MAGEE – McGEE
FAMILY REUNION

The Magee family started in slavery. My father's mother was named India. A slave owner bought her for $500. She was sold to a man named Henry Hampton, who fathered my father. My father's mother changed slave masters. In the meantime, slavery was abolished in 1865. After slavery was abolished, she lived on the Magee Plantation. This is where the Magee name originated. My grandmother, India, married a man named Dennis Brown. To this union was born two boys and two girls. The boys were named Cleveland and Ed and the girls were named Anne and Belle. These sisters died a week apart in 1913. They had a disease called Polygry, which was incurable at that time.

Around 1900, my father married Bertha Kraft. To this union was born one child — me. I was born October 6, 1905 in Pinola, Mississippi, four miles from Pixler, Mississippi.

Ms. Kraft and my father separated. My father then married Ferlie Stewart. To this union was born ten children. Their names and birth years are as follows: Kate (1909), Bernice (1911), Myrtle (1912), Curtis (1913), Ervin "Bilbo" (1915), Rena (1917), Janie (1919), Henry (1921), Thelma (1922), and Doss Jr. "DM" (1924).

We moved to a farm on the Tallahassee River in 1917. This is where Rena was born. This was the year that I learned to cook. Mom became sick in 1917 and was sick all the year. Pop and I made the crop. We stayed one year with the Jennings Brothers on this farm. The next year, 1918, we spent with Perry Givens, another colored sharecropper. I graduated from high school in 1919 in Brazil, Mississippi.

I left Mississippi in 1920 and came to Sturgis, Kentucky. At Sturgis, my name was changed while getting a job in the coal mines. The superintendent misspelled my name and that is where the other spelling (McGee) was started.

In 1923, I met and married Willie Lee Pickrum. She was 13 and I was 17. To this union was born six boys and one girl. They were James, Herman, Daniel, Oscar, Charles, Richard, and Selena. Their mother, Willie Lee, passed away in November 1935 at the age of 25 years old.

I was converted and saved in 1932, the year Richard was born.

In the late 30s, my father Doss and Ms. Ferlie Stewart were divorced. My father then married Laura Mae Williams. To this union was born six girls and two boys. They were LD, Willie, Violet, Inez, Maggie Jean, Laura Jean, Bernice, and Josephine.

Ruth, another sister, was born in Mississippi.

In February 1968, Ferlie Magee died at age 82. In November 1969, Doss Magee died at age 83.

To date, four children of Doss and Ferlie Magee survive. They are myself, Daniel, Doss, Curtis, and Thelma. All seven children born to the union of Laura Mae Williams and Doss Magee survive.