How They Met: My Kitts Grandparents

Soon after my grandmother Margaret Jane Hopson's family moved back near Washburn, TN, she caught the eye of George Washington Kitts one day as he was fulfilling the civic duty that each man had of taking his turn repairing the roads. He took one look at her and declared that she would be his wife some day! He came by her home one day, along with a young man who worked for her father on the farm, and the whippoorwills sang all night, but her parents had no idea then that George was interested in their daughter!

Papaw was born October 5, 1894, in Powder Springs, Grainger County, Tennessee, in an area Mamaw said was known as Dutch Valley. His mother, Nellie Loucinda (Collins) Kitts, was ill and passed away when he was young, so he was raised by the doctor who delivered him, Dr. Atkins, and his wife. They lived next door. For whatever reason, Mamaw's parents really didn't want her to be seeing that Kitts boy, so she secretly carried his photo in her "bosom" (see the worn crease in the photo) and eventually sneaked a few dresses out of the house before they eloped one Saturday, May 13, 1916, after a morning church service and were married at the home of the Reverend Phillips in Powder Springs. Ernest and Ula Needham were their witnesses. (These details came from Mamaw's Bible.) Mamaw knew she was supposed to be 16 to get married without the consent of her parents and her birthday was still a few weeks away, so she wrote the number 16 on a slip of paper, placed it in her shoe, and told the minister that she was "over 16!" She and Papaw returned to visit her parents home that night, where "they didn't throw a fit or nothin'."

Hopson Family

This photo includes my grandmother Margaret Jane Hopson (seated far right) and her parents William and Mary (Rucker) Hopson (seated far left). Standing in the back on the left are Mamaw's sister Eliza, her brother Greenlee and his wife, holding their youngest child. Greenlee's other two children are also in the picture, but I don't know who the rest are. Can anyone identify them? (Note what appears to be a little stuffed poodle held by Greenlee's son. I wonder whether this is a photo made on the day of a family trip to the Stylesville fair, as described in the blog post about Mamaw's memories of Indiana.)

William Harrell Hopson was born February 22, 1862, to Eliza Jane (Rosenbalm) and David Ross Hopson in the Dutch Valley area of Washburn, Grainger County, Tennessee. Mary Isabell Rucker was born April 13, 1868, to Minerva (Jordan) and Samuel Rucker also at Washburn.

Mary and William were married about 1883 at Washburn and lived and farmed at Powder Springs, Tennessee, and about six miles from Amo, Indiana for several years. Willaim Harrell Hopson died June 10, 1921, at Powder Springs, and Mary died September 30, at Luttrell. Both are buried in the Hopson Cemetery, which is in an area called Oakman, near Washburn, Grainger County, Tennessee. .