Happy Thanksgiving and Pass the Cornbread Dressing

Today, I would like to wish all my readers a Happy Thanksgiving.  For most of us, that means a day spent with family and friends, gathered together for a meal (and some football!) that signifies thankfulness for not only food and the necessities of life, but for our most precious gifts - each other. 


If you currently live in the South, or if you have lived in the South and are now transplanted elsewhere, before all the turkey and the football, there is cornbread dressing.  In our family, the recipe for this staple Thanksgiving dish has been handed down for generations.  My mother, whose recipe I make, says she learned to make the dressing from my dad's Great Aunt Stella, who learned to make it from her mother, my great-grandmother Claudia Baldridge Branch. The source of the recipe gets fuzzy past that point, but attributing it to Granny Claudy makes the recipe at least a century old.


Besides being an "heirloom" recipe, what makes this cornbread dressing special?  For me, it is the aroma and taste created by the just-right combination of celery, onion, sage, and thyme.  Nothing says dinner is almost ready quite as much as the aroma of cornbread dressing baking in an oven from which good ole Tom Turkey has just been removed! 


So that's what I will be doing tomorrow.....making that heirloom recipe for some family and friends.  And while I am making the cornbread, chopping the celery, and dicing the onion, I will be giving thanks for so many, many things - family that makes me happy, friends who make me smile, food, shelter, and clothing, and all the many other blessings that God has bestowed upon me ~ including all of you, dear readers, who continue to follow my blog.  


Now go and enjoy the cornbread dressing!

Family Reunion Time 1956

With the school year ended, and summer just weeks away, kinfolk from all over the country will be flocking home for family reunions. Most southern families take these reunions very seriously, and Mississippians are no different. Family members living in other states often take hard-earned vacations to make the trek home to visit with relatives they may see only during these gatherings.


The photograph above was taken at one of these events. This particular gathering occurred on the occasion of my great-grandmother's 80th birthday. The place is Goodman (Holmes County) Mississippi, in the yard between my great-aunt Stella Branch Young's home and the home of her mother, Claudia Baldridge Branch, my great-grandmother. The time was a Sunday afternoon in late summer of 1956. My great-grandmother is pictured in the front, on the right, seated between two of her daughters. It appears that she is holding a wrapped birthday gift in her lap. My mother and I are pictured to the left, sitting next to each other, and my father is standing to the right in the back of the picture.

Claudia Baldridge Branch and Her Only Son

Pictured here are my paternal great-grandmother, Claudia Baldridge Branch, born September 9, 1879, and her only son, Clark Commander Branch, who was born on August 9, 1899. In addition to Clark, Claudia and Edward Arthur Branch had four daughters, Ezma, Catherine, Laura, and Stella. I have previously written posts here about both the Branch family and the Baldridge families.

This photograph, taken around 1951 in front of our house in the Mississippi Delta, is the only one of just Clark and his mother that I know exists. At the time, Grandma Claudie, as she was known to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, was living in Goodman, Mississippi. and was likely visiting our family at the time.

Although I was too young to know the value of asking Grandma Claudie questions about her family and her life before she died in 1964, I have always thought she must have been pretty proud of her son. After she lost her husband when Clark was only 15 years old, as the only son, he became the primary breadwinner for the family, and a farmer like most of his own ancestors. And during his life, it was evident to me that Clark's sisters, too, admired and respected him, not only for his role as a father figure growing up, but for the honest, hardworking, and loyal man he became as an adult.

Clark Commander Branch died on January 19, 1979, in Jackson, Mississippi, of complications from heart disease, the same disease that had caused his mother's death. He is buried in Hillcrest Cemetery, Holmes County, Mississippi, next to his wife of 56 years, Lelia Porter Branch, and near Claudia, his beloved mother.

Baldridge Family - Ireland>PA>NC>TN>MS

This is a picture of my great-grandmother, Claudia Mae Baldridge Branch, and one of her grandsons, my father, James Branch. The picture was taken by his parents, Lelia and Clark Branch, after he had driven them over from the Delta in his 1936 Ford Coupe. He apparently was showing off his first car to his grandmother. Grandsons showing off new cars to grandmothers will never change. It is a rite of passage from grandson, the child, to grandson, the adult.

This is the oldest picture I have of one of my Baldridge family relatives. I do not know the names of Claudia's brothers and sisters. By the time this picture was taken, most of them had either moved out of the State of Mississippi, or they were deceased. Claudia Mae Baldridge was born in Madison County, Mississippi, the daughter of Martin Baldridge and Huldy Catherine Smith.

Claudia Mae Baldridge and Edward Arthur Branch, my paternal great-grandparents, were married in Madison County, Mississippi, on December 21, 1896. They had five children, including four daughters, Ezma, Catherine, Stella, and Laura, and one son, my grandfather, Clark Commander Branch, born August 8, 1899. After their marriage, "Ed" and "Claudie" lived in the Newport area of Attala County, Mississippi, where their children attended McAdams schools. Ed farmed,  and Claudy, as she was called, was a wife, mother, and housekeeper. For a time, Ed's widowed father, who was blind, lived with the family. When my grandfather was only 15 years, his father died, and he became the "head of the household" for his widowed mother and four sisters. Farming was the only livelihood he would know for many, many years.