Bubba was putting new laces in his old boots when the Reader walked up. “I’ve had these boots for almost thirty years. That’s nothing compared to how old my house is. It’s … ah … well … I don’t remember how old. There are alligators in that swamp that are older than me, and they aren’t as old as some of those cypress trees.”
“Here’s the story about a woman and two trees. One was a Sessile Oak tree; the other was her family tree.”
Miriam Sofer was nervous to make her presentation to the Greater Roanoke Genealogical and Historical Society. At the podium, she gulped an entire glass of water, then poured another glass. She scanned the filled auditorium for any friendly, familiar faces. Her gaze stopped on her Aunt Sara sitting in her wheelchair, and Miriam sighed and smiled. Everyone could see her hands shaking. She gripped the podium and began her presentation.
“Good evening to everyone. I am Miriam Sofer and I am terrified to make this presentation – can you tell?” Everyone now roared and applauded. Miriam’s smile grew and she became comfortable. “My Aunt Sara – she’s the one over there in the wheelchair – she said I should start with a joke. Well, I am nervous and that ain’t no joke!” There was more applause and laughter.
“I have spent the last seven years researching my relatives and ancestors in the United States. But what I learned became more of a story of ‘what’ and less of ‘who’. Let me explain.” She clicked the first slide. “This is a drawing of what we think my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Jakob looked like.” Miriam counted to six on her fingers and said, “Yes, that’s a lot of grandfathers! That’s what you genealogists would term my 6th great-grandfather. This next slide shows pictures side-by-side of Jakob and my father David. They look similar but not the same. Here are my direct generations,” she said as she clicked slide after slide of her ancestral tree. She went back in time to the drawing of Jakob Sofer in 1773, then showed a slide of his indenture contract when it was concluded. “And this is where both stories begin – a story about a family and a story about a tree,” Miriam explained.
***
It was a windy and cloudy day on the west coast of Ireland in 1763. Jakob Sofer had buried his father, mother, and sister three days before, and the 27-year-old had said his final goodbyes that morning. He walked through a small forest of Sessile oaks to clear his head of the famine that continued to starve Ireland and prepare himself for the unknown fears about the contract he signed yesterday. He was traveling to the British Colonies as an indentured servant for ten years to start a new life – a new beginning. His master would be Chauncy Pepperton, a wealthy landowner in the Colony of Virginia – wherever that was. Jakob would never know it, but almost half of the European immigrants to the thirteen British colonies were indentured servants who toiled in whatever job the contract holder – the master – desired.
Jakob was unaware that an indentured servant could be sold and bought like livestock, harvested grain, or slaves. And an indentured servant’s value could rise or fall based on the supply and demand of their skills. When the contract expires, the worker was free to live as he or she pleased.
Jakob enjoyed the solitude the forest provided. It also was a place where he could pray. Jakob Sofer was a Jew in a country where most Catholics shunned Jews. Jakob walked through the Sessile Oak trees with green catkin male and red female flowers. After the wind pollinated the female flowers, large shiny seeds would be held by scaly acorns. The oaks towered to heights of 40 meters. Sessile Oak are also known as Cornish Oak, or as Jakob preferred to call them, Irish Oak. He stopped and knelt by a seedling emerging amongst bluebells. “You will travel to the colonies with me, little one. We will be a family, you and I.” He carefully dug up the seedling and wrapped it in an old shirt he had soaked in the creek.
He was 28 years old when he got off the boat at a port in Jamestown, Virginia. He had never seen a black man before and was amazed at the sight of hundreds of them herded from slave ships to be auctioned like horses or chickens on the docks. Jakob was hustled to an ox cart with several others and rode as the rain poured down. They often had to get down from the cart and push through deep mud and water. He had a single sack with a few clothes and hid his small sapling inside his weathered coat. His quarters at the estate were part of the tool shed he shared with three other men with straw on the floor for their beds. It was similar to the shed where he slept in Ireland. He was home.
