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Excerpt from Comes to the Light - Chapter 7 – The Petersons


My search for Mama Lula was well anticipated. During the course of my research, the Petersons of Edgefield began appearing in different parts of my family tree within my mother’s family. By the time I had made my trip to Edgefield, the Peterson family seemed to be everywhere within my mother’s family. Every online search I did for one family line, that search would always end up connecting to the Petersons. I had to know more. I never understood why this happened. I just assumed they were a big family who had a large number of people who married into many of the other families of Edgefield.

I began my search and had found Mama Lula as a married woman with children just like I did her daughter. She was married to my Great Grandfather Papa Johnnie Senior on the 1900 U.S. Federal Census Records. There was no record of her however as a child, which meant I would not be able to learn who my grandparents were. The South Carolina Death Records were no help because the year she died was not available for viewing. This meant I was stuck for the time being, that is until I received a message in my Ancestry.com mailbox from a man named Robert Palmore from Philadelphia. He explained to me that his cousin had connections with Lula Peterson (my maternal grandmother's mother), and that she had told him that Lula’s father’s name was Enoch Peterson. So, I gave him my number to give to her. Tonya Villa is the great great-grand daughter of Enoch Peterson.

Tonya called me. Her mother listened to our conversation in the background. I was told that Tonya's grandmother had sat her mother down before she died and passed on all that she knew about the Peterson family. I don’t remember Tonya’s mothers name or which Peterson child they descended from, but she said, my great-grandmother, affectionately called Mama Lula's real name was Hazeltine Peterson. Hazeltine, as it would transpire, had been one of thirteen children. I was speechless, and really tried to take this in. I asked my mother if she knew anything about the name Hazeltine for her grandmother and she didn’t have a clue. As I thought about it, a different name could definitely explain why I couldn’t find her as a child. Tonya had shared some very useful information, and I was eager to look into it. I went straight to my laptop and started to research my great-grandmother’s possible father, Enoch Peterson.

I found Enoch Peterson married to a lady name Ann, and they did indeed have 13 children. Their names were: Enoch Jr., Goode, Joshua, Lottie, Hattie, Margaret, Oscar Joseph, Buelah, Lizzie, Mary and Dora (who were twins), Eliza, and finally, Carra. Hattie, according to Tonya, was supposed to be my great-grandmother, Mama Lula. I found her as a little girl living with Enoch Sr., and his wife Ann Shepherd in both the 1870 and the 1880 U.S. Federal Census. She went from Hazeltine in 1870 to Hattie in 1880. The one constant was her birth year. It never changed. Familiar with how the census records worked, I thought it possible that Hazeltine/Hattie was my maternal great-grandmother’s first name.

The picture of her which I have shared in this book gives an impression of Mama Lula’s inner strength and fortitude. She strikes me as a plain-speaking, ‘I don’t take any mess’ type of woman. It wouldn’t be a bad guess to say that she preferred the name Lula over Hazeltine/Hattie. Why she would prefer it remained, however, a mystery. Nevertheless, I felt certain that I had found my great-grandmother as a child. ...For more on Mama Lula purchase the book Comes to The Light: Learning About the Entangled Families of Edgefield, South Carolina

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