Sometimes you have to dig deep to find something special.

John Bayne, a kind reader of my blog, recently contacted me about a project he’s working on about Westview Cemetery. I wrote about Westview a few months ago. He had a list of famous people buried at Westview whose graves he hoped to photograph. As you can imagine, I was more than willing to help with that. In the course of that work this week, I discovered Madge Bigham.

You’ve probably never heard of her. I had not until John gave me her name. No picture of her has survived. But in the early years of the 1900s, Madge Alford Bigham was a famous children’s author. She also founded the West End Kindergarten, one of the first of its kind in Atlanta. Her career, for a woman, was beyond her time. But today, she is largely forgotten or unknown.

Madge’s grave was last on my list for the day and all I knew was that she was in Section 16, which contains taller stone monuments. You can even see some of the names from the road. But I couldn’t see a Bigham among them as I began to “hop” down the rows. An hour later, as I reached the front end of the section, I was tired, cranky and ready to leave. But my foot scraped an indentation in the grass. Not willing to give up on Madge, I got on my knees and began brushing and pulling away dead grass and weeds with my bare hands.

Hidden under the grass, I found the narrow, flat gravestone for Madge’s sister, Eugenia Bigham. Beside her were Madge, sister Kate, and brother James. All of them were totally covered with a mesh of grass clippings from multiple mowings that had grown over them. Had I not stopped, I would have walked right over them.

Something told me there was much more to Madge than her simple grave marker. Later, I got on the Internet and started learning about an amazing woman who stepped outside society’s confines to teach children and share her imaginative stories with them. What I learned about her is mostly thanks to the efforts of Atlantan Tommy Jones’ blog, tomirtonics.com. What you read about Madge here came mostly from his research.

Madge was the daughter of Methodist minister Rev. Robert William Bigham. When his first wife, Charlotte, died in 1871, Rev. Bigham was left to care for his eight young children. He remarried and the Bighams had at least four more children. Rev. Bigham wrote a number of children’s books himself, the most famous being Vinny Leal’s Trip to the Golden Shore.

Madge was born in LaGrange, Ga. in 1874, and attended the Female Academy there. She continued her studies at the Lucy Cobb Institute in Athens. In 1896, she graduated from the Georgia Woman’s College (then in Covington). By 1902, she was principal of the Atlanta Free Kindergarten, located on Fort Street east of downtown.

The first kindergarten in the United States was formed in 1856. Established in 1895, the Atlanta Free Kindergarten Association was part of an international movement that began in Europe in the 1840s. The Association’s president in the early years, Nellie Peters Black, was an advocate for free kindergartens and hospitals, enforcement of child labor laws, as well as for the admission of women to the University of Georgia and the Georgia Bar.

Madge’s brother, James Whitaker Bigham, purchased a home on 124 (now 503) Peeples Street in Atlanta’s West End. James, along with his spinster sisters Kate, Madge and Eugenie, never married. The four siblings moved into the house and probably by 1911, they had added an addition in the back for Madge to open the West End Kindergarten. The house was near the Wren’s Nest, home of prominent author Joel Chandler Harris (who wrote the Brer Rabbit stories).

By that time, Madge was already following in her father’s footsteps to become a noted author. Her first book, Stories of Mother Goose Village, was published in 1906. More books were to follow, including Sonny Elephant, Fanciful Flower Tales, and The Bad Little Rabbit.

Celestine Sibley wrote about one of Madge’s stories in her syndicated newspaper column in 1970. “The Story of How Apples Got Stars Within” comes from Overheard in Fairy Land. In the tale, a little apple tree loved the evenings when she could gaze at the canopy of stars stretched overhead. Her wish to have just one star of her own was overheard by the Fairy Queen, who promised the little tree that if she worked hard to grow straight and tall, she would get her stars one day.

The little tree did just that and grew tall, eventually blooming with beautiful pink blossoms. When the blossoms were gone, little brown seeds took their place. That’s when the Fairy Queen returned to grant that wish. The tree, now big, had forgotten about it and told the Fairy:

“That was a foolish wish of mine. But if stars you have to give, give them, I pray you, to my baby seeds.” So that is why, when you cut your apple through the center of the circle side, you find brown baby seeds nestled in a five-pointed star.

When the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, Madge was forced to close her beloved West End Kindergarten. Her other unmarried siblings died as the years went by and she found herself caring for the house with her brother Ernest’s widow, Mary, and their children. Madge died on August 11, 1957.

