Interviews with older folks

          Transcribed by Joe Stout
 

One of the first settlement was made at a site about three quarters of a mile northeast of where Meridian Church now stands, and the first house that was built there was built by Levi Stout, and they named the settlement Jonesboro, Tenn. (Levi Stout did live in this area during this time but he did not come to Weakley County until 1843: Joe Stout). 

This settlement was quite a flourishing settlement and kept on until the Civil War, when it was destoyed by Union sympathizers who claimed to be part and parcel of the Federal Army, but in fact, which was nothing more than a bunch of brigands and cut-throats, headed by the notorious Colonel Claiborne. He was not a colonel in the army, but called himself a colonel - a self styled colonel. Old Wiley Holt was a member of Claiborne's gang. (Wiley Holt is buried in the Henry Capps cemetery; Joe Stout) (another story on Wiley Holt is told in another interview.)

Soon after the settlement was made at Jonesboro, Levi Stout gave the land on which to build a log Presbyterian house of worship which was named Meridian, it being claimed that the site was close to the Meridian Line. (Meridian first started in 1826. The land was given by the Galey family. Levi Stout married Anna Earls and his son John William married Mary S. Galey; Joe Stout)

There was also a log school house built which is still the school bearing the name of Meridian School. That school is still an integral part of the educational system of Weakley County. There are a great many stories told about Jonesboro and about the feuding that went on between the Stouts and the Popes over in Weakley County and the McCalebs who live south of the Obion River and in Gibson County, and, particularly, around what was then known as "North Gibson." It was considered the capital of Skullbone.

There seemed to be a blacksmith shop and trading post at Jonesboro and characteristic of settlements in those days, there was at least two saloons in full operation. It is said that the Stouts, Popes, McCalebs had a definite understanding and agreement which lasted for a long period of years whereby the Stouts and Popes would go to North Gibson on one Saturday to engage in fisticuffs with the McCalebs, and on the next Saturday the McCalebs would come to Jonesboro for the same purpose.

It seems that enmity was not very great between the two families, but doubtless a keen rivalry that is reflected in modern day football teams and golden gloves boxing tournaments.

After the Civil War, political party lines became sharply drawn in this section. The upper half being those who were Union Sympathizers during the war, and those political influences are still felt today. The upper part of the section being normally Republican and the Western or lower part being largely Democratic.

I think it is true that if you take this tier of counties along the Tennessee River, you have normally a Republican vote from the Tennessee River down to the Eastern part of Weakley County, and laps over into Weakley County and takes in those districts that lie against Carroll County. It comes down those hills around Dover.

These folks in those hills did not have any human chattels (slaves) because they did not have any place to use them. It was not because they were better than anybody else - they could not exploit them. 

John Murrell/J.N. Ray/Z.W. Grooms

John Murrell operated in this section in his heyday. There are a lot of stories told about John A. Murrell and his gang, and especially about his preying upon the wagon trains that in those days moved out of that section of the country and east of there and wended ther way on down to Hickman, Ky. (Dover )

I understand that once or twice he preached at Meridian. This was about the only house of worship in this section of Weakley County in those days.

Soup Street in Greenfield was one of the best known streets in any little town in Tennessee. A great many things have occurred on, in and around this street that focused the attention of the people from far and near on it. Its quaint characters, its turbulent times and from the many conciderable fortunes that were built in trade on this street, it has become widely known. 

Among those folks who settled about here were the Rays, and these people east of town really settled Greenfield. Probably some of the better known successful business men on this street were J. N. Ray, Z. W. Grooms (known in politics as Zeb). Zeb Grooms was left an orphan at a very early age and his uncle Bennett Ray, father of J. N. Ray, (better known as Jim) took young Grooms and reared him as his own child, and he Jim Ray became more like brothers than anything else. They grew up together , went to trading mules on Soup Street together in a very small way, became successful Mule dealers, continued as partners for 50 years, and until the death of Zeb Grooms, and it was said that there was never any books kept between them - not even the scratch of a pen in their dealings with one another.

(No offense is intended in phrases used in this transcription but is transcribed as written Joe Stout.) 

