The House on Harrison Street: The Ritchie Files

Just when I thought it might be safe to upload my creative nonfiction book to the cyberworld of CreateSpace by Amazon, I decided I better check one more time with the cousins. Someone might have one more thing to share.That one thing could be a major game-changer.

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Today, I was able to speak with my cousin from Ruston, Louisiana. Not only does she have photos, she has journals.These journals are like nothing I’ve even imagined I could touch. The one from which she read seems to be an accounting of finances and donations to various charities around Camden.

John Campbell Ritchie 

The writer was either former Mayor John Campbell Ritchie or cotton merchant George Louis Ritchie, as the writer listed an entry about “sister Ella" and the Ouachita Valley Bank. Since J.C. Ritchie is Susan’s great grandfather, I’m thinking these journals are his, once in the possession of his son, Stith Bearden Ritchie, her grandfather.

She is boxing up these photos and journals and putting them on the road to my house via Wilderness Express. I've promised to copy them and return the originals to her. She has a treasure and did not know it. It may be that a major re-write in some sections of the book will be forthcoming.

Waiting for the box to arrive is like waiting to meet a long-lost relative, someone I’ve known but have not made contact with in years.Touching what they touched, reading what they wrote, learning what they believed to be important all make these ancestors come alive to me.Their decisions, the names of the individuals in the journal, the places mentioned give life to historical genealogy.

To affirm that the book I'm putting together is important for our family and for Camden, I recognized the names and knew their relationships and how they were significant to the family and to Camden. The failure of the Ouachita Valley Bank during the 1930s impacted the brothers and the family and there is information in the journal about the bank. She did not know what I have learned through research. That is the focus of the book; if I don't share the stories and the information, everything will be lost, because the information is fragmented, scattered among the cousins.

What my grandmother would have possessed went up in smoke from the fire in either 1941 or 1959.

I’m so grateful to these cousins who have unearthed the archives and have chosen to share what they found.