Eventually, the house (which was in such bad shape it had been condemned) was purchased by Dr. Otis Thrash Hammonds and completely renovated. After the doctor’s death from leukemia in 1983, the house sat vacant until Fulton County purchased it. Today, it is the Hammonds House Museum and features Dr. Hammonds extensive African-American art collection. The sounds of children have returned to the house where Madge taught her students.

Unlike Joel Chandler Harris, Madge Bigham’s name slid into obscurity. Occasionally, her books show up on eBay or in a rare book collector’s shop. Like her grave, her amazing life has become obscured in a modern era in which stories about heavily merchandised animated characters have upstaged happy little apple trees. I hope one day she gets the recognition she truly deserves.

Don’t worry, Madge. I’ll be back to make sure you keep seeing those stars at night.

In the mid 90s, I visited my friend (and fellow Church Chick) Megan in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Holocaust Museum had not been open very long so we went to see it. That day changed my life.

At the beginning of the tour, each guest was given a passport of a real person who lived during the Holocaust and was sent to a concentration camp. It briefly described their life and what happened to them. When I opened mine, I was stunned.

The name inside my passport was Hana Mueller. My niece’s name is Hannah. And my maiden name is Muller. That’s when the Holocaust truly became real to me.

Born in Prague (now part of the Czech Republic) in 1922, Hana was reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath in her apartment when she was taken by the Nazis. Despite enduring months in two different concentration camps, Hana was freed when her work crew was abandoned by the SS as liberators approached in May 1945. To watch videos from 1990 of Hana talking about her experiences, you can visit the museum’s website.

My father’s roots are in Germany. The Mullers came from the town of Konz in the Rheinland, in the Southwest. My great-great grandfather, John Henry Muller, arrived in the United States in 1866. He was a carpenter and a Catholic. But despite the fact Hana was from Prague and a Jew, I thought that girl could have been me.

Ever since then, my interest to learn as much as possible about the Holocaust has been almost obsessive. I’ve read countless memoirs written by Holocaust survivors and seen over a hundred hours of documentaries. I’ve read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich all the way through. It’s a subject I never tire of learning more about.

When I heard Atlanta had a cemetery with a Holocaust Memorial, I knew I had to visit it. That’s when I discovered Greenwood Cemetery, located off Cascade Road in Southwest Atlanta.

Greenwood Cemetery opened in 1907. Its diversity is worth noting. Hundreds of graves are for Jews who made Atlanta their home. I had never seen Jewish headstones up close before, except at Oakland Cemetery. There’s also an entire section for those of the Greek Orthodox faith, complete with a small chapel. A very small area belongs to the Chinese, perhaps 20 graves in all.

But what truly separates Greenwood Cemetery from others is its Holocaust memorial. Built in 1965, the “Memorial to The Six Million” is a small granite open-air structure. The funds to build it came from a group of 100 Holocaust survivors living in Atlanta. In 2008, the Memorial was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It is the only Holocaust memorial in Georgia to have that distinction.

What catches your eye immediately are the six 19-foot tall pillars in the middle of it. They represent the estimated six million Jews who perished as a result of the atrocities of the Holocaust. During special ceremonies at the Memorial, these “candles” are lit as an act of remembrance for those who died.

Inside, on the walls, are plaques inscribed with the names of hundreds of people (with surviving family members and descendants that reside in Atlanta) who died in the concentration camps scattered across Europe. Entire families are listed, their lives snuffed out by the Nazi regime. The pillars are anchored by a large, black base that resembles a casket.

On the day I visited Greenwood and the Memorial, it was a stunningly beautiful sunny day with a hint of fall in the air. Nobody else was around as I quietly entered. It is a place of reverence and remembrance. As I scanned the names on the wall, it was like being back at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. The huge number of six million becomes much more personal when you see the actual names of people who died.

Also within the memorial is an urn containing human ashes brought from the concentration camp at Dachau.

There is a bit of controversy attached to the Memorial. Outside of it are buried four bars of soap that are purported to have been made by Nazis from the fat of Jewish Holocaust victims. A Jewish soldier who was part of a U.S. force that liberated a concentration camp brought them home after the war. They were forgotten until his wife found them in their Dekalb County basement in 1970. They are stamped “RIF”.

