The elderly gentleman sat on the cabin’s porch, alone with his thoughts in the warming, sticky Georgia morning air. I slid up next to him. Quietly. Waiting for him to break the silence. We could hear his cousin Gene—my father-in-law—out behind the house showing my wife and kids where the well had been, explaining how they had to draw water for everything: cooking, cleaning, bathing, drinking. Regaling them with stories the veracity of which no one can verify…nor care to.

After a few minutes, Larson spoke. “It was a hard life. I don’t miss it. I like my electricity and air conditioning. My grandparents lived in this cabin. Of course, it wasn’t here back then. It was over in North Thompson down from the church.”

[“Here” being the campus of Brewton-Parker College, where the cabin was relocated a couple decades ago.]

We joined the others inside. One room. A table and a few chairs. One bed with another in the loft above.

Only a few of the furnishings are original, but these are period pieces. Spartan. Functional.

While I explored with my camera, Gene sat on a windowsill and Larson settled into  a chair. The cousins filled us in with details they remembered from their childhood visits with their grandparents. Hunting in the woods. Washing clothes—and bodies—in metal tubs with homemade lye soap. Sleeping out on the porch on hot, muggy summer nights.

When the stories finally petered out we loaded back into our cars—a bit of a jarring juxtaposition of centuries—and caravanned to North Thompson.

This little community just outside Vidalia, Georgia (yes, of sweet onion fame) was named for Berry C. Thompson. He built the cabin around 1842 and later donated land for a Baptist church and cemetery just down the road.

Berry and his first wife—who died young—are buried in the oldest part of the cemetery. His mother rests at his feet.

Generations of the family are interred here, including the grandparents of Gene and Larson who last occupied the cabin, a number of Confederate soldiers—their headstones still decorated with fresh flags—and, on a somber note, Gene’s father’s first wife and infant child. This and the cemetery at South Thompson (on the other side of Vidalia) contain numerous plots with parents laid alongside children who died in infancy. A stark reminder of just how hard life was.

Looking up at the little church, I was struck by the fact that generations of my kids’ ancestors lay underfoot, their stories all but forgotten. Life and death. Love and heartbreak. Joy and pain. And through it all woven threads of fierce independence, hard work, and unshaken faith. I hope someday they’ll be able to look back and see just how special this day was…to appreciate the legacy they’ve received as Americans and Christians. And to pass it on.