If there is any life-truth to be learned from digging through the past, it’s the certainty that “what goes around comes back around.” I find this truth especially pertinent during these uncertain times of the early 21st century. I find comfort from the understanding I glean from the stories of my families’ histories that the human spirit will rise up and persevere even under the most difficult circumstances. Wives left widowed with babes in arms, husbands left without mothers for their children, farmers and city-dwellers each who struggled to feed their families during times of crisis all left their stories to their descendants to encourage us to push forward in our efforts to be a force for good in the place in which we live.
I find these truths especially true in my Whitsett family line. Immigrants from Ireland in the mid-1700s, these men seemed to seek out the wilderness of the North American continent. A generation in Virginia, the next to North Carolina, the next over into Tennessee and Kentucky – the Whitsetts seemed to seek a wide-open space to plant themselves and their families, a place they found in the opening years of the 19th century in middle Tennessee.
Like most of my ancestors, Absalom Whitsett considered himself a farmer, the son of a farmer, the progenitor of farmers yet to come. Absalom was born just after the War for Independence ended, probably in either Guilford or Orange Co., North Carolina. When several of his cousins decided to make the push over the mountains into Tennessee, this tall, red-haired Irishman lost no time committing to tame the wilderness of Middle Tennessee. Ab married, started a family, and began to see the fruits of his hard work. But, hardship and heartache came to knock on his door in the form of battles with the native Creeks and other tribes who claimed that the settlers had taken their traditional hunting lands. So, Ab joined Andrew Jackson’s war against the Creeks. In 1812, Absalom Whitsett was killed in a battle in Alabama, leaving behind a widow and several young children.
The widow, Elizabeth Kidd Whitsett, persevered. She worked her farm and successfully raised her children. Her son, James, named for her father, followed the path of his ancestors and worked his own farm. James married a neighbor, Mary Elizabeth Biggers, and they started their own family, including a son named Absalom for his grandfather. But, like his father, James Whitsett died young, leaving another widow with young children to struggle to survive.
By the time Absalom the younger arrived at adulthood, the farms of the Whitsetts in Middle Tennessee were no longer on the frontier. Nashville was a prosperous river-front town, connected with the other great cities of the eastern seaboard by their rivers. As such, the now-prosperous Whitsett farmers no longer worried so much about sheer survival. Absalom the younger married a local belle, Mary Elizabeth Luna, the daughter and granddaughter of prosperous planters, and they started what appeared to be a life of comfort and quiet success. When the Civil War came in 1861, Absalom and Mary Elizabeth were still relative newly-weds with young children. Absalom chose not to take sides, chose to stay on his farm, chose to raise his family away from conflict. But conflict found Absalom.
As a sustenance farmer during the war years, Absalom understood that every single plant of crop and every head of livestock was precious for survival. Unfortunately, his neighbor didn’t have that same understanding, for day after day for several weeks, the neighbor’s dogs attacked Absalom's flock of chickens. Perhaps as citizens of the 21st century we don’t understand the importance of chickens to a household, but to Absalom’s family the chickens provided eggs, often their only source of protein, they provided feathers, a source of warmth and padding, and, finally, they provided sustenance when the chicken was added to the stew pot. After entreating his neighbor to keep his dogs out of his chickens, Absalom was forced to wage his own war – he shot his neighbor’s dogs. On the following day while Absalom and his young sons were out working in their field, his neighbor approached, took aim, and shot Absalom dead – for the sake of his dogs.
This story would be sorrowful even if it ended here, but it doesn’t. For Absalom’s oldest son, Joseph, who had witnessed the deed, took up his gun, walked over to the neighbor’s house, and killed the man on his doorstep, again, in front of children. Joseph, a young teenager, fled from his home in Tennessee for safety in Texas. According to my grandmother, it was decades before any of his family ever heard from him again. His mother went to her grave not knowing what had happened to him after he avenged his father’s death.
When I listen to the headlines on the radio, I often think about the lives of my ancestors. Yes, “what goes around comes around.”
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