Blest Be the Ties that Bind
I met Roger Dale Wilson via an internet message board who
first told me about a connection between the Brumfield and Caston families. He
told me about an upcoming family reunion.
I was able to attend the
Caston-Brumfield family reunion in Atlanta, Georgia in 2010. Prior to the reunion, I had interviewed very few
family members and had researched my family history 3 generations earlier.
I previously met very few family members even one generation older. Brumfield
is a common surname in the southern part of Mississippi and northern Louisiana. I was
not sure that Roger’s Brumfield family and my family were the same.
I made the trip to Atlanta with slender threads of information about my family. A great deal of genealogy research consists of recording a name with a beginning of birth and an end of death. The middle is the details of the life. In genealogy research, there are two tasks that a beginner is always instructed to perform. The first is to record your own life’s story and the second is to interview your oldest known living relative. It was at the family reunion, I had an opportunity to meet one of my oldest relatives.
The first gathering of the reunion was in a hotel ballroom. There were people seated at multiple tables labeled with the first names of Caston and Brumfield family members. At the reunion, I first met Eddie Brumfield Sr., the nonagenarian grand patriarch of the Brumfield family, who was seated in a chair near a wall in the hotel ballroom. In the informal setting, family members paid their respects and chatted with him.
Quick-witted, he willingly told stories about the family’s
past. He recalled the names of family members Irvin, Sherman, Louis, Isom,
Mattie, Mamie all his cousins who were counterparts in age with his father
Willis Brumfield. He knew the story about the injury and tragic
death of cousin Lattimore Brumfield daughter of Sherman Brumfield. This story
was recited many times to me as a child. It was from his recollection of the death of Lattimore, I knew we were related. I had found my cousin and family.
 |
| Eddie Brumfield Sr. in 2010
Blest be the ties that binds
Our Hearts in Christian Love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to Above
|
