“Being of Sound Mind”

by John Comer

Sam is dying. It’s 1871, fifty-one years since he arrived in Charleston as a 16-year-old immigrant. By age twenty or so he had married a Carolina girl with the unusual name of Rhepsoma, and they had bought a farm on the headwaters of the Savannah River, on the Carolina side.

But that was long ago. He’s been in Georgia now for over two decades. Rhepsy passed away several years back. The children are adults and have children of their own. Life goes on.

Except that now Sam has time to do only one thing more: “In the name of God, Amen. I, Sam’l Junkin . . . being of sound mind and memory, but feeble in health and considering the uncertainty of human life . . . .” He leaves his farm and possessions to his children, except for his watch, left to a son-in-law who must have been a very special person to him.

To me, though, the most intriguing item in Sam’s will is the valise he left to my great-grandfather David. How did a poor farmer come to have a valise? He didn’t make business trips to Atlanta or take vacations on the coast. He stayed home and plowed fields and milked cows. My theory is that he packed this valise back in County Antrim, boarded the ship in Belfast harbor with it, and had kept it all through the years. It may have been the only thing he had from Ireland except memories. I hope David appreciated it for what it meant to his father.

The real issue, of course, is what Sam left his family by way of faith and character. There is evidence that he and Rhepsy taught their children to honor God and believe in what Jesus Christ had done for them. As soon as their son William immigrated to Arkansas, he joined the Mt. Holly Presbyterian Church. One son was an ordained minister. David served as an unordained Methodist preacher, and we can assume other family members also were believers. If so, the most important things Sam and Rhepsy left behind were not written down in the will.

If all of us are truly “of sound mind,” as Sam’s will claimed him to be, we’ll be prayerfully concerned about the Christian values we leave with our families. It’s the most valuable legacy we can offer them. Do we understand old King Solomon correctly when he said that if we train a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not turn from it?