Wallis and Mae Tatum: Life on a North Forsyth Farm

A 1965 photograph shows Wallis and Mae Tatum on their Forsyth County farm with their grandson Danny McGhee. Behind that photograph was a family farm rooted in the Matt and Zion Hill communities.

A North Forsyth Farm

John Wallis Tatum was born in 1906, and Edna Mae Hughes Tatum was born in 1905. They married in 1926 and made their home in the Matt and Zion Hill community of north Forsyth County.

By 1965, their farm included approximately 4,000 breeder hens, 150 acres of pasture and 50 head of beef cattle.

The Old Hughes Farmhouse

Wallis and Mae lived in an old family farmhouse that had belonged to Mae's father, Isaac Newton Hughes, who lived from 1857 to 1943. The house was described as nearly 100 years old in 1965.

Parts of the older house were still easy to see. It contained hand-hewn timbers, and iron hangers in the basement remained from the years when meat was cured there.

Wallis and Mae were the parents of four daughters: Hazel, Bobbie Dean, Marjorie Nelle and Patsy Ann. Danny McGhee, pictured with his grandparents, was Patsy's son.

The Tatum Name on the Road

Wallis died in 1985 and Mae in 1993, but the family name lives on in Wallace Tatum Road. His name appeared as both Wallis and Wallace, and the road was once called Wallis Tatum Road before the current spelling took hold.

Sources

• Forsyth County News, October 7, 1965, page 5
• Patsy Ann McGhee obituary, January 15, 2022