"Odis" or "Odie", as he was called, was the first cousin of Aunt Hilda and my paternal grandmother, Annie Swann Dungan. He was the son of Joshua Swann and Ella Louisa Winstead. He is certainly related to the Dungans through my grandmother's marriage, a cousin-in-law to the Dungans, if you will. He may also be a blood relative through his mother, given the many marriages between the Winstead and Dungan families (It's complicated -- really complicated -- and I doubt I ever figure it all out!)
There is another Dungan connection to this story. Odis mentions that two of his teachers were sisters Mrs. Lucy Dungan Winstead and Victoria Dungan, great-granddaughters of the Northern Neck's original Dungan, David, and the daughters of Joe White Dungan and Elizabeth H. Winstead (see what I mean?), who are buried in the family cemetery (described in a previous post).
Regardless of the exact relationship to the Dungans, Odis's story is so unique, and his writing style so vivid that he just seems to leap off the page, that I just had to share it. He wrote this account himself, and my Aunt Hilda copied it into her journal.
Over the course of his ninety years, he survived typhoid fever, became a schoolteacher, and studied French with the daughters of Stonewall Jackson. He served as Bundick postmaster, survived a long stint in Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Hospital, climbed Observatory Mountain with a group of University of Virginia students, and proclaimed said mountain "scarcely more than a hill" (I love this man!) Odis corresponded with European pen pals in five foreign languages through two world wars, volunteered in nursing homes and prisons, and taught himself organ and violin. By his own account, he had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and "probably had the most selective library in the Northern Neck."
My father and cousins remember him as a tall man who rode his bicycle all over the Northern Neck, and was "an obsessive genealogist".
Aunt Hilda obviously composed the last lines herself: "Euodias Garrison Swann died at St. Luke’s Hospital May 7, 1973, 90 years of age. He never married." Odie is buried at Coan Church. I wish I had known him.
Life of Euodias
Garrison Swann written by himself
“Euodias Garrison Swann was born April 12, 1883, on Thursday
in the afternoon and a spring thunderstorm was in progress at the time.
“He was born with an unsatisfieable thirst for knowledge,
and first attended a private school kept by Alexander Headley in an abandoned
barroom at Burton’s Corner. He had
planned to attend Bethany public school in company with his uncle Millard
Fillmore Swann and Aunt Marion Swann, but a sudden attack of Typhoid fever put
an end to this. The illness was
severe and prolonged and his life despaired of, but for the skillful attendance
of Dr. Judson Hasseltine Booker of Lottsburg won the case.
“His first attendance in public school was Piedmont School,
about a mile or less on the Bundicks Road from Lottsburg and the teacher was
James Lee Claughton, son of William R. Claughton, and the first copy he wrote
in the homemade copybook was this:
“Procrastination is the thief of time.”
“The following September after this school term, James Lee
Claughton was taken with typhoid fever to which he succumbed. He was to have been the teacher in Piedmont
School again. The other teachers
in this school during my attendance were:
Mrs. Lucy Dungan Winstead, Victoria Dungan her sister, and Clara Brown
Bromley, the daughter of Louis Brown Bromley, Jr. of Lottsburg. And a summer session in this school
privately taught by Miss Irene Lewis a well-known teacher of her time.
“After this a new school opened in my neighborhood and the
rest of my school life was spent here, the teachers being Gertrude Harding,
Julia Eubank, and Emma Haynie.
Under Emma Haynie I studied algebra and Latin and took up the study of
French myself.
“The summer of 1901, I took the examination required for
public school teachers at Heathsville, Va., held by Giles F. Eubank, Superintendant
of Schools in Northumberland County and passed successfully. Others taking the examination at this
time were: Miss Rhodes, Estella
Betts and Mack Bray to name those remembered.
“Then I began teaching in public schools of Virginia in the
following schools: Henderson,
Gibeon, Fairport, Coan, Lara, Liberty Hill, Hack’s Neck, Corinth, Litwalton,
Arlean in Fauquier County, and Oak Grove in Fairfax County.
