[Granville-Hough] 30 Aug 2009 - Visiting Ariminta, an Original True Grit

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Visiting Ariminta, an Original True Grit

When Aunt Joan (Sullivan) Richardson learned that her childhood friend 
and first cousin, Ariminta Sullivan, had moved into Pearl River County 
after WW II to the community of Carriere, she resolved to visit her. 
Carriere was as remote from Poplarville as Raleigh was from Sullivan’s 
Hollow. She and her daughter, Maxine, got to Carriere easily enough, but 
finding Ariminta Sullivan was another matter. They finally found someone 
who pointed out a road and said someone of Ariminta’s description lived 
a few miles down that road. Aunt Joan only had one eye, but it was wide 
open for someone who might be Ariminta Sullivan. Along the way, they 
passed a woman in a sunbonnet plowing a mule in her garden. That was a 
bit unusual in Pearl River County at that time, years past WW II, when 
most people converted to tractors. Of course, Aunt Joan had herself 
plowed her garden in Smith County in earlier years. Very few people even 
had mules by the time they made this trip. They talked a bit about the 
woman plowing her mule, and Aunt Joan suddenly said: “I think that was 
Ariminta. Let’s go back and see.” When they got back, the woman had just 
about finished her plowing, but it was indeed Ariminta.

When they identified themselves, Ariminta put away her mule and they had 
a good visit. The information on her family was mostly collected on the 
spot in that one visit. And they thus learned that Ariminta had had 
thirteen children, the ten survivors all with families of their own. She 
was nearly the same age as Aunt Joan, born in 1881, and approaching 80 
years of age when Aunt Joan and Maxine visited. Ariminta's husband, 
William Frederick Lylie Sullivan had died years earlier in 1935. But 
Ariminta still plowed her own mule when her garden needed work.

That’s the True Grit of the Sullivan’s Hollow Woman.