As a child, I always had fond memories of our summer vacations to Mississippi. Every year when school was out, I knew that before the summer was over, we would go to Mississippi to visit our relatives. Whether we went by train or car, it seemed like we would never get there. All we could do for 18 hours was look out of the window and think about the fun we were going to have. The thing l remembered most when we arrived was the hospitality. Every where we went, there were hugs, kisses and always plenty of food. Our relatives really made us feel like they were glad to see us. Everyone called my father Charley 'Boy. He was the youngest of the Jaynes Boys so his homecoming was always well received.

The highlight of our vacation was always the Zion Hill revival. The revival was always held on the third Sunday in July at the Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church. It lasted from Sunday to Friday and was the biggest affair held in the settlement at that time. For everyone who grew up in the Sanitorium Settlement, the revival was a day of homecoming. It was like a family reunion for the whole settlement. It was a day for looking your best and being on your best behavior.

After the Sunday service, there was always a big dinner held on the grounds of the church. The women had spent most of the previous week preparing food. They would have fried chicken, sweet potatoes, chicken and dumplings, pies, cakes and every good thing that you could eat. It was an unbelievable feast. People would serve food off the rear of their trucks or cars if they didn't have a table. Everywhere you looked people would be talking, laughing and having a joyous time. Like most of the kids, we would spend our time going from table to table getting two sometimes three plates, and all the cake and pie we could eat. After we stuffed ourselves, we begged our parents for money and ran off to find the man selling snowballs and candy.

As we grew older, our visits to Mississippi became less frequent. Many of the cousins that I grew up with left the settlement. After high school, they got married and began raising families of their own. They moved to Chicago, Toledo, Jackson, and other cities across the country.

In 1980, the first Jaynes family reunion was organized in Chicago, Illinois. It was the first attempt to reunite the Jaynes family.

The Jaynes family reunion has been continuously held over the years in various cities..It has grown and is now known as the Jaynes, Wommack, Hayes reunion. The purpose of the reunion is to revive old kinships, to remember family members who have lived before us and to recognize the achievements of family members but, most importantly, to 'keep the family together.

It is important that our children and our children's children grow up knowing their relatives and the roots from which they came. It has been said that a family without a history is a family without a future.

In an attempt to discover our family roots, the Jaynes family history was written.

I was given this assignment by my Uncle Nathanial Jaynes at the 1991 reunion held in Memphis, Tennessee. It was supposed to be a brief family history starting with my grandparents, Charley and Josephine Jaynes. While I was talking to my Uncle Lindsey Jaynes about his parents, he mentioned that his grandfather's name was Adam Jaynes and that Adam was a former slave. From that conversation, I became interested in Adam, and that led me on my quest to find him.

My search for Adam began at the Newberry Genealogy Library in Chicago, Illinois. Here I found the origin of the Jaynes name in this country and an article written by Joseph M. Jaynes, who was a plantation owner in Rankin County, Mississippi. Copies of his plantation records and account books were available for me to look at on microfilm. When l looked at the plantation account book, I found Adam when he was a slave on the Jaynes Plantation. Later I looked up the 1880 census for Simpson County, Mississippi Beat I, and discovered that in 1880, Adam was alive and married to a woman named Mary. They had four children one was my grandfather, Charley Jaynes. This discovery was a great joy to me because now our family tree could be complete.

The Jaynes family history is my attempt to record information about the Jaynes family members both past and present. A lot of information has been told to me by other family members,' however, a great deal is based on fact from census records and other documents.

I apologize in advance for any omissions or for any misspelled names. We have a very large family and such errors are hard to avoid. I hope you enjoy reading this paper as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

Curtis Jaynes Sr. March 22, 1992

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The first Jaynes in the United States was William Jaynes, who was born in England in 1618. He immigrated to Long Island, New York, in 1652 where he married and started the Jaynes bloodline.

Even though the descendants of William Jaynes were white, it is important to know that most blacks born in .this country acquired the last name of their former owner or slavemaster.

Joseph M. Jaynes, who owned 48 slaves on his 960 acre plantation in Rankin County, Mississippi, was a direct descendent of William Jaynes. The Jaynes plantation account book written in 1854-1860clearly shows that this plantation existed in Rankin County near a town called Brandon.

One of the slaves on the plantation was named Adam Jaynes. Whether he was born there or brought there from somewhere else is not known. According to the records entered in the plantation account book of Joseph M. Jaynes, he was there in 1854 and remained there until slavery was abolished in the United States in 1863. It is through Adam Jaynes, the father of Charley Jaynes that our family history begins.

Plantation account book of M. Jaynes, Rankin County, Mississippi. Volume 1-5, 1854, 1860
(William R. Perkin Library, Duke University).

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