Thomas Dillard (ca. 1706-1774) of Spotsylvania County, Virginia was married first to Elizabeth Holloway, by whom he had nine children. His second wife was Sarah Mason. They had three children. James Daniel (ca. 1700-1763) emigrated from Ireland in about 1730. He married Jean (Kelso) in about 1738 and settled in Virginia. They had six children. Descendants and relatives lived in Virginia, Pennsyl- vania, Georgia and elsewhere.
When Ina Dillard Russell died in 1953, flags throughout Georgia were lowered to half-mast in honor of her dedication to her state, community, and family. Roots and Ever Green is the engaging true story, told through her letters, of this remarkable woman's life at the turn of the century in a dramatically changing South. Born in 1868, Ina Dillard grew up in rural Georgia during Reconstruction. After Ina married Richard Brevard Russell, an Athens lawyer and future chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, in 1891, the simple life she had imagined was transformed. Russell became the matriarch of a large and influential family and raised thirteen children, including future Georgia governor and U.S. Senator Richard Russell. This energetic and talented woman balanced her household, family, and social responsibilities with extraordinary skill, reinventing traditional roles to accommodate her active life. The letters presented in this volume are selections from the estimated three thousand that Russell wrote to her children and husband during her lifetime. Ranging from the turn of the century to the early years of the Great Depression, they provide an intimate view of what life was like for many women in the South during a time of great political and social upheaval. From guidelines on manners, nutrition, and fashion to instructions on education, motherhood, and home health remedies, she offers insights into the numerous roles women were expected to fill. Not limited to family matters, Russell's letters record her views on politics, football, the World Wars, music, and life in various Georgia towns. A frequent traveler, she also offers entertaining anecdotes of her excursions and descriptions of the people she met. This intimate, detailed portrait of one woman's life chronicles a critical period of change in the roles and ambitions of women in the South and in the United States.
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author In recognition of her long and lauded career as a master essayist, a landmark collection including her most beloved pieces and some rarely seen work, rigorously curated by the author herself “Annie Dillard’s books are like comets, like celestial events that remind us that the reality we inhabit is itself a celestial event.”—Marilynne Robinson, Washington Post Book World “Annie Dillard is, was, and will always be the very best at describing the landscapes in which we find ourselves.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “Annie Dillard is a writer of unusual range, generosity, and ambition. . . . Her prose is bracingly intelligent, lovely, and human. ”—Margot Livesey, Boston Globe “A writer who never seems tired, who has never plodded her way through a page or sentence, Dillard can only be enjoyed by a wide-awake reader,” warns Geoff Dyer in his introduction to this stellar collection. Carefully culled from her past work, The Abundance is quintessential Annie Dillard, delivered in her fierce and undeniably singular voice, filled with fascinating detail and metaphysical fact. The pieces within will exhilarate both admiring fans and a new generation of readers, having been “re-framed and re-hung,” with fresh editing and reordering by the author, to situate these now seminal works within her larger canon. The Abundance reminds us that Dillard’s brand of “novelized nonfiction” pioneered the form long before it came to be widely appreciated. Intense, vivid, and fearless, her work endows the true and seemingly ordinary aspects of life—a commuter chases snowball-throwing children through neighborhood streets, a teenager memorizes Rimbaud’s poetry—with beauty and irony, inviting readers onto sweeping landscapes, to join her in exploring the complexities of time and death, with a sense of humor: on one page, an eagle falls from the sky with a weasel attached to its throat; on another, a man walks into a bar. Reminding us of the indelible contributions of this formative figure in contemporary nonfiction, The Abundance exquisitely showcases Annie Dillard’s enigmatic, enduring genius, as Dillard herself wishes it to be marked.
The marriage records abstracted here derive from microfilm copies of the original bonds and from a microfilm copy of a register of marriage bonds maintained from 1851 by the clerk of the county court. The arrangement is alphabetical by the surname of the groom, and each entry has the name of the bride, the date of the marriage bond and, where recorded, the names of the minister, witnesses, and bondsmen. About 9,000 marriage bonds are abstracted.
