It truly is something else to be a DeRamus. To be a Deramus meant, for me, that people knew who you were and old women beckoned you to come and sit on their laps and there was a name and an acknowledgement that proceeded you. If nothing else, I knew, have always known and been aware of the fact that my great grandfather's name was John Archie DeRamus.Indeed, for my grandmother and her sisters, it was something else to be "One of the DeRamus girls." To be one meant that you were educated, you had status, people showed respect and admiration.

Indeed, there has always been this sort of interesting air surrounding "being a DeRamus," it provides a sense of kinship and the closest thing that I have ever come to identifying as loyalty, and it also beckons one to carry out that legacy with the bearings of dignity and grace. It borders on being something patriarchal, but it isn't.I believe it is something beautiful, interesting, and very fine. To add to that, it is also something else to be one of Morgan Goodson's descendants. if you go to Autuaga County and talk to the older people, those who have been there for a while, they know that name and they respect it. Morgan Goodson was a bold, fierce, and industrious man who provided a legacy for his children and who commanded and demanded respect from the community. They said that Morgan Goodson knew more about the law than any other man in the county. If you needed advice go to him. They also said that he was a soothsayer and could tell the future. People feared him a bit because he had red eyes.

On the other hand, my great-grandfather John Archie was a meek and mild man,who again was respected and truly admired throughout the community. He was a farmer who had a comfortable living, he had the first of a lot of things in the community, and he sent his children to school. John Archie was meek and mild perhaps after he was married. When he married my great-grandmother, it is said that he was quite stuck into some very bad habits and ways and held to some notions that she shed from him quickly. One incident I have heard recounted is that one time my great grandfather told my great grandmother to do something around the house. He came back a bit later and she hadn't done it, so he hit her. They say my great-grandmother picked up a log and proceeded to knock him unconscious. After a while, his sister and others came running up the road to check on him. His sister said to her, " Sissy, you hit your John? I would never hit my John ( she was also married to a John)." My great-grandmother is to have said, " I will not only hit my John, I will kill my John." That was the end of that.