There were lots of treasures to play with in my grandmother's house. Old, yellowing photographs carefully kept in scrapbooks; curious crystals and rock formations; original jewelry my grandfather made for her. I always knew there was a family pitcher that held great importance to my grandmother, Dorothy Wing Weis Swofford, as a family heirloom. I seem to remember her letting me play with it when I was young, as she shared all our old family treasures.

Upon her death, we found the pitcher again and knew very explicitly that it was to be passed on to Evelyn Wilder Scott, her granddaughter. No one was very clear about the history of the pitcher and the connection with the Evelyn line in our family.

In compiling the information for this web site, the entire story has come to light. It is best explained by Charles Dent Bostick, in these excerpts from an e-mail he shared with me. Perhaps the most interesting twist of all is that after 150 years, the pitcher is back in the hands of a woman who carries the surname of Scott.

See also:
Evelyn Lineage
Articles about Bishop Scott
 
"Regarding the pitcher. It belonged, of course, to Bishop Thomas Scott, who married the aunt of my great-great grandmother Ashford (Evelyn Jane Appleby Ashford). The bishop's wife (Eva) was the sister of Little Granny's father Appleby. She lived with her niece in the terrible post-war poverty in Gainesville until her death. Interestingly, one of Little Grannys' former slaves from the big, lost Alabama plantation lived in the back yard in Gainesville until his death. (Note from Stacy: refer to Wings of Eagles for more stories about the slave, Old Doc).

'The Bishop's wife is buried near Pendergrass, Ga., near Gainesville. Bishop Scott was the first ever Episcopal Bishop of the territories of Washington and Oregon in the 1850's.

'Bishop Scott, originally from North Carolina, but who lived mostly in Georgia, won the pitcher for an essay he wrote regarding the proper treatment of slaves in the ante-bellum South. It, along with an oil portrait of him painted in New York before he left for Oregon, fell into the hands of Ashford Daniels, the alcoholic son of Ella May Ashford. When Ella May died in the late l940's, her son Ashford took the portrait and the pitcher to a house in Gainesville where he lived with a family whom he had taken into his home.

'When Ashford died, the woman called my Grandmother Dent who was dying and offered her the two items. I went to see her and took Ruby (Merck Wing) with me. My Grandmother took the portrait, which I now have, and we gave the pitcher to Ruby to carry on the Evelyn tradition. She later gave it to Dorothy (Wing Weis Swofford) for Evelyn Weis (Scott).

'The Bishop was returning with his wife to Georgia from Oregon by sea as the civil war ended. Crossing the Isthmus of Panama on mule back from Pacific to Caribbean, he contracted yellow fever. He died on board quarantined ship in New York harbor and is buried in a very impressive tomb in the Midtown Trinity cemetery in Manhattan."