150 Voices for 150 Years: An Autobiography of Us For your reading pleasure, we present another snippet of history from Dr. Donald Carnes. As you will remember, Dr. Carnes is distantly related to Miss Lucinda Hardage, as she was an aunt of Dr. Carness step-great grandmother. In the passage that follows, Dr. Carnes recounts one of Miss Lucindas memories of war at Kennesaw Mountain: She remembered the war year 1864 well. “I was sixteen and loved to see the men in uniform. I lived in the midst of the Southern Army for several days or weeks. Three different generals had their headquarters at my father’s home. First was General Kelley, who was a cavalry general. Next was General Polk, who was killed at Pine Mountain. Then came General Loring. Our house was in a fine groove of oaks and hickory—about two acres. The generals and their men camped in the groove. General Kelley was very fond of my two little brothers and would have them come into his tent every day and entertained them some way. He was a very handsome man: a blond type and taller than average. One night the army band came to his tent to serenade him. They came up so quiet that no one knew they were there till they hit the drums. While General Kelley was here, one of our bee guns was robbed. He couldn’t find out who did it, so he placed guards over the other bee guns.” Now, About the Bee Gun... We bet you dont know what a bee gun is. Well, neither did we. Luckily, one of our staff members is a great guy from Alabama and knows lots of stuff about 19th century rural living. He pointed out that there was probably an error in transcribing Miss Lucindas words; what she was likely saying were the words bee GUM. Bee gums are artificial hives set up in the hollow sections of trees - typically black gum trees, hence the name. Miss Lucinda pointed out that one of their bee gums was robbed. This was a big deal because someone stole the entire honeycomb and to do so meant killing the entire bee colony. That might explain why General Kelleys decision to put guards over the other bee gums. We hope you learned something new. #150VoicesOfUs #HashtagHistory Beekeepers unite!
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 10:00:01 +0000