Uncle Ned Hatcher

One of the rare characters of Soup Street was Uncle Ned Hatcher, who was a contemporary with Ray & Grooms who was a horse trader deluxe, a member of the County Court, and who considered himself a very great and profound jurist. 

The informant (Mr. Gallimore) one morning as a very young lawyer had started to attend a session of the circuit court in Dresden as he passed by Squire Hatcher's office, he saw a great crowd of people around the office, and stopped to inquire about what was happening, and discovered that Squire Hatcher was in the act of divorcing a couple, and he called the Squiretactfully to one side and suggested to him that his court did not have jurisiction to divorce people, and the squire became very indignant and told the informant that since he had married them By God he could divorce them.

On another occasion, a certain man was arrested and brought before the squire, charged with having stolen a middling of meat, and the squire, instead of holding him, under bond, to await the action of the grand-jury, as provided by statute, proceeded to sentence him to from three to ten years in the penetentiary, and ordered the constable to proceed with him to Nashville. Habeas Corpus proceedings had to be threatened before the defendant could obtain his release from the clutches of the constable. 

On another occasion the informant (Mr. Gallimore) was defending a nigger boy who was charged with having raped a nigger gal. The nigger boy was arrested and arraigned in Squire Hatcher's court. However the weather was very cold and a snow storm raging and about half of the population of Greenfield had gathered - some to get out of the weather and some to hear the proceedings. 

When the prosecution witness was put on the stand and examined by the Honorable Selden Maiden, who represented the State, she testified that the rape occurred at the noon hour when she was permitted to leave the school grounds where she attended school, and go for her lunch; that instead of going for her lunch, it had been the practice of she and another nigger girl to go to this nigger man's house and play phonograph records and dance. She stated that on this particular occasion the defendant was feeling bad and was lying on a cot in the kitchen, which constituted half of the house, and that for some reason, the prosecuting witness went into the kitchen and that the rape occured at or on the cot that the defendant had been lying on. 

Upon cross examination, she admitted that she was bicycling as she went through the door that ran into the kitchen, and that she only stayed in the kitchen about four minutes. She stated that as she came back from the kitchen she was snake-hipping. When pressed to explain what she meant by the use of the term snake-hipping and bicycling, she testified that bicycling was a dance, which turned out to be more or less voluptious, and that snake-hipping was the same dance except a little bit more on the extreme.

The Court was very logical in rendering his decision, and reasoned that even a negro gal could not bicycle into a room, stay three minutes, get raped, and come snake-hipping out.

Uncle Ned, as practically all men of his age and day, liked a drink. A certain party one cold morning offered Uncle Ned a drink of gin, and as Uncle Ned was about to take a drink, he asked where this party had obtained it, and he was told that he had stolen it. Uncle Ned cussed him out and said: "Hell I would not think about taking a drink of stolen liquor." The party who offered him the drink said to him: "That is all right, I did not mean to offend you."

After a while, Uncle Ned met this party in the Post Office lobby. He walked up to him , all
the while grunting, and asked him where he got the gin that he had been offered. He told him that he was not telling where he got it because he had stolen it. Uncle Ned said: "On second thought, I believe I will take a drink of it, I might enjoy my citizenship a little more."

Levi Hill/J. N. Ray

There was another quaint character, Levi Hill, and it is said by some that he had a great ability as a horse swapper. He, in fact, put Jim Ray and Zeb Grooms on their feet.

Uncle Levi liked his "horn." He was a member of the Old Baptist Church. Some of the bretheren thought that Uncle Levi was doing a little too much drinking, so they proceeded to admonish him about it, but he continued to pursue the even tenure of his way. Finally at a church session, they decided to withdraw from Uncle Levi.

It seems that their policy was not to turn a man out of the church, but the church would leave the individual. So they sent a committee to inform Uncle Levi of the church's action. When he was informed that the church had withdrawn from him, Uncle Levi asked them to give him a few minutes to think about it. He went out and fortified himself, and came back and told them that he had thought it over and that they could go back and tell them they could not withdraw from him because he was already gone.

__________________(missing pages) 

( The following will be a revision of questions and answers to put in narrative form by Joe
Stout.)

