I mentioned earlier that I had ordered the book Remembering Kingstree: the Collected Writings of Bessie Swann Britton, after discovering that it mentions Aunt Gaynelle and Caroline Cox (my ancestresses?). It turns out that Caroline Cox was Bessie's first cousin, making Bessie my first cousin, four times removed (perhaps)! Sort of fun to read such fabulous writing and think that it was written by my suspected blood kin.
The book is a compilation of Bessie's personal historical anecdotes, which she wrote for Kingstree's newspaper in the '50's and '70's. Bessie was born in 1894 near Kingstree and primarily recounts stories of her childhood and of many town characters. For residents of Williamsburg County, SC (and the county seat of Kingstree), the preponderance of familiar landmarks and surnames should add pleasure to the reading. Most of the stories are humorous, for everyone's pleasure.
Bessie declares herself a bit of a tomboy, and she has an older, studious sister named Mary. With the similar setting, there is a strong hint of Little House on the Prairie energy to a couple of the stories about Bessie's school days, and it's entirely possible that she was influenced by Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose books were popular well before Bessie wrote her recollections. I even read a couple of her childhood stories to my children for bedtime, and they loved them!
Unfortunately, I didn't actually discover too much more about Caroline Cox or Aunt Gaynelle. Aunt Gaynelle's husband, George Hammet, had apparently been somewhat of a scamp in his youth, though, along with the other local boys, but he was later police chief.
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