Edie's mother, Marietta Moore Hamrick, circa 1904

Two years ago Terry Kearns, a family friend now living in Atlanta, visited my father.  He was given copies of the original hand-written publications of Crick and The Shaggy Dog Chronicles .  Terry, his parents having passed away several years before, had been feeling rather cut off from his North Carolina roots.  He found that my father's stories of family and a bygone North Carolina struck a chord and suggested that we create a website giving the stories a wider audience.  I agreed little realizing the task we had undertaken. 

As we started transcribing Crick and The Shaggy Dog Chronicles , Jigs mentioned that he had some other material in addition to these two previously self-published efforts.  That was an understatement.  Since his retirement fifteen years before, Jigs had been steadily writing, thinking that at some later date he would compile these numerous musings into a single volume.  As box after box emerged from his closet, we became aware of the massive editing job ahead of us. 

With the passing of our mother in the summer of 2000, several of us felt that the story of her family needed to be completed but, as Jigs mentions in his introduction, he had misplaced his original draft during his move from Connecticut to Atlanta.  He has now rewritten this volume from memory.  Personally, I remember hearing my mother on more than one occasion question how my father thought he could write about someone else's family.  Perhaps those notes disappeared earlier than he thinks. 

As kids growing up in the urban northeast, we found the rural foothills of western North Carolina a magical place full of strange accents, unusual names and incredibly good food. Walking the road between the Hamrick house and the Moore house while checking out the various farm buildings and the old Holland house was a daily adventure.  No trip to Boiling Springs was complete without a visit to C.J. Hamrick and Sons, remembered as a dusty brick edifice with lots of John Deere tractors sitting in the yard.

And, unlike my father's family, Edie's family had a rich tradition of oral history.  I can still remember sitting with our extended family on Grandpa Moore's porch listening to how Granny Moore's family had buried the silver and hidden the horses when Sherman's troops came through.  The silver supposedly survived but Sherman's troops left their own worn-out nags in place of the horses.

It seemed everyone was either related to or knew our mother.  There were her brothers and her sisters and her aunts and her uncles and her cousins and her cousin's cousins, all captivating.  There was Gundy with her chickens and her gardens, Uncle Vic with his goatee and straw boater, Uncle Dan with his overalls and his mule, Uncle Felix and his gentle manner living next door to Gundy, Uncle Bud with his horses, jeep and cider press, DW with his pasture full of cows, Aunt Blanche in her bed with her freshly applied make-up and never-ending chatter, Ollie and Kate playing their daily game of solitaire while fresh apple pies baked in the old kitchen.  All wonderful memories of a time and place now gone. 

How these people came to this particular place is the subject of this book of The Shaggy Dog Chronicles and their story is told as follows:

• Chapter 1, In the Beginning

• Chapter 2, 'tis a Small Connected World

• Chapter 3, George and Nancy (Cook) Hamrick

• Chapter 4, The Tale of the Two Georges

• Chapter 5, The Golds, the Hollands and the Moores

• Chapter 6, James Young and Catharine (Harding) Hamrick

• Chapter 7, Henry and Lucy (Reaves) Green

• Chapter 8, Charles Jefferson and Sarah (Hamrick) Hamrick

• Chapter 9, Elijah Bly and Galena (Green) Hamrick

• Chapter 10, Thomas Carl and Marietta (Moore) Hamrick

• Chapter 11, Across the Cross-Roads from the Hamricks

• Chapter 12, The Scotch-Irish Migration

• Chapter 13, John Franklin and Cynthia Susam (Holland) Moore

• Chapter 14, The Marriage of Thomas Carl Hamrick and Marietta Holland Moore

• Chapter 15, Afterword

With the completion of this book, Jigs feels his efforts to leave for his children a record of their family and their family's stories is complete and it is for those who follow to continue with the stories of their generation.  In editing these writings for Kathy, Griffin, Ned, Leslie, Hugh, Sophie, Robert, Elizabeth and Georgina, I have decided that these stories, though written as Book Three, will become Book Four of The Shaggy Dog Chronicles.  Book One will remain the story of Jigs' family lineage.  Crick and other vignettes from Jigs' childhood will become Book Two.  The stories from his Navy years leading up to his courtship and marriage to Edie will comprise Book Three, which will be followed by this book telling the story of Edie's lineage.  The vignettes from his years in medicine will comprise Book Five.  Book Six, consisting of the stories from Jigs and Edie's marriage and our childhood, will be the final volume.  Books One, Three, Four and Five are complete and available on this site as is Crick.  The balance of Book Two and Book Six in its entirety remain to be done.  My hope is to have the transcription of these writings complete by this time next year. 

Carl Bridgers
July 4, 2003

Photo of Edie's mother, Marietta Moore Hamrick, circa 1904