Tom Coats built the Opera House and I remember when I was a little kid he brought some very fine Vaudeville Shows here. The old Keith Circuit and I remember, as a kid, I heard Frank James lecture over there. I guess it was the only show house between Jackson and Cairo, Illinois.

It was operated from the time it was built (I don't recall the exact date it was built.) on up until about 1919 or 1920. I had forgotten about these other men who made real fortunes here. Ward Kent Corporation, who exploited all this country with timber. The father of Harry Anderson was a partner in that outfit. The late Judge Anderson was born here.

Question: Did Ward-Kent succeed Anderson-Tully or did they compete with them?

Tully Anderson went out and all of the capital for this huge plant in Memphis was made right here by Anderson-Tully. The Wards left here and went to the West Coast where they entered the fish canning industry and Neal Ward, who died a few years ago, engaged in the manufacture of bottled inks and the maufacture of salads. Harry Ward is still living out there on the West Coast. Neal was a chemist and a Harvard Graduate.

Question: Who built the building where the Greenfield Drug Store now stands?

J. N. Ray and my mother owns it now. She is Mrs. Birdie Swearingen and her sister is Mrs.Odell Barton. 

J. N. Ray died in the depression and his estate wound up about $470,000.00. If he had lived until now his estate would have been worth a million dollars. This wealth was made practically all by trading in mules. He sold mules all over West Tennessee. He would take a man's note and would never push anybody about paying it.

Another thing peculiar about him - He was banker of all the folks that the ordinary banks don't benefit much - people with bad credit ratings and questionable risks. I doubt that he ever lost very much. He would either be grunting or whistling. The would-be borrowers knew that if he were whistling they would have trouble negotiating a loan, but if he were grunting they would walk up to him and say: "Mr. Ray, I need $100 and he would say sh**, sh**, what do you want with it", and he would be writing out the check all the time. 

Robert Goolsby/Ed & Scott Baker

Bob Goolsby, President of the Bank and Mr. Ray were close bosom friends until the very last days of Mr. Goolsby when he tried to shoot him in a Director's meeting in the bank. Mr. Ray was Chairman of the Board of Director's and Vice-President of the bank. Mr. Goolsby had been ill mentally, and it was his desire to dispose of his stock. In a directors meeting he pulled a pistol and forced a sale of this stock to J. N. Ray and probably another, I don't remember who - forced all the directors except one into the director's room and thenproceeded with the director's meeting, making the necessary motions and requiring the other members of the board to second same, and declaring motions carried.

Ed and Scott Baker were farmers. Ed was married and had a family, and Scott was an old bachelor - he died an old bachelor. They were very well fixed as farmers and their endorsement on notes were always readily acceptable at the Greenfield Bank.

There was a certain fellow who was very generous with his friends, when he had money, that got in hard straights one spring and he went to Mr. Goolsby at the bank and inquired about getting a loan of $200 to make a crop on. 

He was asked at the bank who he proposed to get to endorse the note and he told him Ed and Scott Baker. The bank, without hesitation, wrote out the note and told him to go and get their signatures, but on his way down to the sales stables of Ray & Grooms he stopped at one of the Drug stores and bought a half pint of grain alcohol. He sweetened it with syrup and cut it with water before he approched the Bakers about signing the note. 

He carried them out behind the barn and they passed the bottle of alcohol around. It was said to have been very potent. They got to discussing their long standing friendship and when he finally asked them to sign the note for $200, the Baker boys took another drink and one of them asked him if he was sure the he could get by with that amount, and suggested that he just tear up that note and go back and negotiate a loan of $400, all of which the borrower did. It goes without saying that the Baker Brothers signed the note. That was old Charlie Wilson.

The Baker boys went around with the rear of their pants hanging out, and did not spend but a little on alcohol once in a while. They would give you the shirt off their backs.

How about that law suit you were telling me about one time last summer - about that old Judge in Dresden, and was a hard man to get to?  We better not say anything about that.  Some of them are still living.

How about this here hardware family, E. N. J. Brock?  Old man N. J. started in with nothing, and had so many irons in the fire he did not know anything really about his business.  People wondered why he did not fold up, and the old man died thinking he was broke.  It turned out he left a very good estate. 

