Even Daddy would be surprised to learn the truth behind this photograph!

The portrait of my grandfather, Richard W. Wiggins II, hangs in my living room.  I thought it was taken in 1913 when he played Joseph in a play about the Biblical story of Joseph of the coat of many colors.  Many times I had heard the retelling of the event that had taken place before my father’s birth.  So, I suppose my father could be excused for having gotten the facts a bit out of order. 

 

Granddad's portrait in my living room.

 

I had heard about the play being presented in the Grand Opera House in Meridian, MS , about 1913. The family must have been present because the tale is that Granddad’s niece, Annabelle, was in the audience.  When she saw her Uncle Dick on the stage, she hollered out a greeting to him right in the middle of the performance.  After all she was just a small child, Daddy said. 

I have held the wig that my daddy said was a part of Granddad’s costume as Joseph.  I have memories of seeing the sandals he is wearing in the photo, but maybe that memory is the kind that seems to be born of hearing a story so many times that reality and true memory seem to blur.

I found a program from the event that had been put away as a souvenir and remained out of sight until I had to empty the house on 15^th avenue for Mama and Daddy to sell.  I was too busy to look through the program at the time, so I, too, put away the program along with smaller versions of the photograph on my living room hall.  There was also a printer’s woodblock of the photograph that had been used to print Granddad’s image in costume in the playbill.  The printer’s block was the same image as the portrait in my living room.  I had a “complete” souvenir package of my grandfather’s stage appearance as Joseph.

Then the day came that I had time to bring out the “playbill” and photograph the pages to document it for the family history.  That was the day that the truth was revealed to me.   If I had only taken the time to even read the cover when I found it, the tale would have gone up in smoke.  The booklet is titled “Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.  Valley of Meridian.  Orient of Mississippi”.  Inside the program I learned that it was the  forty-first reunion held in February of 1920 at the Scottish Rite Cathedral on Twenty-third Avenue.  How could I have not noticed that!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wrong date.  Wrong place. Wrong event.  Right photograph.  Yes, the portrait that hangs on my living room wall is the same portrait of my grandfather in the program booklet , but he is not identified as Joseph son of Jacob.  The caption reads, “ R. W. Wiggins, 32 Degree, as Zarababel, in the Fifteenth Degree.”  I don’t know any of the secrets of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, so I can’t explain the caption.  I can only assume that he had some role in the rites of the degree process in the Masonic lodge.

If I had not been caught up in the story Daddy told me from the time I was a child, I would have noticed some clues as to the errors in the story.  The strongest clue is the reference to my grandfather’s niece who in a childish way called out to him from the audience.  I could have put two and two together to realize that she was much too old in 1913 to have behaved in such a manner.  She was about 12 years old then. 

Granddad may have actually acted in a play in the Opera House.  There are other costume pieces and stage equipment that were found in the attic and outbuildings at the 15^th Avenue house.  Annabelle could have, as a young child, greeted her uncle on stage.  But that is not the story of the photograph.  Daddy may have heard the various stories and may have as a child blended the facts into his own memory.  He certainly was not trying to fool me or to pass on a false story.  He really thought the photograph represented Joseph.  But the truth, in the end, does come out.  And that truth is a good story all its own.