“During these years, Samuel Roland Hall of Heathsville, through
self-study, had acquired a practical use of shorthand and typewriting, and he
encouraged me in the study of the Ben Pitman system of shorthand, and he went
to Baltimore, Maryland and obtained a stenographic position with a firm in east
Baltimore.
“A disadvantage of the Pitman system was the strokes had to
be shaded. The same stroke light
and shaded represented two different letters of the alphabet. Soon John Gregg invented a shadeless
system which became very popular and I took up the study of this system and
went to Baltimore and obtained a stenographic position with the Manhattan
Rubber Company on West Lexington Street, managed by Richard Kutzleb, assisted
by his son August. Here in
addition to stenographic work I had charge of the payroll and the delivery of
monthly statements to various firms.
“My self study of French led to a desire for further study
of the language for I could not master the different pronunciation alone and I
found help in the person of Mme. Marie Delavigne, a native of Paris, who had
come to Baltimore and become a well known French teacher. Numbering among her pupils were two
daughters of Stonewall Jackson.
“My first position was with Bernheimer Brothers, a popular
firm in their time, who sold a general line of almost everything. I was engaged as a bundle wrapper, and
when a sale was made the saleslady brought the article to be wrapped. I was seated at the wrapping desk high
above the floor which commanded a view everywhere.
“On one occasion I was employed part of a day by a boat that
had brought a load of bananas from the West Indies to Baltimore for
delivery. My duty was to check
with a machine each bunch of bananas that came off the boat.
“On another occasion I worked for several days in a metal
factory, but this proved to be harmful for holding the pieces of metal to the
machine for hours caused a numbness of the left hand that lasted for months.
“The most memorable period of my life was when I was an
inmate of Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital near Towson, Md., entering in the
month of October and leaving the first of March, probably some time around
1920.
“Dr. Ross Chapman was head of the hospital and some of the
doctors were: Clark, Dunton,
McCoy, and Saunders, the last a lady from South Carolina, who was the
supervisor of the women’s department.
“Two youths, Bill Woodward and Charles Lee, were there, the
former the son of Dr. Woodward of Westminister, Maryland who came occasionally
to visit his son.
A son of R. J. Willingham and a fine looking young man he
was, of the Southern Foreign Missionary Board, was there then. It seems he was unable to speak,
probably a deaf-mute.
“Also a son of David Jayne Hill once an Ambassador to
Germany, and he is still there (1969).
Some persons thought David Jayne Hill resembled President Howard Taft.
“Dr. George Edward Clark and Frances Underwood Clark his
wife were loyal friends of mine and continued faithful correspondents to the
end of their lives. Dr. Clark was
born in England and had lived in Holland.
He started as a medical doctor, but had become a psychiatrist. When he left Enoch Pratt Hospital, he went
to a hospital in Rhode Island.
“Mrs. Clark was a remarkable person. Her chirography (?) was highly
individualistic and replied to her letters immediately. After the decease of her husband, she
took up her residence in Boston, Mass.
Immediately after leaving Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, I was
employed by the Gas and Electric Company to distribute advertising matter for
the company, and this took me to all sections of Baltimore and its environs. This was a temporary job and it was
following this, that I went with the Manhattan Rubber Company.
“During my stay at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital I
conceived the idea of having the novel experience of traveling afoot from the
open country and into the downtown section of a great city. So, permission was obtained for such a
trip from the hospital, and one fine winter morning immediately after breakfast
a start for the city was begun.
Rapid progress was made and finally I was entering the northern environs
of Baltimore, when a passing truck halted and invited me to take a ride. It was but a few minutes before
downtown was reached and I alighted from the truck. The returning trip to the hospital was made by trolley.
“During my teaching days in Fairfax County in 1911-12 I
wished to attempt some climbing.
The previous summer at the University of Virginia, I accompanied a party
of students up Observatory Mountain to view the moon and Jupiter through the
telescope, but this was a comparative low mountain scarcely more than a high
hill.