He was always moving his car and forgetting where he left it.  On one occasion, he tied a mule behind his car, got in the automobile and forgot all about the mule and started out to his farm with the mule in a sweeping lope.  He winded the mule before he discovered it. 

On another occasion he had a bunch of horses that he was going to turn into the pasture.  When he got there, he opened the gate, turned them in and turned around and brought them right out again and brought them back to town.  When he got back to town, he discovered that he had not left the stock out there at the pasture at all.

How about the Brasfield's?  I think they came in a little bit later.  There was L. C. or Coke Brasfield they called him. 

You surely want to get Uncle Buster Pence in this pack.  Uncle Buster was illiterate but he had a lot of native horse sense.  He had a stoppage in his speech.  He was partially tongue-tied and talked funny. 

A great many stories are told about him, one of which was that either Sunny Man or Coley his boys had been hunting and had killed a good bit of game and brought it in.  It seems that Uncle Buster had a veracious appetite and ate a lot of game and it gave him indigestion.

He called old Dr. Hudson down to see him and Dr. Hudson gave him a shot of App-Morphine which makes you expel everything from your stomach.  Uncle Buster had a slop jar and was puking up a storm.  The doctor saw that he was going to be all right and told him that he was up late last night and believed that he would be going.  Uncle Buster says: "Oh for God's sake Doctor, don't leave me now, there are two more rabbits and a yellow hammer yet to come up."

Uncle Buster Pence and Myers Bobo procured the agency for a washing machine company and they went down to Ray and Grooms' barn and bought them a couple of buck skin ponies and a buck board buggy.  The manufacturer had sent them a demonstrator machine.  They stapped this demonstrator on this vehicle and went over to Gibson County to demonstrate.  Uncle Buster liked to do all the talking. They drove up to a farm house and there were a bunch of neighborhood women piecing a quilt.  Uncle Buster asked the housewife if her husband was home and she replied that he was on away on jury duty.  Uncle Buster says: "Well get up your clothes and come out here.  I want to show you the slickest running thing you have seen in a long time."

Another time Sunny Man was working for the telephone company and he slept in the telephone office at night. One night he had some trouble with the local policeman.  They used the night stick on him and Uncle Buster heard about it and cme down to Ray & Grooms barn and told Jim Ray about it.  He wanted him to go and see about it.  They went to the telephone office and Sunny Man pulled a sheet up over his head.  Uncle Buster pulled the sheet down and says: "Bud are you hurt?"  He says "No." Uncle Buster says: "Well, if you are not hurt what are doing with all of those knots on your head?"

Another occasion on which Uncle Buster sold Jim Ray what he (Buster) said was some mutton - sheep.  He came back later to collect for it and Mr. Ray took him to task about him selling goat for sheep.  Uncle Buster told him that was as pretty a young sheep as he ever saw, whereupon Mr. Ray remarked to him: "Well if that is sheep, it tastes more like goat than goat does."  Uncle Buster said: "Well come to think of it, that sheep had been running out there with a gang of goats."

Bob (Sunday Hat) Jeeter went up to the bank and wanted to borrow $2,000 to buy a farm.  The cashier says: "Well, I will call the board of directors together", and that made Bob mad and he told them to go to hell, and he wired the Whitney Bank in New Orleans.  He got a wire back saying that they would be glad to loan him the $2000, but could not understand why he had $9,674.72 on deposit in their bank in New Orleans that had been there seven years and he had never transferred it to a savings account.  He had forgotten all about it.  (All of the above was liquor dreams)

One of the quaintest characters of that section was old Uncle Sam Stout.  Uncle Sam was a brother of my step-father John William Stout, the son of Levi Stout.

In Sam's younger days he was a money maker, and he put all of his earnings into land, and he was engaged to marry a young lady -- a very beautiful red head.  This young lady took typhoid fever and died, and it just about ran the boy nuts, and he lived all his life an old bachelor.

I remember when he lived in a quaint log cabin in a deep hollow in the back woods.  There was a lane that ran north and south that separated the property on which he lived from his niece's property. They were Lucy and Florence Galey and Jess Williams' wife.

