Mama Shaw's Albums

 My “Mama Shaw,” Lillian Ophelia Wilkerson (Shaw,) loved her photo albums. She had three store-bought 7"x9" albums with black covers and gilt lettering on them that read: "The Shaw Family," "The Wilkerson Family," and "Our Family Album." The pictures were either attached with gold colored "photo corners" or pasted in. After I inherited them I transferred the crumbling pages to acid-free sheet protectors and looseleaf binders. Many of the pictures on the Milstead Memories Facebook page and on the previous website managed by my sister Beth, came from these albums.

In many of my visits to Mama Shaw’s house on Main Street in Milstead we would sit together at the dining room table and leaf through the albums. She’s tell me about which babies were which. She’s talk about her Childers and Brewer relatives in Fish Creek (Polk County) and the Shaw family who lived between Conyers and Lithonia. And of course about all the pictures from her family in Milstead. 

Since I have had the albums — 30 years now — I have scanned almost if not all of the photos. But they are scattered on different hard drives. In the nineties when I first began doing that I had the idea that digitizing them would safeguard the images; I’m not so sure now. At least it seems easier to find them in the old fashioned albums than on my computer sometimes! 

I have toted the albums along to many family reunions so I'm always surprised at the folks who claim never to have seen the photos when I am confident they have... but of course I should realize that they likely got a quick look at them at a reunion maybe two or three times over several decades. Soooo -- digital images on any particular website cannot be expected to last forever, they can get a lot more views on Facebook and e-mails and text streams than in physical albums that spend most of the time undisturbed on shelves. 

Here are the cover of one of the albums… 

Here are three pictures from those albums that I posted to Milstead Memories today -- and the enhanced versions that appeared thanks to Jerry Owens only a few hours later.

Grady Columbus Shaw, born May 15, 1898, was the son of Columbus Turner Shaw and Minnie Zipporah Wood. He grew up near Milstead and eventually went to work for Callaway Mills. He eventually opened a barber shop in a building on the little lane that lead from Main Street past the water tower. That shop burned. He later opened a shop in the community building on Main Street which he operated until his death on July 16, 1965. He has been one of my heroes since childhood. He was a loving father and grandfather and was not above pulling pranks that would irritate his wife and delight his sons and grandchildren.

This is a newborn photo of Lillian Ophelia Wilkerson who was born October 29, 1902 in Polk County, Georgia. She was the daughter of Charles Reuben Wilkerson and Eula Amanda Childers (Wilkerson). He worked at the cotton mill in Aragon, Georgia, later moving to the mill in Atco (Cartersville) Georgia, and finally (around 1916-17) to Callaway Mills in Milstead, Georgia. Lillian's mother died in 1910, and in 1912 her father married Mattie Kiser (Wilkerson).

Lillian met Grady Shaw in Milstead and they married in 1918. IMO this photo of Mama Shaw could be easily mistaken for a picture of one of her grandchildren or great grandchildren -- especially Deborah Shaw Lewis or one of Debi's children!