Longtime Summerville resident and retired teacher John Turner contributed these photographs which show various members from his family tree.
The Joseph Payton Lawrence family lived in Subligna in a house built in 1855 near the Walker County line. This photograph was made around 1860. From left to right, Dee, George, Joseph, (in back) Julia, wife Elizabeth, Maddie (Martha Jo), Gertrude, and Mae. The family was related to the founder of Menlo.
Maddie or Martha Jo later became John Turner's grandmother.
Workers at the Summerville Cotton Mill are shown with John's grandfather, Lucien Claude Turner (AKA "L.C.") standing on the right wearing a straw hat. L.C. was born in 1883 and came to Chattooga County from Marion County, Tennessee in 1903. He was later the general manager and superintendent of the mill in the 1920s and 1930s.
Jumbo Maxey was one of ten brothers. While working as a flagman for Southern Railroad, he lost an arm when he fell under a rolling car. He later ran the projector at the Royal Theater in Summerville, owned by one of his brothers and his sister, Bessie.
Emmett Maxey was perhaps the youngest of the ten brothers. He was killed in a gunfight while trying to protect someone at a gambling operation.
John's grandmother, Bessie Maxey Turner, is shown with her mother, Mary Jane Henley Maxie, at their house on the corner of Georgia Avenue and Economy Street in Summerville.
A later photograph of Bessie taken at the same location as the previous photograph.
This photograph, circa 1908, shows a group near Raccoon Creek, located between Summerville and Lyerly. From left to right, unidentified, Bessie Maxey, L.C. Turner, unidentified, and unidentified. L.C. and Bessie later married.
Thanks to John Turner for sharing his photographs of the Turner, Maxey, and Lawrence families.