Jakob discovered a clearing in the pine forest up a hill away from the plantation grounds and carefully planted his scrawny seedling fighting for life. He toiled sixteen hours a day, hoeing and digging rows of corn and beans with a hoe or just his hands. After a couple of years, he was assigned to the estate house as a server when he was not emptying chamber pots. He also cared for the two prized possessions of Chauncy Pepperton that the master thought demonstrated his wealth – spittoons. Once a week, Jakob would walk to the clearing and tend to his Irish Oak as it grew to a height of nine feet.
***
Miriam explained, “In 1773, Jakob’s contract expired, and he was given his freedom, and the right to marry Linda Sommes, another indentured servant – all on one condition. Chauncy Pepperton made Jakob swear on a Christian Bible that he would never support the growing quiet hysteria in Virginia against the British Crown, and he would take up arms to support the British if a revolt arose. Jakob had no problem swearing on a Christian Bible since he was a Jew and therefore, he considered the pledge was null and void.” The audience had mixed laughter over that, so Miriam continued. “Jakob and Linda married and had four children – three who died of the fever. Jakob fought for the new America but died during the Battle of Yorktown on October 4, 1781. He never returned home, and his final resting place was never found.”
“The child who survived was born Baruch Sofer in August of 1776. I could not find out much about his life, but he was a blacksmith and a wheelwright. He lived and worked just two miles from where he buried his mother Linda in 1811 and his wife Martha in 1819 in a clearing in a pine forest near Jakob’s Irish Oak. The oak was about eighteen feet tall then. Baruch never remarried, and his story is incomplete. Martha did draw a picture of their son Aron born in 1810, and this is the only image that remains,” Miriam said as the slide changed.
“I eventually found a little more information about Aron. He worked as an overseer on the plantation that had been the Chauncy Pepperton estate. Pepperton’s grandson Osgood ruled the estate’s cotton empire with an iron fist. New African slaves off British ships replaced slaves who worked and starved to death. I have a letter Aron wrote to his new son Daniel in 1850. Aron hated slavery, which he considered worse than the indentured servanthood Aron’s grandfather … Daniel’s great-grandfather … had endured. He wrote:
My Dearest Daniel,
My grandfather was not much better than these poor slaves. Maybe they were the same. I have started to help slaves escape from this hell. If Pepperton finds this letter, I will be hung – so please guard it. When I cannot stand it any longer, I go to my sanctuary – my synagogue – in the pine forest. I sit underneath Jakob’s Oak which is now 31 feet tall. In the middle of all those pine trees, I talk to my ancestors buried there. There are no grave markers, but this is our family tree.
My love to you,
Aron Sofer
“I like to think he meant ‘family tree’ both literally and figuratively. What do you think?” Miriam paused to sip some water. Her hand visibly trembled as she held the glass because her next comments always upset her.
“In 1861, Aron was caught helping runaway slaves, and he was hung in front of all the slaves and Pepperton’s family as a warning,” Miriam said. “His body was partially burned as it hung, but 11-year-old Daniel with the help of a few slaves stole the body and buried it in the clearing in the pine forest.”
Miriam choked back some tears, then composed herself before she continued. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Daniel ran away to serve in the Union Army, but he was too young. It is estimated that most soldiers who fought in the Civil War were between the ages of 18 and 39, but there were many exceptions. Daniel was a message runner until he was 14 and trapped in a shed. He used a pistol and a pitchfork to defend himself from a Rebel patrol. He was accepted as a soldier after killing all four members of that patrol.”
“After the war, Daniel worked on the railroad, shoveling coal for the engineer. After that, he worked as a telegraph operator in Raleigh. By 1870, he took his new bride Elizabeth to where he had buried his father. The old Pepperton plantation was in shambles and many former slaves were farming the land. Daniel and Elizabeth put down roots and farmed the land on the north side of the pine forest. He visited the graves of his parents every Saturday near the 39 feet tall Irish Oak. One Saturday in 1874, Daniel and Elizabeth introduced the newest family addition named Abraham to his ancestors and the family tree.”
