Transcribed by Suzanne Forte ( suzanneforte@windstream.net ) from information received

From Patricia Diane Goga ( ldsfrog@hotmail.com )

Mrs. Beatrice Rockmore, known to her many friends as Batch, looks remarkably young for her 82 years.

"That," she replies, "is because I've always had a happy life and still am having a good life.  I always tied to make my home a happy place".

Born June 22 1894 on the Hammonds home place on the Winder road, Batch has lived in Loganville all her life.  Her parents were the late James Robert Stevens and Cassie Hammond, both natives of Walton County, and she has one living sister.

One of the first things she remembers about Loganville is the telephone.  "My aunt, Maude Stevens, was a telephone operator in a building located where Johnson's drug is today," she says.  Our number was 28, and of course, you always had to call the operator back then."

Batch has seen a lot of progress over the years.  The old two-story building where she attended classes is gone now, but she still remembers it.

"I graduated in 1912.  We had to buy our own books, and some of the people I remember were Miss Coker and he superintendent Mr. Tribble."

In 1917 she married Joe Grade Rockmore, a local merchant.  He later worked for Morton salt and years later put the first Camel cigarettes on the market in the Loganville area.

"He died in 1971," she says, "and would be mad to this day if I ever bought any other kind of salt besides Morton."

"We had a good life.  We were married at home by Brother Donnell of the Methodist church.  Mel Tuck carried us to Lawrenceville and put us on the train to Chattanooga for our honeymoon", she remembers.

"I went to the Baptist Church when I was growing up",  she says.  "When I married Joe, I joined the Methodist church.  My husband put the bell in the belfry at the Methodist church and helped in laying the cornerstone.  In the cornerstone of the church are old coins, a Bible and a list of the members and it has not been opened to this day after Rev. Sam Jones closed it when the note was paid off."

"Loganville was once a big railroad center", she says.  "My husband was the youngest stockholder on the railroad from Lawrenceville to Loganville, and he hit the golden spike at age 11 when the track from Lawrenceville was finished"

Possessing a good memory, Mrs. Rockmore says, "I remember my mother telling about how her mother, my grandmother Cassie Hammond hid the cows and chickens in the woods around Loganville when part of Sherman's army came through Loganville.  My grandpa Stevens was in the Civil War and is buried at Haynes Creek Cemetery."

One memory that stands out in Mrs. Rockmore's memory is when Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated the gym in Loganville.  "She came in a car from Lawrenceville and walked a gangplank up to the door of the gym.  She shook hands with my son, who was just  a little boy then."