Historians say the initials stand for Reich Industrial Fat. But when the bars were found, the “I” was widely interpreted as a “J,” and some people thought the initials stood for the German translation of Pure Jewish Fat.

After the bars were discovered, the couple called a local rabbi who consulted with Jewish scholars and planned a burial at Greenwood. The bars remain buried there, although I could not find the flat stone marker where they are located.

In 2000, a Jewish architect from Atlanta named Ben Hirsch (his parents and two siblings died in concentration camps) wrote a book that included his belief that the Nazis did indeed make soap from Jewish victims. Hirsch’s uncle’s unpublished writings describe how he was forced to work in the concentration camp crematories and saw it himself.

Most historians contend that while the atrocities enacted by the Nazis were horrific, there is no substantial proof that this soap making actually took place. Because of this sentiment, the U.S. Holocaust Museum barred a book signing for Hirsch there.

Regardless of who is right or wrong, the Memorial for the Six Million at Greenwood Cemetery is a sacred place that sends the message it creators originally hoped to get across. Such a tragedy must never be repeated. That’s why remembering it is so critical.

We must never forget.

This week, for the first time, I am featuring a guest blogger!

Meet Steve Reagin. We became good friends in high school through the drama department and by being in the same church youth group together. I hadn’t seen or talked to him since 1987 until we made contact on Facebook last year.

Here’s a message he sent me in February:

“Hey Traci, If you’re ever in a cemetery around Conyers, Lithonia, or Stone Mountain, and you run across a headstone for “Marvin J. Reagin, Sr.” or some version thereof, give me a yell. That would be my grandfather. No one alive seems to know where he’s buried.”

What happened after that is what Steve has written about in his own words. I know you’ll enjoy reading about how he found many of his ancestors in just one day in a Georgia cemetery:

When my Dad died in August 2007, I began to wonder more about his family. I realized I knew close to nothing about the generations of Reagins before him. When he was a kid, his father was an alcoholic who spent time in and out of jail, and died in a car crash fleeing the police. His mother ran out on the family for a while. My Dad and his brother, Robert, were shuffled amongst his aunts and uncles, and weren’t always treated well. A few years before I was born, Robert died in a car accident as well. Because of this, Dad rarely talked about his family, not even to Mom. I had no concept of a larger family outside of my immediate family.

At Dad’s funeral, I met a cousin who was so close to Dad when they were kids, he was like another brother. He told us stories about Dad as a kid and about my grandfather whom he called “Mr. Joe”. During one of his stories (which always seemed to end with Dad keeping my grandfather out of jail or bailing him out of jail), he stopped, looked right at me, and said I “was the spittin’ image of Mr. Joe.”

After Dad’s funeral, my sister-in-law, Kara, showed me some information she found on the Reagins through Ancestry.com. She and my parents even tried to find the family land in South Carolina where Dad’s ancestors lived before moving to Georgia. I didn’t pay much attention to this and forgot about it for the most part.

On my way back to my current home outside of Seattle, I realized I had no idea where my grandfather or uncle were buried. We never visited a graveside on a birthday, death anniversary, Memorial Day, etc. The next time I talked to Mom, I asked if she remembered where they were buried. She said no, but assumed they were at Lithonia City Cemetery. This struck me as odd, as I knew she had to have been at my uncle’s funeral. He was the best man at my parent’s wedding and had dated Mom before Dad did. I knew she must have attended his funeral. However, I decided not to push it.

Years later, through Facebook, I started reconnecting with friends I hadn’t seen since before I moved to Seattle in 1993. One of those friends was Traci. After reading some of her blog posts, I sent her a message that if she ever came across the graves of Marvin J. Reagin, Sr. or Robert Reagin to let me know. Traci zoomed into action. In a matter of moments, she was looking up census records, death records, and a website called Find A Grave.com. She didn’t have much luck, but said she would keep an eye out during her adventures.

Some months later, I found out I was going to Atlanta for a work conference. I arranged to stay a few extra days to visit with Mom and see some friends. I asked Traci if she would be interested in exploring some cemeteries with me in search of my grandfather and uncle. She was all over it.

Before we met up, Traci did some legwork to see if she could find anything. She found many of my grandfather’s brothers and sisters in the Lithonia City Cemetery and nearby Turner Hill Baptist Church Cemetery, but no sign of my grandfather and uncle. She said I should be prepared for the reality that they could be in unmarked graves. She did send me a picture of a monument in the Lithonia cemetery that said “REAGIN” that had no names etched into it or any other markers around it.

