Mary Lou Williams' birthplace - some speculation

[jeffcrom]

I started reading Linda Dahl's biography of Mary Lou Williams, Morning Glory, today. I don't know what took me so long to get to this book. I had known that Williams was born in Atlanta, but for some reason I had thought she was born in the Buttermilk Bottom neighborhood, in what is now called Midtown. While reading the first chapter of Dahl's book, I realized that Williams was born (and lived to the age of about five) in Edgewood, within walking distance of my house.

Here's the deal: Edgewood, once a separate town, was one of the suburbs that developed east of Atlanta in the late 19th century. In contrast to more prestigious suburbs like Inman Park and Druid Hills, it was a working-class town, filled with shotgun houses and small bungalows. (I live in one of the latter, which replaced one of the former in 1930, as far as I can tell.) Atlanta annexed Edgewood in 1909, approximately a year before Williams was born.

Edgewood was divided by the railroad tracks which run along the Eastern Subcontinental Divide - about a hundred feet or so from my house. South of the tracks, Edgewood was populated almost entirely by African-Americans. North of the tracks, the population was mostly white, but there were two black enclaves known as Rose Hill and Hooperville. (This is not from the Dahl book - I already knew this stuff.) The area south of the tracks is still known as Edgewood, while my neighborhood north of the tracks is now known as Candler Park. In true white Atlanta fashion, the names of the major streets that connect Edgewood and Candler Park were changed in Candler Park in the mid 20th century, so that the white residents north of the tracks wouldn't be associated with the black neighborhood south of the tracks.

Williams' half-brother was very specific that she was born in Edgewood, and that they lived there. The name of the street was supposedly Gotsipling. I can't find any reference to any street of that name ever existing in Atlanta. So I think that either that wasn't the official name of the street, or that it was such a tiny alley in such a poor neighborhood that no one took any notice of it. Dahl asked the legendary Atlanta historian Franklin Garrett about it, and he thought it must be a corruption of "Gospero." Well, Gaspero Street still exists, but it's in the Old Fourth Ward, Martin Luther King's childhood neighborhood, and over a mile from Edgewood.

Mary's parents were active at the Beulah Baptist Church in Edgewood, and her mother played the reed organ there. That's a common church name, but I quickly came up with a Beulah Baptist Church that was located at the corner of Hardee Street and Wesley Avenue in Edgewood in the early years of the 20th century. (The church is still active, but later moved out of the city limits). Here's the location. (I live just north of the area shown - on Clifton Rd. near DeKalb Avenue.)

My guess is that Williams was born and raised within walking distance of this church. I explored the area a little today, and there are streets that probably look much as they did 100 years ago, although much of the area has changed a lot. North of the church site is a new-ish subdivision, with street layouts that are obviously different from the time of Williams' birth. East of the site is a large apartment complex, and south is the campus of a public school which looks like it was built in the 1970s. My guess is that Gotsipling Street, or whatever it was, was in one of these areas.

I'm going to do more research - I would love to pin down the exact location of Mary Lou's birthplace and childhood home. That may be impossible, though - no birth certificate was issued for her at the time. But for now, I'm guessing that this is the right neighborhood.

Edited November 8, 2013 by jeffcrom

[flat5]

Good Luck.

[paul secor]

Sounds like you've already learned a lot from your explorations, even if you don't come up with "the answer".

[page]

Your research sounds exciting. Maybe that church has records from the time she was born. If she was baptized that will be written down somewhere in their records and maybe you could get more information from that.
Good luck,
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