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Society

Birth announcement

Velasquez

Danny and Melody Velasquez of Holly Springs announce the birth of a baby boy, Vanderbilt Raul Velasquez, born November 29, at Baptist DeSoto in Southaven.

He was 7 lbs. 8.5 oz. and was 20.5 inches long.

Maternal grandparents are Patrick and Deborah Holmes of Holly Springs and paternal grandparents are Maria Luisa and Felix Raul Velasquez of Honduras.

Maternal great-grandparents are Thurman and the late Marjory Holmes of Holly Springs.

Museuming
Lois Swaney Shipp
Museum Curator

Holiday Christmas Tour very successful

Grandpa Bonds and family at the homeplace in Waterford

Wow! The amazing ‘Christmas in Holly Springs’ is over and it was, again, wonderful. The six houses were beautiful, all dressed in Christmas splendor. Always, we owe a debt of thanks to the wonderful, unselfish, homeowners. They are like heroes as, without their generosity, we couldn’t have a tour. We entertained about 400 people. They came from many states. The weather was absolutely perfect and everybody enjoyed it and had a good time.

The museum was decorated in old fashioned decorations. Our tree has wooden handmade ornaments (no candles, though; we don’t ever allow a match in the museum.)

About 40 years ago, there was a Methodist missionary about 80 years old here on ‘leave’. She said the Lord was letting her live to pray for the church leaders and other missionaries. She was born in Hudsonville and had great memories of her childhood. I asked her what her earliest memory was. She said she remembered being in the First Methodist Church one Sunday night waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. She was only four or five years old, (about 1894 or 5). There was a huge cedar Christmas tree in the amen corner lighted with candles as decorations. Then jingles started and Santa Claus came ambling down the aisle to the tree. All of a sudden Santa Claus’ beard caught on fire from getting too close to the lighted tree candle. Her memory was of everybody trying to put out the fire, so the horror of Santa catching on fire lasted a lifetime.

Back in the 1930s, people didn’t do much decorating and what little they did began a week or ten days before Christmas and it was over before New Year’s. Christmas Eve was the big shopping day and lots of people waited until then to begin shopping. Much preparation was made in the food department. Julie Ann Glover, who was our cook, had come to Mother when she was 14 looking for a job and my mother took her in and she cooked for us for 55 years. They would cook the greatest dressing, fruit cake, jam cake, and pound cake. The recipe for Grandma Bonds’ pound cake was a pound of sugar, a pound of butter (4-sticks), a pound of eggs (10), a pound of plain flour, (4-1/2 cups), two teaspoons of vanilla, a pinch of salt, bake a long time at low temperature. Then cover when it was cool with seven minute icing. Yum, yum, good! My Grandmother Bonds had 13 children and they claimed that everyday she cooked a pound cake, probably without icing however.

Once I asked Uncle Grover Bonds what he remembered about Christmas at his house. He said they all received an orange, a peppermint stick and a shiny dime every year. In 1907 all the Bonds and relatives came to the house to eat Christmas dinner (always in the middle of the day). Supper (left-overs), was at night. A photograph was there and shows a big family in the front yard in front of the house, which was close to Spring Hill Church, east of Waterford. Grandpa Bonds joined the Confederacy when he was 16. He was in the Mississippi Calvary, but was captured by the Yankees on his first mission. He was sent to Fort Delaware on an island in the middle of the Delaware River.

It’s still there and open to the public from May until September. He was kept there for four years and after the war was over, he was carried by ship around the east coast from Florida to Mobile. They let him off there and he walked home to Waterford from Mobile and never went anywhere again. He died in 1915 of stomach trouble which he had all of his adult life. He blamed it on the Yankee prison food.

Benton County Fairest of the Fair

The “Fairest of the Fair” contest was held September 9, at the Benton County Fair. The overall winner was Courtney Petrowski, daughter of Don Petrowski of Holly Springs and Tammy and Gary Byrd of Ashland. There were 79 contestants. Pictured above are, from left: fourth alternate, Rebeccah A. Gray, daughter of Melisha Gray and the late Rodney Gray; third alternate, Melissa Karraffa, daughter of Michelle and Keith Denham; winner, Courtney Petrowski, daughter of Tammy and Gary Byrd and Don Petrowski; first alternate, Kasey Bennett, daughter of Sherry and John McKaughan and the late Shan Bennett; second alternate, Kortny Tucker, daughter of Sonia and Heath Hurdle.

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