“The Initial Blooming of My Imagination”
by Augusta Trobaugh
During my childhood, a “Swan Place” actually existed. It was a two-storied, unpainted house in Jefferson County, Georgia, set well back from the unpaved road, beyond a cotton field, and protected from road and field dust by many Sassafras and Crepe Myrtle trees.
My great-grandparents, Eliza Ann Narcissus Aldred Connell and Nathan Jerome Connell, lived in that large old house and provided stagecoach drivers, passengers, and horses a haven where they could eat, be refreshed, and spend the night. The entire second floor was divided into two large bedrooms – one for gentlemen and one for ladies. From what I have learned, this original “Swan Place” was selected as a rest stop for the stagecoach that ran from Savannah to Augusta.
Because I grew up during an era when children could safely wander around (especially in completely rural areas), I often went to that deserted old house, riding my horse there from my own home about half a mile away. I had not personally known either of my great-grandparents, but I always felt something of their lives when I was there. I could imagine my great-grandmother cooking in the detached kitchen (well away from the main house, in fear of kitchen stove fire) – the kitchen sort of a separate little cabin resting on logs and equipped with large iron latches, to which mules could be hitched to pull a burning kitchen well away from the house itself.
In that old house, I dreamed my dreams, inserting my great-grandparents into a story that I made up.
Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the initial blooming of my imagination.
When I wrote “Swan Place,” I created a much grander home than the old, unpainted house of my childhood, but the feeling of sanctuary was the same, as was the fanciful thinking I had done there.
It’s a treasured memory!
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