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BY JOHN SEAWRIGHT
THE SORROWS OF THE
ALSTONS. Part 11.
With the death of Willis Alston at the
hands of a Texas lynch mob Dec. 12, 1841,
the last of the sons of Robert West and
Henrietta Green Alston was dead. The
Alstons’ separate griefs at the loss of a
husband, father, brother and son was
compounded by a general familial sorrow in
the extinction of their adult male line, a
hard blow in a patriarchal society where
name, property and honor were in male
custody. Augustus left his widow Mary with
two young children; Joseph Hawkins and
Henrietta. Willis’s widow Elizabeth had four
children; Robert Augustus, Susan Willis,
Augustus H., and Thomas H. The name,
the hopes and burdens of the Alstons lay
now upon the shoulders of four fatherless
boys, the oldest of whom was three weeks
Tort of his ninth birthday on the day his
father died with 30
bullets in his body.
We come now at
last to what was
originally to be the
starting point of this
series of columns, the
story of Willis’s oldest
son, Robert Augustus
Alston; this is an
appropriate place to
pause and note that
most of the 13
children and 38
grandchildren of
Robert Wesr •**
Henrietta Green
Alston led sedate,
unremarkable lives
and died peacefully in
their beds. My version
of the Alstons’ story lingers on the bloody
and the spectacular; the reason is best put
by Shakespeare: “The evil that men do lives
after them; The good is oft interred with
their bones:” newspapers and public records
are poor chroniclers of quiet and virtuous
lives.
After Willis’s death, Elizabeth Howard
Alston took her children from Texas to
Milledgeville, Ga. Most of the Alstons were
in Tallahassee and nearby south Georgia
and east Alabama, but most of Elizabeth’s
brothers and sisters lived in Middle
Georgia. The nearness of her own family
and the good schools around
Milledgeville probably had much to do
with her choice of a new home, but it is
also likely that she wished to remove her
children from the baleful influence of
their father’s family. Elizabeth Alston was
a pious Methodist; her father, the Rev.
John Howard, had been one of the
evangelists who had kindled the
Wesleyan fire that swept Georgia in the
early 19th Century. The Rev. Mr.
Howard had, according to Robert West
Alston (as reported by Mary Bryan),
offered the first prayer that was ever
heard in the Alston house in Sparta —
this was at least 15 years after the
Alstons moved in. Elizabeth possibly
shared the opinion of her in-laws
expressed by Mary Bryan in 1828: “...1
should deprecate the consequence of a
more intimate connection with the family
(the Alstonsj. They are so irreligious, and 1
would dread their influence on our younger
children when they are grown up.”
Nine-year-old Robert A. Alston was
enrolled in Ramsay’s primary school at
Midway, a few miles from Milledgeville.
Midway is now Hardwick, the site of
Central State Hospital, which, under its
original name as the Georgia Lunatic
Asylum, admitted its first inmate in 1842,
the same year in which Robert started
school; Midway was also home to
Oglethorpe University, which was moved to
Atlanta in 1870. Oglethorpe’s first presi
dent was Carlisle P.
Beman, who as a
young Hancock
County schoolteacher
had taught Robert’s
father and uncles.
From two
childhood anecdotes
of Robert Alston it
appears that Elizabeth
had succeeded in
inculcating the
Howards’ Methodist
moderation in her
oldest son. One
childhood friend
recalled a dispute
over a game of
marbles in which
Robert told his fellow
players “I know that I
am right, but I will not quarrel for a marble,
and 1 will not play with boys who are mean
enough to cheat, and rude enough to fight,”
and walked away. The other anecdote
recounts Robert a few years later, “a good
Christian boy, a peace-maker, noble,
generous, kind...” and also “a born
orator. ’ At the end of the school term
Robert’s required public recitation was
the well-known funeral oration from
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. His audience
was transfixed by the young man’s
eloquence, and as he held up a torn and
stained old shirt to show “a rent the
envious Casca made,” many, if not all, of
those present must have felt a chill;
before them was Willis Alston’s son,
reciting words of mourning and anger
over a public murder at the hands of a
crowd of "honourable men ” On that day
Robert was Antony and Willis Caesar,
but Robert A.lston would in time be
Caesar himself, mortally wounded in the
Capitol at the hands of a trusted friend.
.. .How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown. 1
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK.
©1996, John Ryan Seawright
nnnnn
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Athens Music Directorv
This February. FLAGPOLE will publish a special issue
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will be available for free at Athens businesses.
The FLAGPOLE Athens Music Directory will feature.
• Bands - complete listing of Athens bands and musicians
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directory of local studios • Clubs - how to book vour
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The 1997
Band / Business Name
Contact Person
Address
City / State / Zip
Email / Website
Athens Music Directory
Phone / Fax Number
Q Band Ll Studio Q Club ul Support Service (what kind?)
Describe your music, studio, club,
or support service in ten words or less:
-J management cJ promotion
ZJ accountant □ attorney
□ graphic artist □ printer
□ lighting designer □ sound
□ other
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