Feb 25 2009
Wordful Wednesday: Paw-Paw
This is my maternal grandfather, Lake Randolph Ledford (1905 - 1980). The picture was taken about 1915, judging by his apparent age. The building behind him is his parents’ home. I believe that building is still standing, but haven’t seen it since I was a little girl, so I can’t say for certain. Since I blogged about my grandfather’s wife, Ruth, last week, I thought it only fair to include a little something about my grandfather this week.
Paw-Paw was raised in the Skeenah community just south of Franklin, Macon County, North Carolina. His parents were Millar David Ledford and Lula Ann Stanfield. Paw-Paw was the fifth of ten children. He attended the University of Georgia. I don’t know what he studied, only that he walked most of the way, likely hitching rides as he could, and that he delayed going to college in order to help his parents.
His first marriage was to Ova Mae Hastings, daughter of Henry Wymer Hastings and Mattie Roxanne Ledford. They had three children. Ova Mae died giving birth to the third child, a daughter who died shortly after birth. The two are buried at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church Cemetery.
Paw-Paw later married my grandmother, Ruth (the story of their marriage is given in the post dedicated to her), and they had ten children. Paw-Paw had about one hundred acres of land covering a little valley near where he had grown up. The family raised their own vegetables and had livestock. Paw-Paw also grew tobacco. I remember walking through the fields as it was growing, and seeing it hung up to cure in the barn.
My grandfather died when I was fairly young (about the same age as he was in the photo above), and there were so many of us grandchildren that I never got to know him well. He used to walk the fields and would bring back rocks and arrowheads to show the kids. He would sit under the old Black Walnut tree and watch us play, but I don’t remember him speaking much.
Paw-Paw was a lay preacher for a while after he and Maw-Maw helped found Longview Baptist Church, and a surveyor, too. He was also a learned man. I spent many a day reading books from his library after his death in 1980, books by Plato and Aristotle, books about religion and the books of the Bible and other subjects, and all of these glorious words arranged on a hand-built bookcase that filled half of a wall. This, then, is how I remember him best, as a quiet man who sought solitude in the growing fields and in the books he so loved. May he rest in the peace.
