The Mitchells were a fairly typical family in the early to mid-1900s, with a lot of children, or extra hands, to help on the farm they built in Turin, Georgia.

  “We were the farm,” laughed the siblings.

  Alfred and Marjorie Mitchell had six children; Elizabeth, the oldest, Lamar, Leroy, Geraldine, Helen and, finally, Betty Anne, the youngest.

  The siblings all remember life on the farm fondly, but acknowledge that there was a lot of hard work to be done.

  “It was challenging. We knew the jobs that we had to do and we did them,” said Helen Mitchell. “On Sundays, we would have time off and we could do what we wanted to.”

  During their free time, the siblings would spend time playing together, competing in soapbox derbies, making stilts out of spare wood and jumping in the hay. 

  Each sibling lent a hand in one way or another on the farm that they helped build from the ground up, understanding that effort on the part of each individual would make a more comfortable way of life for everyone.

  “At the time, we didn’t think it was fun but we got along. Everybody had a job, nobody hum hawed around,” said Geraldine Johnson. “We could not be lazy.”

  Both their father and mother understood the value of hard work and commitment. Alfred previously served in the Navy while his wife was home raising their children.

  “He was assigned to the USS Houston cruiser,” said Elizabeth Beard. “My mother was a veteran too because, at the time, she was raising four children. In any military family, the whole family serves, because the whole family is affected when someone goes into the military.”

  On the farm, the children helped their father put the roof on their house, planting the fields and cutting wood for the fire. They helped milk the cows, gather eggs, pick weeds, harvest vegetables, and can fruits.

  Cows, pigs and chickens were some of the animals on the farm and, despite their father’s objections, were a source of friendship for the siblings.

  “We weren’t supposed to, but we did,” laughed Elizabeth. “We weren’t supposed to pet the farm animals, because they were supposed to be food.”

  “Daddy would go to a cow sale and he would buy these little calves and he would bring them home and fatten them up and then he would take them back to the sale,” said Helen. “He would tell me and Geraldine, ‘Now y’all don’t get used to those calves because they’re going back in about a month.’ So, me and Geraldine, when they got ready to take them, we would find ribbons and we would comb the calves’ tails and tie ribbons in them.”

  The family’s main source of food on the farm were the vegetables they grew. They were not avid consumers of meat and did not eat many sweets.

  “We were vegetarians before it was popular,” said Elizabeth.

  Christmases on the farm were small, family affairs, making it one of their most favorite holidays of the year. 

  “We always enjoyed Christmas because daddy somehow always picked out a tree. We would all go to get the Christmas tree and decorate it with whatever we could find that was shiny and pretty. We used a lot of popcorn,” said Geraldine.

  However, life of the farm did not last forever and the family eventually moved to the city, where things were very different. 

  “We didn’t know about things outside of our area, our neighborhood, our school and our church,” said Elizabeth. We didn’t know that there were other things out there until after we graduated from high school and left home.”

  As the years passed, each sibling graduated from high school and moved on to jobs nearby, service in the military and starting their own families.

  Today, each of those six siblings are alive and remain as close as they were as children. Aside from Helen, all of the siblings are married and most of the siblings have settled down in Henry County.

  And, despite the time they spend apart, when they reunite, it is as if no time has passed since their last gathering.

  “We’ve never had a big argument in the family. Even now, we try to get together at least once a year. We always manage to have a big get-together around Thanksgiving or Christmas,” said Elizabeth.

  The siblings attribute their commitment to God as the reason that their marriages have been so successful and the reason that they have remained so close over many years.

  “All of us are born again Christians, all of us are active in church. That’s why, I think, all of us have been able to be married as long as we’ve been married,” said John Beard, husband of Elizabeth. “God has been good to us and gave all of us good spouses. None of us are perfect, but God always works things out for us.”