Photo of Terry Connolly by P.G. Misty Sheehan.
By P.G. Misty Sheehan
Editor’s note: This story appeared in the July 22, 2020 issue of Freshwater Reporter.
Terry Connolly wants to re-establish the 40 acres his family originally owned in Manistee County. He is working hard planting apple, pear, plum, cherry and Asian pear trees, plus strawberry and blackberry bushes.
Connolly has returned in his retirement to Dublin, Michigan, where he was born and raised. He and his wife Vera Ellen, good friends since their Grand Valley State University days, finally got married in their “Field of Dreams” here, and he has begun farming again. They bought the Harper Lake Resort, which Vera Ellen manages.
He is still good friends with his cousin, the actor James Earl Jones — best known, perhaps, as the voice of Darth Vader — who went to Brethren High School with him and acted in Manistee’s Ramsdell Theatre. Connolly and Jones were just two of their family’s generation to move away after the family’s acreage was divided and sold.
Connolly is interested in his genealogy, and his family has an interesting story. Theirs begins with Connolly’s discovery of his forebear “Brice” who was captured in Africa with three brothers and brought to the United States around 1840. As a slave, Brice was given no last name. He married a white indentured servant, Parthenia Connolly, and took her surname. About 10 children came from this union.
Parthenia taught their children to read and write, even though it was illegal at the time for slaves to learn these basic skills. Those abilities stood them in good stead when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 and slaves were freed. Despite laws preventing black citizens from owning land during Reconstruction, those legalities did not prevent Bryce’s children from reading and understanding their new rights. They signed their documents not with a slave’s “X” but with their own names. They became successful farmers and teachers in the South.
Connolly’s great-grandfather Wyatt Connolly, Parthenia’s son, married Charlotte Jetter around 1919. The extended family had a farm in Mississippi at the time, but Jim Crow laws institutionalized economic, educational and social disadvantages for African Americans living in the south. Once, when trying to sell their cotton, they were jeered at by the white people and spent the night in a ditch with their rifles, ready for the Klu Klux Klan to pay them a visit. The sheriff, who was a KKK member, told the clan the family was okay, so nothing happened. But great-grandma Charlotte said it was time to move.
They relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, to live without fear. While there, they bought a “subscription,” making recurrent payments for 40 acres in Michigan, but the purchase was never completed.
Their son Terry’s grandfather, John Henry Connolly, moved to Gary, Indiana, where he worked in a steel mill and purchased his first new car, a 1929 Chevy. John Henry married Maggie Anderson and the family tells of her fierceness. You did not cross her.
After the stock market crash, his grandparents moved back to Mississippi for a time. Their thinking was that having a farm and growing their food was a better situation than being homeless in the city.
Michigan stayed in the family’s mind. Grandpa John Henry and Terry’s dad, Hubert B. Connolly, drove up to Dublin in 1936. To their surprise and concern, everyone was wearing red plaid coats and carried rifles. However, it was November 15, the beginning of deer season. They ended up buying 40 acres in Dublin, where the extended family (including cousins) lived for the next years.
They raised cows, horses, chickens and pigs and lived off the land, selling pickles as a cash crop. In 1938, Hubert sent for his love, Willie Eva Phillips, who was part Indian, and they were married. They got along well with their neighbors, except in church, where the minister gave a sermon about Black Sambo. They then designated a piece of their own land to build a church for their extended family.
This is where Connolly was born and raised. He went to Wellston Elementary School then graduated from Brethren High School with dismal grades, due to his lack of interest. Learning made more sense to Connolly at West Shore Community College, in Ludington, and later at Grand Valley State University, where he did extremely well. While there, General Motors offered him a job as a security guard in a work-study type of arrangement, so he could finish his degree in accounting, which he did.
He wasn’t interested in being a CPA as, at that time, only about three percent of CPAs were Black. After 14 years as a security guard at GM, Connolly was promoted to the accounting division. Eventually, he took a special course in engineering provided by the company and retired as an Engineering Technician from GM.
Connolly said he was fortunate to know the right people, who aided him in his quest for success with his life’s goals. Having a lot of money wasn’t one of them, but he wanted enough to live comfortably and kick back, if necessary. He and Vera have two children, and their three grandchildren now keep them “young at heart.” As he works to resurrect the 40-acre farm his family once owned, his notion of easing off seems far from reality — but close to home.
P.G. Misty Sheehan is a retired professor of humanities and a former executive director of the Benzie Area Historical Society Museum.
