If you guessed some accountant from the 1930s, you would have been very close to the truth. This photo is of my maternal grandfather, Harry Edward Hagerty, at my mother and father’s wedding on December 26, 1958. In a way, this blog is because of him. I was a young boy when he had a heart attack and stroke. He lived for years after that, but he was never the same and spent those years in a nursing home. Most of my memories of him are little snapshots. I asked my mother some questions over the years, but not as many as I should have. That’s why I am now trying to get some of these stories in writing.
I know that he was born in Pennsylvania on May 2, 1890. He was a CPA for Westinghouse for 26 years. Due to health concerns, his doctor advised him to move south and get out in the open. That’s how he got to Dutchtown with his wife and two young daughters.
He purchased approximately 250 acres of property from Frank and Ruth Exum in 1946. The purchase price of $14,557 included a house and according to the deed, ‘all livestock, 6 mules, 4 cows and calves, and hogs, and chickens, and all feed, seed, and fertilizer, and all farm tools and implements, now on the Exum farm, which includes every thing on the farm except 5 chickens, the household furniture, and automobile of Mr. and Mrs. Exum.’ He sold the 180 acres on the north side of Jonesboro Road in 1951 for $10,000 and maintained the property south of Jonesboro Road until his death (this property is now the Wyntercreek Estates subdivision).
The most vivid memory I have of him is when he had stacks of coins lined up on a desk/table. To me, it might as well have been a million dollars. In retrospect, it may have been only 20, but what did I know. He delivered the Atlanta Journal, the afternoon paper back then, and those coins were payments from his paper route.
I also know he had a mischievous side. If someone called his house in error, he had his own way of dealing with it. If they were asking for a female, he would tell the caller they got married. If they were asking for a male, he would say the man in question joined the army. I think I may have inherited that gene.
I remember going through his barn years after his death. It had many of the typical things you would find in any barn, but it also had boxes and boxes of papers that looked like accounting ledgers. I wondered at what an interesting transition it must have been to go from a CPA up north to a southern farmer.
Do you have any stories or memories about my grandfather Hagerty? If so, I’d love to hear them.