Elbert County GaArchives Newspapers
Author Mrs. Corra Harris lays father to rest at Van'Creek church. 
2 May 1930

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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Chandler Eavenson
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00030.html#0007294

Newspapers
Author Mrs. Corra Harris lays father to rest at Van'Creek church. 

The following article appeared in the Elberton Star newspaper on 
2 May 1930: 

"Corra Harris Finds Ideal Funeral When Her Father is Laid to Rest
in Historic Ruckersville Churchyard. 

"The body of Tinsley Rucker White was laid to rest in the graveyard
at old Vans Creek church in Ruckersville Wednesday afternoon in the 
presence of his surviving children, relatives and a number of friends. 
The simple Christian burial service was conducted at the grave by 
Rev. John H. Mashburn. 

"Mrs. Corra Harris, celebrated author, says that the funeral of her 
father measured up to her ideal of what a funeral should be in the 
following authorized statement: 

"I always wanted to have a natural, kindly human funeral - not so 
solemn as we are sometimes when we lay away our dead, but a sort of 
genial, friendly funeral - now I have had it. My father, who longed 
for his old home, passed away on the 28th of April, and remembering 
the cry of his heart, I brought him back and laid him to rest 
between his father and mother at the old churchyard in Ruckersville. 
(No more than the mere scar of that old town remains, and it is 
generally known that the first state bank in Georgia was located 
there. My grandfather, Senator William Bowling White, was the 
cashier when he was a young man. Years later, when he was a member 
of the Georgia senate, he traveled in his carriage from Milledgeville
to Ruckersville with $100,000 of the state's funds rolled up in a 
bundle in the bottom of his carriage with other baggage, for his 
bank.) My father's mother died when he was six months old, and from 
the time I can remember until a few days ago when I heard him 
talking about her again, he would wish and cry for his mother. So 
now he is beside her, shriven of all his weariness, pains and sins, 
clean and good as any little child lying beside his mother. 

"I only hoped that some of the old neighbors who used to know him 
would come to help me bear him and lay him softly in his long 
cradle of the earth, and that somebody would say about his dust 
'I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth on me though 
he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth 
on me shall never die.'

"I only hoped they would come, but I didn't know. - What a joy then
it was to be met by so many whose faces I had known long ago, grown 
dim and kinder now, but sweetened by all the memories of my childhood,
and they did help me to lay him away, and his funeral was like the 
happy ending to so much sorrow and grief. 

"We sat around on the old disheveled grave-stones while the covers 
of earth and flowers were being laid upon him, laughed and talked 
of other days, and sang a song, and prayed a prayer for our own 
soul's sake. Altogether it has been for me a happy day. The long, 
long past of my childhood has run through my heart like a song, and 
I was in love again with my old home and the peoople I used to know, 
his friends and neighbors who so tenderly and kindly helped me to 
lay him away. I am going away, strangely lonesome for my father, but
blest and comforted by the love and friendliness of mankind, as I 
have been so many times in my life after some grief or great anxiety 
had laid me low." 

[Submitted by: Chandler Eavenson]