It’s not often our part of the country is center stage in a Christian Historical Fiction Novel, but a few short weeks ago it happened! Larry Craze, a 6th generation resident of the Mountain Home community released such a book, Yet a Remnant. Many of Larry’s ancestral family are buried at Mountain Home. His grandparents, 1st great grandparents, and 2nd great grandparents on the Craze side of his family are buried at Mountain Home. His 1st and 2nd great grandfathers fought in the Civil War as part of Company C of the 1st AL/TENN Vidette Calvary.
While the book is presented as historical fiction, there are many factual elements that ground it, and the blending of family stories passed from one generation to the next tie the story together in an easy to read style that allows the reader to be almost transported to this earlier time. The book is well worth reading for its Christian message, its historical content, and for those with ties to the community – to read about your family and or their neighbors.
The Ider Library (just north of the 4-way on Hwy. 75) will be hosting a book signing on Friday, June 21st from 3:00-5:00pm CDT. Larry Craze will be there with books available. Don’t miss this opportunity to meet the author and get your own copy of Yet a Remnant.
How Did Yet a Remnant Come About?
Guest Blog by Author Larry Craze
Before the days that government holidays were distributed among Mondays, “Thirtieth of May” was always a day encircled on my dad’s calendar. It was not lost on me, when my sister called after midnight to notify me that Dad had passed from this world, that the date was May 30, 2019. Ardell Craze was big on Decoration Day and family, so many of my most vivid memories are associated with Mountain Home Cemetery.
It was more than fifty years ago that I carried Dad’s mother, Elzora Cordell Craze, from her home in the valley up to Sand Mountain for a Decoration. Grandma was a Valley Girl, and my grandfather, Roosevelt Craze, was a young Mountain Man when they met. My grandmother was raised near Valley Head in the Violet Hill Community. She met Grandpa when he and his friend, Sam Hunt, cruised the school yard at Lea’s Chapel. Later, she showed me post cards he had sent, treasured in a trunk, asking her to be his “dear friend.”
It was at that Decoration that I was reacquainted with Grandpa’s younger brother, Dan Craze, as he visited us at his brother’s grave. I remembered Uncle Dan from visits to his home when I was very small. It was at his place on Pea Ridge that I had my first horse ride. Uncle Dan would raise piglets for my dad, and we would go there to retrieve hams and shoulders from his smokehouse.
When Dan asked if I wanted to see where his father was buried, I followed him from our location at the south end of the graveyard to an area in the northwest corner. It was there that he showed me the marker, provided by the Veteran’s Administration, identifying Dan’l Craze as a soldier with Company C of the Tennessee/Alabama Vidette Cavalry. Until that time, I had never known any of my family beyond the second generation, and I was amazed to be speaking to a man whose father had fought in the Civil War. Uncle Dan also pointed out several marked, yet unnamed, graves in the surround, but he wasn’t sure about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the wife and children from Dan’l’s first marriage. Dan was only five years old when his father passed. I was impressed with the similarity between the losses of Dan’l Craze with that of Job from the Old Testament.
It was years later that we learned that Dan’l’s father is also buried at Mountain Home. Flora Thompson had been faithful through many years to decorate the graves of her parents and grandparents, and she informed us that her grandfather, William (brother of Dan’l Craze,) requested to be buried next to his father, James. Most likely, James Craze was the first person to be buried on the property that is now Mountain Home. His body had been retrieved from a grave behind the field hospital at Bridgeport, Alabama, where he had also served with Company C. It was his land that was donated by Flora’s family to be used as a cemetery for Chestnut Grove Baptist Church.
In later years I was fortunate to be contacted by various distant family members who have provided ancestral information and treasured photographs. I have tried to share this information in various ways and developed a desire to write a story so that the family’s history on Sand Mountain might be preserved. Email, social media, and the internet have made information available and shareable, and I am continually amazed at what we can learn from the past.
Until about eight years ago, I did not envision that such a story would garner sufficient interest, beyond my own family, to consider its publication. A cousin, John Harold Craze, from Hixson, Tennessee, sent me a packet of papers he had requested from the United States Pension Bureau. The packet documented the depositions taken from several citizens of DeKalb County regarding a pension claim of his ancestor, Jennie Cooper Craze. A special agent, John Harper Wager, was tasked with reinvestigating the circumstances of the death of her husband, John Craze, a soldier from Company C of the Vidette Cavalry.
As I began to research the life and work of John Harper Wager, it became apparent that his story needed to be told. His work during and after Civil War Reconstruction was influential in the history of Alabama and of the nation. The telling of his story provided a means to tell my family’s story, along with many of their neighbors on Sand Mountain and in Wills Valley, and of the Winston family in Valley Head. These tales can be found in the novel, Yet a Remnant. It is my hope that, by reading this book, the community can have a greater appreciation for the pivotal role their families played in American history and what the lives of their ancestors may have been like in January 1878.