an Anglican priest in September. This meant that the search for a suitable present had to begin at once. Janet Latham went in with us on the gift.
After surfing a variety a Web sites, we concluded that a silver chalice was outside of our budget. Jim suggested a wooden chalice or cup, as in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. (In case you've forgotten, Indy identified the Grail by reasoning that a carpenter would have used a plain wooden cup.)
As luck would have it, the Cary, NC, summer craft fair was happening that weekend. I wasn't able to get to there until early afternoon, with the temperature at over 90 degrees. I quickly spotted a gracefully carved wine glass. A 100 year old oak tree had been destroyed in a storm a few years before. The town gave some of the wood to a wood carving group, which had donated the carved items to support the Page Walker museum in Cary. They wrapped up the glass with a little card explaining its history.
I mailed the glass to Alan the week before his ordination. My parents attended the ordination ceremony. They said Alan was showing the wooden "chalice" and explaining the reference to the movie, and that it had been carved from a 100 year old tree. The children were very impressed. And a friend of Alan's, who had been "priested" a few years earlier, said, "Nobody gave me anything like that when I was priested!"
Several people have congratulated me on sending a family heirloom for the occasion. I don't know how that transformation happened. Usually it takes more than a week for an item to make heirloom status!
Back to Alan KentRelayed by Janet Latham, who heard it from one of the boys, many years later.
Fred Latham grew grapes near the house on Circle Grove Farm. He would let kids go in and eat all the grapes they wanted for a dime. The only rule was they couldn't take any away with them (except in their stomachs). One day, Fred, as usual leaning on his cane, approached four young boys who were coming out of the arbor. He spoke to the first boy, saying "Enjoyed those grapes, did you? Get your fill?" He punctuated each remark by poking the boy's hip pockets with the tip of his cane, then with a friendly but firm poke at the boy's chest. He repeated this with each boy, who all had all filled their pockets and the fronts of their shirts with grapes. The boys went home, completely (and conspicuously) covered with grape juice. One of the boys wrote up the incident for his own family history as an example for "Honesty is the best policy."