Jess was an Indian and he was a ne'er-do-well and he went there on his wife, and Lucy and Florence owned this property as tenants in common.  He went there and just sat down on them.  His wife had a baby in the spring of the year and one in the fall.  Claude Williams was a Red Agitater in Arkansaw, and ran on the Red ticket for the U. S. Senate. 

Uncle Sam lived right across a lane that ran north & south.  Uncle Sam was pretty pugnacious about his legal rights, and was always sueing somebody or was in a law suit.  A lot of times he would represent himself. 

I recall on an occasion, he sued his nephew Zeb Stout for damages growing out of fraud of deceit in a mule trade. He got this mule and it had the blind staggers.  Uncle Sam put this mule in his hen house, and the mule had one of those fits.  In addition to the damage, he claimed in the Justice of the Peace Court that this mule had kicked down two roost poles and had scared two hens that were about to set out of setting. 

His nephew, Roland Galey, a Presbyterian preacher, and brother Andrew were passing by Uncle Sam's one winter afternoon and caught him out slopping his pigs.  They laid a high powered rifle on the fence rail and shot Uncle Sam in the hip, filling his pants and boots with blood.  Eventually Uncle Sam managed to catch them and beat them up for that.

One time one of the boys slipped in and got Uncle Sam's sox and put them in the coffee pot, and Uncle Sam made coffee on his sox.  He whipped him for that.

Zeb Stout contraced to build Uncle Sam a potato house, and he just thew it up any sort of way.  He got Uncle Sam to pay him and then left it.  Uncle Sam beat the devil out of him.

Roland Galey disliked Uncle Sam so much it was said that he bribed a son of a fellow who lived on my step-father's farm named Neal, to go before the grand-jury at Jackson and swear that Uncle Sam had sold him a quart of whiskey.  Everybody knew that Uncle Sam had never sold any whiskey to anybody.

A good one on Uncle Sam - Nancy Smithson sued Uncle Sam for setting fire to a sedge patch and it burned up two panels of fence.  It was set for trial before Squire Jess Dudley.  In those days, everybody went to a Justice of the Peace lawsuit. 

I remember I was a kid playing out in the yard, and Uncle Sam had to pass our farm - he rode the derndest biggest mule I ever saw in my life.  He stopped and asked me if I was going to the law suit.  I says;  "You will have to ask my mother, I told him."  He had a volume of Wharten's Criminal Law under his arm.  I went on up to the Squire's and there were women and babies, people in buggies and wagons from all over the country - one or two model "T"s.

Squire had set up on the porch and Philip Harris, a young lawyer, was representing Nancy Smithson.  Uncle Sam was going to plead his own case.  Philip got through examining Nancy and turned  her over to Uncle Sam for cross-examination.  Uncle Sam had on a pair of 10 cent store glasses with one of the ears broken off and a string from the lens to the ear.

He got out those glasses, put them on with great ceremony and would look through a few pages of Wharton's Criminal Law.  His by-word was "By Hokey." He says "By Hokey, Nancy, you used to whore around a lot in your young days didn't you."  Then he turned to the J. P. and said: "I move that this case be dismissed, as the evidence produced reflects upon her 'moral turpitude.'  Uncle Sam won the case. 

The Perry gang and the Stout's from the earliest days feuded with one another.  Irivine was the son of old man Spain who was a contemporary of Uncle Sam, so this younger Perry bunch, led by Irivine, tantalized the gent by cutting his fences.  Uncle Sam was watching for them one Sunday morning right behind a log within range of where he figured they were going to cut his fence.  Sam had an old navy pistol and laid it over the log and shot him.  When they tried Uncle Sam in Dresden, J. W. Thomas represented him. 

Tom Stout, the youngest brother of same was in the wholesale grocery business in Kennet, MO, and he would send down to Dresden every morning two quarts of the finest whisky he could buy.   Judge Maiden liked a drink very much anyway.  They asked Uncle Sam if he knew that he had hit Perry, and he said: "By hokey, when I fired I saw some dust on the seat of his pants and when he grabbed the seat of his pants and hollered 'ouch", I figured by hokey, I had hit him.  "Sue, Hell and Damn was one of his expressions."

