The Deckner Iris

The young woman who has purchased one of the original Deckner homes in Southwest Atlanta has a unique variety of iris growing in her yard. It must be remembered that the Deckner family, who originated in Saxony, were horticulturalists in Atlanta and must have had beautifully landscaped yards. This iris is so unique because it was brought to Atlanta from Germany by one of the Deckners in the 1930s. How fortunate we are to be able to still enjoy some of the Deckner beauty.

Slander in the First Degree

Frank DeMayo: For the Record

A good practice for genealogists is to google the name of an ancestor to see if anything about him has been published on the web. A search for the name Frank DeMayo turned up some rather disconcerting information as to Frank “Chee Chee” DeMayo’s involvement in the Kansas City Mafia. A few of these web sites are mere repeats of the text that comes straight from a Wikipedia article, which cites no sources but offers a link to The American Mafia, "Kansas City Crime Bosses." This web site actually reports that “though some believe he rose to lead the Kansas City Mafia in the late 1920s, it seems unlikely because others had power and prestige in the city during that period.”¹

Now I don’t normally write about the negative things in my ancestors’ lives. However, this allegation of a Mafia connection has been passed off as fact and published to the world. I feel that reference to Uncle Frank’s involvement in the Mafia needs to equally be addressed.

Uncle Frank’s niece, Nancy, knew him when she was a little girl. She had also heard talk of his imprisonment in the Atlanta Penitentiary, though she knew not his crime. A search for Frank DeMayo on Footnote.com turned up an old Bureau of Investigation case in which Uncle Frank had been investigated for bootlegging. It mentioned a prison sentence in the Leavenworth Penitentiary. Nancy obtained a copy of his Leavenworth prison file, which made no mention of the Mafia. I later found newspaper articles out of Missouri detailing his trial prior to his incarceration in Leavenworth. Although the articles report that he was eventually found guilty of violating Prohibition, he was never connected to the Mafia. We still do not know why he was sentenced to the Atlanta Pen.

While it is true that the Mafia didn’t really gain power in this country until the days of Prohibition, when they accumulated a vast amount of funds through bootlegging, the newspaper describes Frank “Chee Chee” DeMayo only as the Bootlegger King of the second largest bootlegging ring in the country. For Wikipedia and its copycat web articles, to report that Uncle Frank was a member of the Mafia is nothing short of slander. This serves to set the record straight.

Nancy concedes, “I just know that the man we read about in those reports is not the same Uncle Frank that I knew. Yet bootlegging is not the worst thing that happened in those days. He must have really repented and changed his life. I choose to remember the man I knew my Uncle to be during my childhood. He was a loving husband to Aunt Bess, a good father to [his son], and a great grandfather to [his grandchildren]. He was generous and kind to my family (and he loved dogs).”

¹http://www.onewal.com/maf-b-kc.html, par. 3.

Genocide During the Civil War

Though the term genocide did not exist before 1944, I do believe General Sherman was trying to commit just that on the Southern population during his famed march to the sea. His comments to his wife and fellow soldiers are no secret. They have been published often and show that he was certainly bent on destroying the people of the South.

I have brought up this notion of Sherman and genocide to a couple of people in my circle, whom I consider to be very intelligent. Both hesitate to strap the already shameful Sherman with the crime of genocide.

Consider the definition of genocide as was adopted in 1948 by the United Nations in the wake of the Jewish Holocaust.

[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.[1]

After conducting a study of Sherman’s war practices enacted upon his enemies, there can be no question that Sherman would have been tried as a war criminal had he dared to carry out his campaigns today. Even his own fellow generals abhorred his tactics.

As recently as 2008, one scholar likened Sherman’s practices to “war crimes and probably genocide.”[2] It is obvious that Sherman’s army killed and wounded Confederate soldiers. But, with the able men off in other places fighting the war, Sherman rampaged his way through the South. It is no secret that Sherman encouraged his men to destroy everything in their path after they had foraged for themselves. This left the women and children and old men with no food, no livestock, no crops, no cotton bales (a source of income), no valuables for which to sell, and in many instances, no homes. Such destitution brought about starvation, a sure way to prevent the births of anymore Southerners.

One might argue the last element of the definition—that of forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. While it is true that Sherman did not remove the children from their Southern parents, he did cause that the children were forced from their homes, with their parents, while carrion from the north moved in. This resulted in the desired outcome of watering down the Southern population.

In my opinion, there is no doubt that General Sherman was trying to rid the country of Southerners through criminal means. It is true that war is hell and many unfortunate things happen to the innocent. However, there is a moral code most men live by but Sherman was dispossessed of any morals. He was not the great military mind his fans set him up to be. The hero they worship was nothing short of a war criminal, a disgrace to his uniform, no one to be lauded or honored.


