How It All Started
Elijah and Bertha were married December 24,1926, at the ages of 24 and 18, respectively.
They settled in the small town of Graham, GA., and Elijah worked as a migrant farm hand throughout the South. After many years of working for others, Elijah purchased our own 80-acre farm in Jeff Davis County. Here, Elijah and the children, which over the years climbed to 12, grew tobacco, cotton, corn, watermelons. cane, and other vegetables and fruits.
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While Elijah and the children tended the farm, Bertha was busy keeping the books, tending her garden, and canning vegetables, preserves, and fruits for the winter. Later, she completed the requirements through correspondence to become a practical nurse. While she did not work as a nurse, she did work in Hazlehurst Hospital. She started working there when it opened in August 1963 and retired after several years. She worked doing what she loved, cooking for others.
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In addition to tending our farm, Elijah and the girls share-cropped several farms in the area. At the same time, Elijah and the boys dipped tar from the pine trees on the land. It was always something to be done—either on our farm or working on someone else’s farm from Monday through Saturday.
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The hard work on the farm instilled in all the children a reason to do whatever it took to leave the farm behind. Elijah and Bertha also had a dream of the children becoming something other than farmers. That was the reason they came up with the idea of how the children were to get through college. The plan was for them to get the first two girls through college; then those girls were to help the next one’ and continue down until the last child got through college.
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For the most part, their plan worked. It was this plan that resulted in the Kornegay Family being honored as the “Family of the Year” a few years ago by Savannah State University (College) for having 8 siblings complete 4 years of college.
Even though sadly, Elijah did not live to see the full fruition of his dream, Bertha lived long enough to see it come true.
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In addition to farming and dipping tar, Elijah was an ordained minister. In this capacity, he pastored our home church, Macedonia Baptist Church, and other churches in the area. Bertha served faithfully as First Lady and a Deaconess.
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The thing that we, as children, learned first-hand from both Elijah and Bertha was, “Hard work never hurt anybody”.
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Contributors: Bertha & Laura