Contributed by: Sandy Daniel, 06 March 2009
Article from the Linden Times, dated May 20, 1880 from Crooked Creek.
FROM CROOKED CREEK Reading an article in the ‘Times’ of last week about ‘pea-nuts’ put me to thinking-an unusual thing for Dot to do-. Now I don’t wish people to think that I want to brag on my country or people, but I can not forbear saying that the people of this pea-nut region are in a better condition financially, than any I know of, and I have been around some. I heard our school-teacher who is a comparative stranger and owns no land here, and so can have no interest in puffing country or people, say, that Perry is the best county he has ever found, in which to collect tutition. He is now teaching his fourth term here and says he has not a dollar owing to him; patrons frequently pay him in advance. And that instead of the Perryites being lawless, God-less people as so often represented, he has never seen quieter or better disposed people anywhere; that there has not been a fight or public disturbance of any kind within his knowledge, since he has been in the county. As an illustration of what pea-nuts will do for a man, when accompanied by the necessary amount of energy and industry, or ‘git up,’ as it is very expressively termed. I will mention one or two instances, and I hope the parties will excuse me, for putting their names in print. When the late war ended Jno. N. Daniel, one of my neighbors, was the owner of two little mules, and two shares in his deceased fathers estate, worth in all about $700. Now he has 230 acres of land in actual cultivation, and heads the list of our heavy pea-nut growers with about one hundred acres planted; is out of debt, and has a good round sum in clean cash. That old saying: ‘A fool for luck, and a poor man for children’ lacks a few, of being exemplified in his case, for while he has a house full of ‘pledges,’ several of whom are grown, and whose vivacity and intelligence, add a charm to the social gathering of the neighborhood, he is one of our sharpest citizens and most successful farmers. In the year, I believe, of ’64, a poor devil of a Confederate soldier from Independence county Ark. while fighting, manfully, in the Army of Tennessee, was wounded and taken prisoner. Enroute to a northern prison he jumped the cars between Murfreesboro and Nashville, and on foot; without a dollar in money, only the clothes he had on, he made his way to this creek, to the house of his Aunt Mrs. Mary Scott. By hard work and judicious expenditure, he –J. T. Northern–has today $6,000, invested in one of the most beautiful and fertile farms in the Tennessee valley, and stands second on the list with sixty acres in pea-nuts. I mustn’t forget Aunt Polly, the twice widowed mother of Mr. Daniel, and mother-in-law to Squire Northern, who has hundreds, aye, thousands at interest derived from the rent of her dower lands, and the increase-of a small stock of cattle and swine.
If you have a newspaper article with genealogical interest pertaining to Perry County before 1923, please send it to Jerry L Butler, your Perry County TNGenWeb coordinator.