As my trip neared, I finally remembered the information that Kara had put together and left with Mom. When I got to Mom’s house in Georgia, I searched Kara’s research for any clues. While there was nothing much about my grandfather besides the listing of his siblings and parents, the story I discovered about my family was incredible!

In contrast to the story I remember hearing about three brothers who immigrated to Georgia from Ireland during the potato famine in the mid-19th century, evidence suggests that my family came from Ireland in 1690s and settled in Maryland. Part of that original family wound up in Newberry County, S.C., where one William Reagin owned a plantation that consisted of 250 acres and many slaves.

When William died in 1830, his estate was divided up between his wife and 10 children. Sometime after that, three of his sons and one daughter left for Georgia including my great-great-great-great-grandfather, James Jones Reagin.

As I was reading this history and talking with Mom, she started to remember some things. Yes, both my grandfather and uncle were buried in Lithonia City Cemetery. She vaguely remembered where they were located and described what she remembered seeing from the graveside (and obelisk across the road, Confederate graves off to the side, a Scottish family nearby).

When Traci and I finally got to the Lithonia City Cemetery, a city landscaping crew had just finished mowing and trimming the entire cemetery, so it was very easy to see everything. When I stood in front of the monument Traci had found, I knew that this was where my grandfather and uncle were. It matched my Mom’s description exactly.

I was surprised at how emotional I became, not only because I found where my grandfather was buried, but as I looked around, I saw the name “Reagin” everywhere. The only time I had ever seen Reagin on a headstone was on my Dad’s that I had just seen in person for the first time a few days before. I finally had a sense of a larger family that I never had before, and I found myself crying beside my grandfather’s grave.

As we walked around the cemetery, I started recognizing some of the names that were in the historic information Kara had gathered, which I neglected to bring with me. I started taking pictures of the Reagin headstones that sounded familiar. James, Jones, and Joseph are all common names through the Reagin generations. My middle name is even James. When I showed Mom what I had found, she said, “By the way, your father’s grandparents are in the same plot as his father and uncle.”

When I compared the pictures I took with the family history I had, I discover that my great-great-great grandparents are in the plot next to the one I had just visited. My great-great-grandparents are nearby across the street. In one day, I found four generations of my family that I didn’t know existed the day before.

As I looked at the family tree, I realized the next person up would be my great-great-great-great-grandfather, James Jones Reagin, one of the sons of William Reagin that moved to Georgia from South Carolina. My information didn’t show where he was buried, but it did note that one of his brothers was buried in the McClung Cemetery near Conyers, and his sister was buried in the Rock Springs Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery near Lithonia. I messaged this to Traci, and she quickly found a listing for both James and a third brother at the McClung Cemetery on Findagrave.com.

On my last day before heading back to Seattle, I found myself searching for McClung Cemetery in the middle of a residential neighborhood near Conyers. I drove down a dead end road and didn’t see it. I turned around thinking I may not find it after all, but as I headed back to the main road, I noticed what looked like a vacant lot, but there were stone stairs leading up from the road. This was it.

McClung Cemetery is a neglected cemetery. The weeds are waist high. Right in front of me were granite tombstones with “REAGIN” carved or etched into them. It seems there are more Reagins than McClungs in the McClung Cemetery. Some graves are marked only by a single, huge, granite rock. Under a tree, I found a very well preserved stone that said “REAGIN” and under it the names and dates of James and Talitha, my great-great-great-great grandparents. The trees that shelter the tombstone definitely weren’t there when James and Talitha were buried, but fortunately, they protected the couple during the graveyard’s years of decline and neglect.

I eventually found one of James’ brothers grave, and what I think are the broken remains of the other brother’s tomb, as well as their sister later on in a nearby church graveyard. However, as I stood in front of James and Talitha’s grave, I marveled at the fact that the day before, I was unaware of my grandfather, and now I’d discovered five generations of my family.

James moved his family to Georgia, and as of right now, we don’t know exactly why. When his father’s estate was divided up, was there not enough money? Did the oldest brother claim the plantation house itself? Did James leave to work in the granite quarries around Lithonia, Conyers, and Stone Mountain? Did he become a stonecutter as some of his descendants did?

