Augusta’s eldest brother George and younger brother Jones became leading singers of their generation.Īugusta too became a dedicated Sacred Harp singer. The Entrekins in particular were a prominent singing family. Marriage license of Roland Jackson McGraw and Augusta Ann Savannah Entrekin, 1879.īoth Roland and Augusta were avid Sacred Harp singers. Roland was twenty-one and Augusta fifteen. On Septemin Carroll County, Georgia, Roland Jackson McGraw married Augusta Ann Savannah Entrekin in a ceremony conducted by Minister J. She was the role model for their third child and eldest daughter Augusta Ann Savannah Entrekin, born on July 20, 1864. She took on much of the responsibility for running their small homestead as well as bringing up their six children. Her family remembered that whatever she was doing she was the boss. Roland’s wife Harriett was a strong willed lady. He remained chronically sick with Bright’s disease for the rest of his life. Thomas Neal was furloughed home unfit for further service in 1863 after contracting fever in Pennsylvania and being hospitalized in Virginia. Both fathers enlisted to serve in the Confederate States Army and both survived the war. Ephraim and Jemima’s eldest child, Roland Jackson McGraw, born on July 5, 1859, was almost two, and the Entrekins’ eldest barely one. On the same day, in the same county, Thomas Neal Entrekin, aged eighteen, was married to twenty-five-year-old Harriett Henrietta Cannon by a different Justice of the Peace.īoth men were farmers with young families at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. On that day in Coweta County, Georgia, Ephraim Wesley McGraw, aged twenty-four, married twenty-five-year-old Jemima Adeline Kilgore. Thursday October 7, 1858, was the most significant date in the history of the pre-singing generation of McGraws. Though less well known than that of his younger brothers Tom and Henry Newton “Bud” McGraw, the story of Lee and his family can teach us something about the part that Sacred Harp singing played in the lives of the individuals who collectively make up the tale of our tradition’s history. So began my on-going research into the McGraw family history. As my work progressed, I became increasingly interested in some lesser known members of the McGraw family in particular Tom McGraw’s eldest brother Lee Andrew “L. Keen to know more in those days before the publication of David Warren Steel’s The Makers of The Sacred Harp I wrote to Hugh McGraw, receiving an encouraging note from him and Charlene Wallace in reply. My book fell open at page 562, Tom McGraw’s “Infinite Delight.” I found the song delightful, and my love for the music of this family with such strong ties to Sacred Harp singing was born. Sitting in the garden with my brand new copy of The Sacred Harp I was following the advice in the rudiments to open the book at random and say the shapes to practice the rhythm. It was a warm, sunny afternoon in early summer 2009.
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