About the Meridian Church I remember they paid their dues.  The men folks would cuss a little but did not mean to take the Lord's name in vain.  They had three tiers of seats in the church.  All of the women would sit on the west side of the church.  The courting couples could sit in the middle section (if they would behave themselves), and all the men would sit on the east side of the church.  They would preach an hour and a half.  The hogs would sleep under the church and the hog fleas would get in the cappets on the church floor.  My stepfather had to sit in the Amen corner on the far side.  Nobody else would dare take that place because it belonged to him.  I would come in there and sit down beside him, and the fleas would get to biting and I would get to scratching.  The preacher would call on pa to pray.  He would get down and pray for 15 minutes or more, and the darn fleas were all over me.  I can see him now, duck his bald head and spit out of the window while he was praying.

Roy's (Whicker) mother was a Stout - a sister of John William, Bud, Sam and Tom. Their mother was an Earl's.  I was the step-son of John William Stout.  Abe Earls would go down in the bottom and beat on a log.  He was crazy.  He carried crayon in his pocket and would write on every bridge "Stark Bros. Nursery."  He would start pounding on that log at 12 o'clock at night and beat on it until day light. That could have been some indication of his Indian ancestry. 

Bud Earls told me before he went to the asylum that it had been reported that he was drowned in a slew somewhere around Shade's Bridge.  So he came down town and he was always selling axe-handles, and if not that, he was trying to write poetry or working on a rat trap.  So I said to Uncle Bud: "Somebody told me that you were drowned."  Uncle Bud said: "Well now I will tell you, you take Elbert, John Bowden, and Dan, they worry me to death, and when I go there to stay all night - Elbert hasn't any sense, and John is shallow -they keep asking me about this drowning business - some says one thing and some says another, and so they have got me to the point where I don't know whether I was drowned or not."

One time Uncle Bud walked all the way to Birmingham, Alabama.  Oscar would have sent him Pullman fare.  Uncle Bud would came into town with a gallon  bucket  of black-berries and he decided that he wanted to go to Birmingham so he just hauled off and walked.  He walked down the railroad.  He got eats by stopping and making a hammer handle occasionally. (I recall Bud whittling hammer handles on the streets of Greenfield using a piece of broken glass as a knife; Joe Stout)

Tobe Moseley died and was worth $150,000 in cold cash.  He would pick up these hard headed hickory nuts and trade them for sugar and coffee.  He would always walk from his home to town on the railraod tracks.  He said the reason he walked on the iron rails was that he did not wear his shoe soles as much as if he walked on the cross ties.

An old gent came to the Martin bank. He was ragged, dirty, unkempt as he could be.  He had 25 government bonds on him.  He wanted to convert them and that had to be done through the medium of a National Bank.  Mr. Gardner, at the bank, did not know him.  He threw these bonds on the desk and told him he wanted to convert them to cash. Mr. Gardner made some excuse and called old man Goolsby and told him that there was a man there who said his name was Moseley and he had 25 government bonds.  Old man Bob says: "Describe him."  After he described him, he told Mr. Gardner that he did not steal them and wa probably worth 100 more just like them.

After they finished, old man Tobe asked him to call and find out when the train left.  He was told that the train left about 4 o'clock and the fare was 52 cents.  The old man said: "Well, it is still up in the middle of the day, and I believe I will just walk back to Greenfield and save the 52 cents.

Question:  Wasn't it Old Peter Moseley who had his slaves dig those channels in the bank of the river?

General Moseley was worth half a million dollars when he died.  He had 10 government bonds, and was fixing to mail them in and dropped them on the floor in front of the post office.  He had them in an old manila envelope, and a fellow picked them up and saw the envelope had General's name on it.  General was up at the grocery store browsing around - helping himself to crackers, etc.  When this man handed him the envelope.  He says: "John, do you know what is in that envelope?  It has $10,000 in government bonds in it, and I am going to reward you for finding it."  He turned around and bought him a 5 cent orange.

Eighteen men went on an excursion to Cario, Illinois in the old days, and they went into a restaurant and sat down.  The waiter said: "What will you have."  They all said "soup."  The owner came around and said: "My God, you are all from Greenfield, aren't you?"