[1] “What is Genocide?” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 4 May 2009. 13 Jul. 2009
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007043, par. 4

[2] Allan D. Cooper, The Geography of Genocide, University Press of America, 2008, p. 150

The Other Side of the Coin

As I read stories and watch movies about the War Between the States, I am disappointed that the full story is not told. Reference is often made to the Union prisoners’ awful conditions at the Andersonville prison, but I’ve never heard mention of Rock Island prison, home to 12,000 Confederate prisoners. Complaints among Andersonville inmates included lack of food and medical care. It should be noted that the Confederate soldiers guarding that prison, and serving elsewhere suffered from the same lack of food and medical care. They couldn’t offer their prisoners what they themselves did not have. The Union Army had done an excellent job of cutting these necessities off from the South. Not only did the tactic succeed in crippling the Confederacy, it also starved their own men. The excuse at Rock Island? Rations were cut, as ordered by the U.S. government in response to the treatment of Union prisoners at Andersonville.[1]

In the end, 17% of the Confederate prisoners died at Rock Island compared with the 27% of Federal prisoners, who died at Andersonville.[2] If those numbers lessen the severity of Rock Island Prison, consider a lesser know prison camp in Federal territory that has been conveniently swept under the rug by the very critics of Andersonville, who also point out that Andersonville prisoners were cruelly mistreated. Camp Douglas was located in Chicago and had the highest mortality rate of all Union prisoner of war camps.[3]

"Prisoners were deprived of clothing to discourage escapes. Many wore sacks with head and arm holes cut out; few had underwear. Blankets to offset the bitter northern winter were confiscated from the few that had them. The weakest froze to death. The Chicago winter of 1864 was devastating. The loss of 1,091 lives in only four months was heaviest for any like period in the camp's history, and equaled the deaths at the highest rate of Andersonville from February to May, 1864. Yet, it is the name of Andersonville that burns in infamy, while there exists a northern counterpart of little shame."[4]

The next time you read a book or watch a movie that mentions Andersonville, remember Camp Douglas.


[1] Brenda Smelser Hay, “Rock Island Civil War Prison,” http://www.censusdiggins.com/prison_rock_island.html, 2008, par. 5.
[2] Ibid, par. 8.
[3] Brenda Smelser Hay, “Camp Douglas Prison,” http://www.censusdiggins.com/prison_camp_douglas.html, 2008, par. 1.
[4] Ibid, par. 3. See also “Camp Douglas” at http://geocities.com/BourbonStreet/2757/issues/camp.htm. Though the author of this web page seems to have had some trouble mastering HTML, his material appears to be well researched. After reading this account of Camp Douglas, Andersonville will not seem so unique.

Introduction to Butter Peas

In the summer of 1995, I took my four girls down South so they could meet relatives and see the beautiful homeland of our ancestors. Our van traveled in a caravan with my parents and brother, Leslie, in one car; and my other brother, Fred, and his family in another.

While at Uncle Charles’ and Aunt Blanche’s house in Albany, Georgia, she served up some lunch, which included field peas I’d never seen before. They were green like a regular garden pea, but not quite as round. They were more oblong, but not quite like a black-eyed pea. I sure did like those peas. I had never had anything like them before and I’ve never had anything like them since.

Apparently, I did not find out right then what they were called, but as I have thought about them a lot, I have decided they must have been butter peas, the most delicious of all the different varieties of field peas. I would sure like to have some more of those, cooked just the way Aunt Blanch cooked them, flavored with a little butter or meat grease.

I will always remember Aunt Blanche when I think of butter peas or whenever I get to taste them again.

Picture found at http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/food/stories/2008/07/22/fieldpeas_0724fd05CVV.html

(The previous story was submitted to a memory book being compiled for Blanche (Booth) Thaden in honor of her 90th birthday!!)

Our Southern Belle

The few documents that have been collected on Mattie Love (Meigs) Thaden reveal that she was a serious Christian. The following short announcement, which appeared in the Society column of the Atlanta Constitution in 1905, is further evidence.

A Silver Tea

The Ladies Aid Society of the West Side Methodist church will give a silver tea for the benefit of the parsonage Monday evening, March 1 from 7 to 11 p.m. at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Thaden 458 West Hunter street. The public is most cordially invited. A pleasant evening is promised to all.
(27 Feb 1905, p. 6.)

So what is a Silver Tea? A brief Google search turned up an article about a contemporary charity organization that has revived the Silver Tea explaining that it "is a tradition that began in the early 1900s when guests at fundraising events learned to place their contributions – very discreetly – into a large silver bowl.”¹

This gives us a better glimpse into Mattie's home as she graciously hosted a pleasant social gathering of Southern ladies and gentlemen on a Georgia winter evening. One can almost see the sparkle of the polished tea sets and hear the delicate clatter of porcelein cups against their saucer mates. And off in a place that is niether prominent nor hidden sits the silver bowl, steadily collecting the willing contributions of the guests. . . .
¹Burl Stiff, “A Silver Anniversary for the Silver Tea,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, 21 Dec 2008, par. 7.

Soldier and Patriot

Capt. Henry Rhoads is the 6th great grandfather of Michael Hahn and one of Michael's ancestral heroes because of the patriot he was during the Revolutionary War. Isn't it special then that Henry and Michael both share the same birth date of June 5th.

Image posted at FindAGrave.com, Memorial #11345940, by JYOAKE.