“In Fauquier there is a shapely mountain rising out of the
plain. And the desire came to make
an ascent of it. Thanksgiving,
being a holiday and no school, this was thought to be an opportune time for an
attempted ascent. So after breakfast
a start was made for the cobbler, as it is called. The distance was probably about three miles. Crossing a broad level field, distant
solitary farmhouse loomed in sight at the very foot of the mountain. Nearing the Cobbler there was a growing
fear in undertaking the climb. It
was not long before respiration had become quickened and to assist in the
upward movement, any low growing shrub grasped with eagerness, that would lend
the least aid. Just before reaching
the summit there was a well-defined footpath that led to the top, which was of
bare rocks and from which was an extended view of the surrounding country. After pausing for some time, a descent
was undertaken which involved no special effort and required very little time.
“The following spring a second ascent was made, but this
time in companionship with Harry Hall, a high school student in Warrington High
School. The summit was reached
about noon, and looking below at a distant farmhouse a farmer had left the
field and was unharnessing his team for the noon meal.
“With the outbreak of the First Word War in 1914 into which
the United States was finally drawn and troops sent to France for combat, there
was an interest in the French language, and I began correspondence with various
persons in France which was cheerfully received, with the mailing of letters
and postcards. The same thing took
place again in Second World War.
“It was during the First World War that a study of the
Russian language was begun. The
pronunciation is too difficult to attain except through contact with a native,
and on trips to Baltimore I made acquaintance of Rev. Constantine Sebetzky,
pastor of a Russian church where I had the first opportunity to hear Russian
spoken by a native.
“Self study of the language was continued and when I went to
Richmond, Virginia in 1959 a Russian class for beginners was being taught by
Professor Frank Wilson, a promising and enthusiastic young man, in old John
Marshall High School, who had previously had brief stays in Russia. Before the term came to an end he was
offered a position with radio station WSDP in Washington, D.C., which he
accepted, and left the class in care of another young man who had experience in
the study of Russian similar to him.
Then came the acquaintance of the native teachers of Russian who taught
in the High Schools in Richmond, Virginia. Yacenko and Firs and Romanoff who taught physics in Virginia
Union University, and finally attendance in a Russian class of Richmond
Professional Institute taught by Professor Firs.
"The correspondence with France continued through the years, and at the same time Russian was being studied under Prof. Tiers, also in Richmond Professional Institute. French was being studied under Mme. Hermabessiere a native of Paris, France.
“When a school boy I had a desire to learn vocal and
instrumental music. Charles
Beauchamp taught a class in vocal music at night in Lottsburg, Virginia in his
workshop, and my father and I attended the classes and here I learned vocal
music.
“After learning vocal music it gave me an idea of how to
adopt it to the playing of an organ.
But there was no instrument available on which to practice, but in my
eagerness I took a board and marked off the white keys and attached raised keys
for the black keys on which to practice.
But this helped little.
Finally, when I began to teach school I purchased an organ. I learned to play hymns on the organ
and piano and a few times played in church.
“In addition to the study of French and Russian through self
study I acquired a reading knowledge of German, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian and
had correspondence with the countries where these languages are spoken with the
exception of Russia. The
Russians unlike the people of Western Europe were not interested in foreign
correspondence and therefore replied to no letters.
“I learned to move over the ice on ice skates in the winter
when the ice was thick enough to permit skating. The muscles of my ankles did not seem strong enough to do
real skating and I had to keep both feet on the ice to maintain a
balanace. Headley’s Mill pond
between Lottsburg and Callao was the favorite skating place.
“I had an ardent desire to learn to swim but the facilities
were lacking. In learning to swim
one has to constantly guard against drowning. One summer, one night in Baltimore I went in the swimming
pool in the U.M.C.A. but the
temperature of the water was chilly and it resulted in a severe case of
laryngitis. This was the last
attempt to learn to swim.
“One summer during the rush of the tomato season George
Quail Thomas, postmaster and wharf agent at Bundick, Virginia, asked me to stay
in the post office for a short period.