“A 15-year-old Abraham heard stories of Lt. Colonel Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt signing up recruits for the volunteer Rough Riders regiment in the bar of the Menger Hotel in San Antonio in 1898. His father answered the call in the Civil War, and his great, great-grandfather had fought in the American Revolution. Abraham never made it to Cuba with the Rough Riders, but he served as a port guard at the Portsmouth, Virginia naval yard where the battleship USS Texas had been built and launched in 1892. Abraham Sofer wanted to fight but never saw combat.”
“Abraham mustered out of the Army in 1900 at the age of 16 because his mother had died of either typhoid fever or scarlet fever. By the time he arrived home, his father was also dead. The young man buried his parents by himself in the quiet cemetery by the 41-foot tall Irish Oak in the pine forest. Abe – as he was known – hated farming but could not leave the area. He felt compelled to stay – perhaps he was drawn by Jakob’s Tree.
Since he had been in the Army, he decided on law enforcement as a profession. Abraham married a local girl named Christine Bommert in 1917. Abraham wanted to enlist in the Army in World War I, but Christine refused to allow it. She was pregnant with their first child – Deanne – who died as she was born. Christine died the next day. Abraham buried both in the clearing near the 46-foot tall Irish Oak.”
“Abraham enlisted and was deployed to France as a squad leader. He returned from World War I as a decorated soldier but with no apparent future. He came home to find Widow Ada Barnhart and her young daughter Constance working a few acres of his farm in hardscrabble poverty. In her Abraham saw a kindred spirit, so he built an addition to the farmhouse for himself and gave them the bedroom he had built for Christine and the nursery for Deanne.”
“Abraham and Ada married in 1926 – this slide is of them on their wedding day.” Miriam paused for a drink, then continued, “Please notice they are standing under an Irish Oak almost 52 feet tall. Yes, that is Jakob’s Oak in the background. There’s something else about this picture – perhaps you have noticed it in old pictures of your own family. No one smiled, even on their wedding day. Or in this picture taken in 1929.” The slide changed to show Abraham and Ada Sofer with Ada’s daughter Constance holding a baby. “That baby is one-year-old Jacob Sofer – my father.” Miriam smiled at the picture, then said, “And they are still not smiling! The audience laughed.
“Tragedy struck on December 7, 1941. Literally, tragedy struck. Besides the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that morning, lightning struck Jakob’s Tree that night.” A new slide Miriam projected showed the 56 feet tall tree almost split in half from top to bottom. “My grandfather Abraham was almost 67 years old then, but I think he aged 30 more years that night. My father, then only 12 years old, would find him wandering in the clearing talking to his ancestors and placing his hands on the tree as if in silent prayer. My father would guide him back to the house and get him in bed, but he might not stay there. In time, he stopped going to the clearing and became more removed from the world around him.”
“By August 1945, Constance had married and moved away. Abraham sat listening to the radio with Ada about the end of World War II. Sixteen-year-old Jacob burst through the door hollering, ‘Come with me! It is a miracle! Come!’ He practically jerked his father from his chair and pulled him outside. ‘Mother, you must come too!’ the boy yelled.”
“Abraham had not been to talk with his ancestors in almost four years, so when he walked into the clearing he fell to his knees. The remnants of the split Jakob’s Oak were surrounded by oaks bursting with male and female flowers as well as surrounded by dozens of small saplings.” Miriam changed the slide to show the clearing full of flowers and saplings. “My father took this picture in 1945.”
“I was born in 1958 and this picture was taken the next year.” Her father Jacob and her mother Mary stood holding a baby in front of a split tree that refused to die. Instead, it looked like two trees standing beside each other with dozens of saplings of varying heights everywhere. “The marker in the background is where we buried Abraham and Ada. That was the first tombstone placed in the clearing, but we have had a large family stone with the names and dates of all the ancestors inscribed since we don’t specifically know where they were laid to rest in the clearing.”
Miriam brought up the last slide. “Here is the clearing today – but as you can see, there is no clearing. Instead, it is a forest full of tall Irish Oaks. To me, it symbolizes all of my family together – standing tall – bound by their lives and experiences. Truly, this is my family tree. Jakob’s Tree.”
A standing ovation comforted Miriam as tears of joy ran from her eyes.