"Dreams and Despair" by Joel R. Stegall

 – Endings and beginnings are never far apart.

With the confidence of those who don’t know a lot, Ben was sure he’d soon be back home.

In his career as professor and academic administrator, Joel Stegall wrote more than 35 journal articles, book chapters, opinion pieces and other such. None of these gained him widespread acclaim. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, NC, he has written a family history tracing his ancestry back to 1735. Though documentation is elusive, he has found considerable evidence that his ancestry began even earlier. Several of his stories, often about his ancestors, have appeared in the Personal Stories Publishing Project. Joel continues to write because he likes to.

Author’s Talk

Joel R. Stegall

My interest in family history may be driven by the relative absence of grandparents in my life. Both my grandfathers died several years before I was born. Mother’s mother lived in our home until she died when I was five. Daddy’s mother, the only grandparent I remember having fun with, lived five years longer but I saw her only once a year at the annual family reunion.  

My mother was a writer and storyteller, as was her mother. Most of what I know about the family history comes from stories Grandmother Ringgold passed down through her daughter, Irma Ringgold Stegall, my mother. Those stories are the source of most of what I know about my great-grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Ringgold. Mother told me many times how Ben, home from the Confederate Army on Christmas leave in December 1863, played in the cornfield with his little Willie before disappearing among the corn stalks to return to his combat unit. Willie Ringgold was my mother’s father.  

Mother also keep the original copy of a letter Ben wrote the following spring to a friend back home in Stedman, NC complaining about the men of the village who had “feigned illness” to avoid the draft were not looking after the wives and children of those who served. It was apparently understood that if men stayed home due to age or physical inability, they were to be sure the wives and children of those in the service would be provided for. Ben wrote that they did not even give his wife enough money to buy a bushel of corn.  

Ben Ringgold, a product of his time and place, served in combat for a cause his granddaughter, my mother, did not think just. But his courage and devotion to his family are still admired by this great-grandson nearly 160 years later.—Joel R. Stegall