Memories of Charlton County - by Gibson and Mays Back to Table of Contents 12. GOOD NEIGHBORS (Pp 16-17) We had some mighty good neighbors when I was
growing up in Charlton County. The Grooms family that lived on the adjoining farm had children about the same age as my family so we really enjoyed our friendship with them. Mr. Jesse Grooms and Mrs. Grooms, --we called them Uncle Jesse and Aunt Vinie--were about the best, most respected people that I knew. He was a wonderful, good man and she was a specially good wife and mother. They had a big family. The Grooms girls were Ollie (who married Jim
Mattox), Idella (who married Bailey Gay) and Bertie who was the youngest. Bertie was Andrew Gowen's second wife and she was Shep Gowen's mother. Then there were four boys: Ernie, Gene, Ralph and Billy. Uncle Jesse looked after Jehu Paxton's cows, and when it was branding time Papa and all of us Gibson boys helped the Grooms boys mark the cattle. That was a good farm with over two hundred head of cattle, lots of pretty timber and a log dwelling house.
Uncle Jesse also had extra income for he was the Treasurer of Charlton County for many years. He was already an old man when I was growing up. We had lots of good times playing with the Grooms children. Most any time that we weren't working at the farm chores, we were together, either at our house or at their house, about a mile away. A creek separated the farms. The lived on one side of the bridge and we lived on the other. Mrs. Grooms was a prayerful
woman. She was the life of the church at Bethel and kept the Sunday School going. If some of us Gibson children were over at the Grooms' house after supper, we were called inside with her children and she read the Bible and had family prayer. She led Bible reading and prayer every evening for her family. Before Aunt Viney died the Georgia-Florida Investment Co. bought the Paxton Place. They put in a turpentine still and my brother Elvie and his wife Emma lived there for
several years. A commissary was built for the people that worked for the company and my good friend Guy Dean had a job there. When old man Paxton sold out to Georgia-Florida, Uncle Jesse bought himself a farm of his own near Sardis Church, not far from Uncle Owen Gibson's home. He bought the Robinson place which was next door to the Jim Robinson farm. (These Robinsons were brothers.) Jim Robinson's two younger daughters were Mary and Bessie and Ralph went with Mary and I
dated Bessie. The Grooms boys were like brothers to me. Earnie Grooms married Uncle John Vickery's daughter, Ola and they had a boy and four daughters. Earnie lived near Emory Dean in the Prospect Methodist Church community and was a farmer. In his older days he moved to Folkston and lived there. Billy Grooms married and moved down in Florida and I never saw him again. Another of the Grooms boys was Eugene but we called him
"Doc." He worked for the Hebard Cypress Company the same time I did and then later he got a job as a street car motorman in Waycross. Some time later he moved to Savannah and I never saw him but once after that until I want to his funeral. Ralph and I were about the same age and he was the youngest of the Grooms boys. He married Mary Robinson and they had several children. Mary was sick once and was taken to Waycross. At that time I was living there and working
in the office of the Gibson Gas Company. My brother, Charlie, called me on the phone from the King's Daughters Hospital and said "Madison, come over here quick and bring help! The hospital is afire!" So I hurried over there with several friends and helped carry out some of the equipment, but the building burned down. They set up a temporary hospital in a big vacant dwelling house and when Mary got bad off sick Ralph brought her to this hospital. After she died he moved to Florida
and I never saw him again. For some reason Mr. Grooms didn't join the church till he was an old man. When Gene decided to join, the preacher talked about baptizing him until his mama spoke up. "He's already been baptized. He was christened when he was a baby," she said. Aunt Viney was sick for a long time and I think she probably had a stroke. She couldn't eat and the family fed her some kind of special soup that kept her alive. She was a
wonderful woman and everybody loved her. I can't recall when Uncle Jesse died...I don't remember if it was after I got old enough to ramble or not. Uncle Jesse was a veteran of the Civil War. I only remember one conversation we had about his service in that war. It was after I had come home from the Marines in World War One and he said "Madison, how did you pick your officers in the Marines?" I told him that our officers had to be college graduates and those were
the only ones chosen. He said, "The war I was in was different. We appointed ours. We just chose those who we felt would be good leaders and made them our officers." | 
