[The following is a transcription of the handwritten journal of my mother, Margaret Elizabeth “Beth” McKeown Miller. Her journal, contained in two spiral notebooks, runs from 1981 to 1996. The notebooks were found a few weeks after her death, which occurred suddenly in the early morning hours of Saturday, March 8, 1997. I have used brackets [ ] to include explanatory information I have added. Harry Malone Miller, Jr.]
August 19, 1981
I was born on March 30, 1924, the fourth child of John Stevenson McKeown and Margaret Emmie Beam McKeown.
I was named for both my maternal grandmother and my paternal grandmother and [also] my mother. However, my mother, having read ,Little Women, decided I should be called Beth instead of Margaret Elizabeth. I was small at birth and once wiggled my way out of the cradle between the bars.
My sister just older than me, Emmie Jane, had suffered an accident a few months before my birth. Mama still needed to care for her a lot as she had been badly burned from a pot of boiling water. Daddy made a "play pen" for me from a wooden box so that they could keep me out of mischief.
We lived for a short time after my birth on a farm in the Cornwell community of Chester County [South Carolina]. The house no longer stands.
Before I was a year old we moved to a farm on Douglas Creek on Ashford Ferry Road about 15 miles south of Chester, SC.
My father was John S. McKeown. He was born August 14, 1895 in Chester County [died October 21, 1978 in Lexington County Hospital, Lexington, SC, buried at New Hope ARP Church Cemetery, Fairfield County, SC. At his death, he was living with his son, John Wallace McKeown, in nearby Columbia.] His father was Thomas Mabry McKeown born April 9, 1852 died November 8, 1932. His mother was Margaret "Maggie" Cameron.
My grandfather [McKeown] was 9 years old at the beginning [of] the Civil War but he didn't talk to us much about it. By the time I came along he had many grandchildren and his health was not good. He fell and broke his leg when I was 8 and died several weeks later.
Later in [my] life after my father moved us to Fairfield County [SC] we knew a very elderly Negroe named John Brown, whom we fondly called "Uncle John" Brown. We spent many pleasant hours talking to him of the "olden times". He remembered making shoes during the Civil War for our Grandfather who was as he said "a mere lad". Uncle John was well into his 90's when he died.
The war years of course were fresh in the minds of my grandparents and my parents. The reconstruction days following the war had been difficult. Most Southerners were staunch Democrats. Republican was almost a curse word and spoken of as such.
My paternal grandmother was Margaret Jane Cameron. [She was born on] March 8, 1862 - died March 16, 1934 having just turned 72 a week before her death. She married Thomas on January 18, 1883. She was 10 years younger than he. They had 6 children all of whom lived to adulthood except for Edna who was[,] at the age of 11[,] burned. Her gown caught on fire and she died soon thereafter.
[The following is a list of Thomas and Margaret John McKeown's children:]
William - married Mary Cameron
Cora - [married ________] Varnadore
Lily - [married _________] Matthews}brothers
Ada - [married _________] Matthews} "
Annie - [married] Boyd Mobley
John [Stevenson] - [married] Emmie Beam
Edna - [died]
[The following entry is somewhat duplicative of the entry above:]
My paternal grandmother was Margaret Jane Cameron. She was born March 8, 1862 - March 16, 1924. She married Thomas Mabry McKeown (April 9, 1952 - November 8, 1932) and was ten years younger than my grandfather.
They had six children one of them Edna died as a young girl in a tragic accident. She was standing in front of an open fire in a flannel gown and she caught fire and was so badly burned that she soon died.
My father was always cautious about fire and taught us to have a healthy respect for it. We used open fire places to heat the house and rules were strict about handling fire. One never put paper in the fire for fear it would blow up the chimney and catch the roof on fire. On a farm any building that caught on fire would more than likely burn before you could summon enough help to extinguish it.
[The following is a list of the children of Jesse Franklin and Janie Elizabeth Craft Beam:]
1 - Emmie September 20, 1898 - February 28, 1989 age 81
2 - Albert Franklin May 12, 1901 - February 27 - 1957
3 - Hugh Ravis April 8, 1903 - September 29, 1919 [from] diabetes
4 - Herbert Samuel July 28, 1905 1981
5 - Ellis Burton September 3, 1908 - July 10, 1951 [from] emphysema
6 - Jesse Henry August 25, 1910 - May 30, 1911
7 - Grover Thomas February 4, 1912 - June 29, 1912
8 - Infant daughter [possibly named Betty Elizabeth] born & died February 12, 1913
9 - Ruby James June 29, 1914
10 - Elizabeth Wylia April 1, 1917 - July 4, 1917
Several of these children, those born between 1910 and 1913[,] are buried in Ridgeway, SC. My grandmother developed kidney disease which caused the death of Jesse[.] - Grover and the infant daughter died after my grandmother's death from flu.
Posted by Beth McKeown at August 19, 1981 06:43 PM