For whatever reason, he is why I was raised in Georgia and why I’ll always identify myself as a Georgia native. His decision five generations ago had a hand in shaping who I am today. It also makes me wonder if five generations from now, will there be someone standing at my grave wondering why I moved from Georgia to Washington State?

What will my legacy be?

In this modern age, you don’t even have to wear black to a funeral any more. There are no rules, it seems. I’ve seen people show up in everything from sweatpants to club attire.

Back in the Victorian era, there was a very specific code for what a woman (men were pretty much off the hook) in mourning must wear and for how long. If you didn’t follow it to the letter, you risked being branded a social outcast by those around you.

The Victorian age officially began in 1837 when an 18-year-old Queen Victoria took the British throne. A few years later, Victoria married her German first cousin, Prince Albert. Their marriage resulted in nine children and was said to be a very happy one.

Perhaps that’s why when Prince Albert died of typhus in 1861, the Queen went off the rails a bit when it came to grieving her loss. She remained in full mourning for three years. From that day forward, she always wore black and spent a considerable time in seclusion. This earned her the nickname, the Widow of Windsor.

Mourning clothes were supposed to be an outward reflection of a family’s inner feelings.The rules for who wore what and for how long were complicated, and were outlined in popular journals or household manuals which were very popular among Victorian housewives. They were filled with instructions about appropriate mourning etiquette. If your second cousin’s cousin twice removed on your father’s dad’s side died and you wanted to know what sort of mourning clothes you should wear and for how long, you consulted The Queen or other manuals.

The elaborate mourning fashion code tended to isolate a widow in her time of need just as the Queen had done. For the first year, a woman in mourning was not allowed to leave her home without full black attire and a weeping veil. When she did go out, it was supposed to be only to attend church services. Crepe was the material of choice for its dull sheen and lack of richness.

In other words, when you were in full mourning, there was no such thing as throwing on a pair of yoga pants to run to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. You had to send someone else to do it. So although it really mattered what you wore, few people saw it because you were stuck at home!

Middle and lower class women did not have the luxury of buying an entirely new wardrobe for mourning. But they would go to great lengths to appear fashionable in such times. Dying clothing black and then bleaching them out again was quite common. The industry of mourning became so vital to tailors that rumors were spread concerning the bad luck of recycling funeral attire.

In nineteenth-century England, a widow was expected to remain in mourning for over two years. The rules were slightly less rigid for American women.

These stages of mourning were observed by widows:

Full mourning, a period of a year and one day, was represented with dull black clothing without ornament. The most recognizable portion of this stage was the weeping veil of black crepe. If a women had no means of income and small children to support, marriage was allowed after this period. There are cases of women returning to black clothing on the day after marrying again.

Second mourning, a period of nine months, allowed for minor ornamentation by implementing fabric trim and mourning jewelry. The main dress was still made from a lusterless cloth. The veil was lifted and worn back over the head. Taking their cue from Queen Victoria’s example, older widows often remained in second mourning or half-mourning for the rest of their lives.

Half mourning lasted from three to six months and was represented by more elaborate fabrics used as trim. Gradually easing back into color was expected coming out of half mourning. All manor of jewelry could be worn. A woman now had a bevy of colors to choose from, by comparison. Grey, mauve, purple, lavender, lilac, and white could all be implemented. Subtle prints using any combination of these colors were also allowed. This trend was more popular in the South because of the weather. I can’t imagine wearing black crepe in 90 degree heat.

The standard mourning time for a widower was two years but it was up to his discretion when to end his single status. Men could go about their daily lives and continue to work. Typically, young unmarried men stayed in mourning for as long as the women in the household did.

Mourning for parents ranked next to that of widows, children mourning for their parents or parents for children being identical. One year was the standard length. Six months in crepe, three in second, and three in half mourning. Second mourning, without full mourning, was suitable for parents-in-law. After one month in black, lilac would follow.

Did you get all that?

Not long after the Queen’s death, the Victorian style of mourning attire faded out. Styles became more relaxed and women became more independent. Black became a fashionable color that transcended death, giving its importance in mourning fashion far less impact. The “little black dress” became a key element of a woman’s wardrobe, but not for grief.

While the pendulum may have swung almost too far back the other way, few would say they desire a return to this kind of lengthy, rule-driven form of mourning. But for the Victorians, for whom death was a large part of life, it seemed entirely natural.