“The summer of 1909 and 1910 I was employed by William S.
Cralle, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Northumberland County to assist him in
the clerical work of the office.
My chief work was to record deeds in the record books. Here, I gained a knowledge of how to
write legal documents, especially deeds and wills.
“Going to Richmond, Virginia in January 1959 I remained
there until September 1966. This
gave me an opportunity to engage in various forms of religious or social
work. The Fishers of men organization,
started during the Billy Sunday Crusades was active in Richmond at the time,
holding their meetings monthly in the Y.M.C.A. One of the leading members was Mr. Welch, a lawyer. It was through an invitation from him
that I attended the first meeting.
Mr. Welch was interested in travel, and had visited the Holy Land. His desire to visit Australia fulfilled
not long before his death. He was
an Episcopalian. Some of the
members from this group maintained religious services at two oclock on Sundays in
Henrico County jail in Richmond, and I attended these meetings regularly,
walking to the jail but returning home with some person at the meeting. The walls of the jail resounded with
the songs. There were two floors
in the jail and a group of the service leaders on each floor. Sometimes, there was an interest
manifested by the inmates in the service, but others were too hardened to be
interested. It was hoped that
these meetings would induce some person to lead a better life. Many of the inmates were young persons,
some of them teenagers.
“Another kind of religious services was to hold religious
services in some nursing homes, and some of us were asked to be a “Friendly
Visitor”. The first person I
visited was Brock Mines in Clayton Nursing Home on West Franklin Street. He was a victim of Parkinson’s disease,
with twitching about the face and mouth.
When the Clayton Nursing Home was closed he was transferred to the
Convalescent Home on South Street and here he died.
“The next person to visit was Mr. Bichoff a Russian Jew in a
nursing home on West Grace Street, who was unable to walk. He finally moved to a Jewish nursing
home in the West End.
“The next and last person to visit was Robert Lyell Hancock,
a retired farmer from Bedford County, Virginia, who was in the Wheatly Nursing
Home in the eighteen hundred block of West Grace St. He was quite talkative and liked to talk about his farming
days in Bedford County. He had
acquired the habit of chewing tobacco which he still kept up. He was a pleasant agreeable
person. A visit of one hour was
made to the person that was visited, twice each month and a monthly report made
to the Supervisor, who was Mrs. Robin Bristow of West Point, Va., and although
she lived a considerable distance from Richmond she performed her duties with
regularity and (?)
“About 1959 the Junior League a group of college trained and
intellectual young women of Richmond conceived the idea or establishing a
center for the elderly persons of the city, and the Senior Center came into
being with its headquarters in a building in the nine hundred block of West
Franklin Street which had formerly been the palatial home of Fred Scott and was
still owned by his daughter, Mrs. Bowcock who occupied the second story and the
center ground floor. It proved to
be a success and with passing years there was a steady increase in the growth
of membership and attendance. Some
of the various activities were:
making articles in ceramics, the study of art, a study in literature,
birthday parties, bridge playing and dancing on Fridays. The men had a coffee club which met on
Tuesday mornings and sometimes a movie or slides were shown. Persons of the City who made trips to
Europe or other places came to show movies or slides.
“A few times, Nancy Byrd Turner, the Virginia poetess came
to read her poems. And she always
preferred standing while reading her poems.
“The Men’s Coffee Club was an active organization and the
interest and attendance was well sustained.
“About this same period an International Council and Club
was organized in Richmond, because many students from Europe and other foreign
countries came to study in the colleges and high schools of Richmond, and its
meetings were in the YWCA each month.
“In addition to the languages already enumerated I have
studied slightly Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
“I probably had the most selective library in the Northern
Neck.
“A neighbor Master Headley whose name was Garrett, once
loaned me his violin and I learned to tune it and play some hymns on it, but
never kept the practice up.”
The Life of Euodias Garrison Swann was written by him and
copied from the original by Hilda Swann.
Euodias Garrison Swann died at St. Luke’s Hospital May 7,
1973, 90 years of age. He never
married.
