THROUGH MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their Descendants...Their
Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the Mists of History on
Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene
Dyer Jones
Mayme Collins
Aydelotte,
educator and genealogist
Sisters Goldie and Mayme Collins
always
seemed to have their names linked together when any news of them came
back to
Choestoe. They had both gone out from
Their parents were Ulysses
Thompson Collins
(
Mayme's parents, Ulysses
Thompson Collins
and Nora Della Jackson were married in
The family decided to return to
Choestoe
and were on the journey back when Nora Della Jackson Collins got sick.
She died
on
Mayme and Goldie’s father, Ulysses
Thompson, married, second, to Pearl Townsend in 1939.
To this union were born three sons, Archie
Benjamin Collins (1940), Garnet Eugene Collins (1942) and James Elias
Collins (1945). Pearl Townsend was younger
than her husband
Uly by 22 years. His older daughters,
Goldie and Mayme, were already away from home when he married Pearl.
|
Great sadness entered the
Collins family
when Theodore Ralph Collins was struck by a hit-and-run driver on a
Ponce de
Leon Avenue near Georgia School of Technology while he was a junior at
that
college. He died immediately from severe injuries November 8, 1930. C.
Roscoe
Collins, a cousin of the young Ralph, wrote in an eulogy to the young
electrical engineering student: "I have seen him tried in almost any
kind
of circumstances. He never failed. He was a staunch bulwark for better
manhood.
Strong in his efforts to raise the standard of his community and
rapidly
gaining the goal he had set to reach." At age twenty-three, full of
potential and zest for life, the young man was laid to rest in the New
Liberty Church
Cemetery in sight of his Grandpa Dallas Collins's house.
Mayme tells a delightful story
about a time
in Colorado when she and her older sister, Goldie, were assigned the
task to
look after their baby brother Ralph when the family still lived in
Colordo.
Their mother Della left them in charge of the baby for only a short
period
while she took water to Uley Thompson and others working on an
irrigation ditch
in the fields. Baby Ralph went to sleep, and Goldie and Mayme decided
they
could go exploring to find some flowers in the field. They kept going
on,
finding more and more flowers to pick. They lost their way.
In the meantime, their mother
returned from
her errand of mercy of taking fresh drinking water to the fields. She
was very
surprised that the girls had left the baby. They were nowhere to be
found. She
returned to the field, this time with Ralph in her arms, to tell Uley
that his
daughters were missing. Not finding them easily, he engaged the help of
field
workers and neighbors to help search for the little girls, who were
about four
and five at the time. At 2:00 a. m. the searchers found the girls
curled up
together in the sagebrush, sound asleep. They were tired and scared
from their
flower hunting adventure, but were unharmed, either by animals or
wandering
people. That adventure taught Goldie and Mayme never to wander away
from their
home again.
Goldie and Mayme Collins were
fortunate in
their teaching careers in that their cousin, Dr. Mauney Douglas
Collins, became
state superintendent of schools. He had contact with systems all over
the state
and knew about openings for teachers. He was able to assist both
sisters in
getting good positions as classroom teachers. Mayme later became a
principal
for many years in Fairburn, Georgia where she and her husband, also an
educator, lived until their deaths.
In 1939 she married William
Henry Aydelotte
who was born and reared in Delmar, Deleware, This couple did not have
children,
but they spent their lives teaching and encouraging students. In
addition to
being an educator, her husband also was a research scientist and a
certified
audiologist.
Mayme Arma Colllins Aydelote
died December
30, 2000 in Fairburn, Georgia.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
Back To Union County, Georgia GenWeb Site