Intimate Glimpses

      Transcribed by Joe Stout
 

This was a service for which their other misdeeds will weigh less on the scales of time. I have heard father say Jack Clayburn knocked him over the head and took a good horse and the last time he saw of his horse when he regained consciousness was the gang were almost out of sight going through a long lane. 

Several years ago a digging was had one night at the gang headquarters on the George Deck old Spring branch. Winton Scarborough told me next morning he went down to the hole that had been dug and he found a half dime made in 1854. From all accounts, money, stock, cloth or just anything this gang took a fancy to they took and in the taking blood was spilled. One of the gang had his wife riding behind him on the horse and he was shot off and his wife was left alive. Dr. T. Z Elinor remembers her. She later married a Reddick.

For more on the Claiborne Gang visit Bushwachers & Gangs section of Weakley County USGenWeb project website.

The Scarborough family settled in the Seminary Community many years before the Civil War. Stephen Scarborough was the first. His boys lived on until recent years. Sam Scarborough, the merchant at McKenzie is of this family. Winton, a young scion of this old family was born in an old log house south of Pillowville, which has been standing for more than an hundred years. 

In other days, a farmer had a tenant on his farm. The farmer had some sheep to get killed. The tenant said it was an adjoining farmer that killed the sheep and this farmer had to pay dear for the sheep.

Another farmer was out hunting the day the sheep were killed and saw who killed them, but did not say a word about it until he had served a term in prison for another offense. Years later, when he arrived back home, he told it was the tenant farmer who killed the sheep. All these men are now sleeping the last long sleep in Meridian Cemetery.

How is God going to judge the tenant and the one who was out hunting and saw the sheep killed and would not testify to save an innocent neighbor? You can possibly learn the names of these citizens from some one else, but I just give you this as heard the fellow at the time say he did not kill the sheep, but he paid for them.

I have a little plum tree that caused me a chain of thought as I cut a diseased limb from it. In 1916, I had Hoyt Drewry to pull my buildings to where my brother put them. There was a fine plum tree in the yard. I got a sprout or seedling from this tree and brought here early in 1917. It was a good tree, but passed on and this one came up in it's place. It is not so good as a bee must have brought wild plum pollen to the bloom which made the seed from which the present tree came.

Back to the plum tree in my yard, before I moved, I remember Abe Earls as a fruit tree agent for Stark Brothers, many long years before coming and selling my brother a bill of trees. Mrs Earls lost his mind over selling fruit trees for Stark Bros. He claimed they beat him out of a commission on trees or something of the kind and tried to write all over the balusters of the bridges at Shades Crossing. He also had a hollow log there in the bottom. He would beat on this log with a maul. It would sound on the autumn air for miles around. 

Many of these old trees that Mr. Earls sold for Stark Bros. have passed on, but a few still survive, and there is no doubt Mr. Earl's early efforts have caused this nursery to furnish many trees to this community.

According to Winton Scarborough, there was a witch around Seminary church in early days. One day a hunter was out and he could not kill anything. He thought of this witch, and took his gun there to the witch who blew through the barrel and the hunter killed everything he shot at. Winton has been handed this report down from his folks who knew it to be a fact.

There was one interesting feature about grandfather Whicker I have not mentioned. It was his great love for dogs. He had one blood hound and an old plain common dog that could really trail up any one. He was a natural trailer himself, and many a runaway negro was brought back by him and his dogs. His dogs were so good he brought them with him from North Carolina.

In the mountains of East Tennessee they got on the chase of a wild animal and were gone two days and two nights, but when they had chased this wild animal to their hearts desire, they came up with the wagon train of migrating families and located their master and family. One night during this trip to the west, the women were up cooking deer meat for the next days eats, and a panther squalled. One of the hunters was awakened and shot a gun and the mere scent of powder was enough for Mr. Panther.

When they got to Huntingdon, they began to inquire for Dove Evans who married a sister of grandfather. Old uncle Dave got his mill at that time and lived near Poplar Springs Church.

Post Offices were not very handy in those days. The land on the north side of the river seemed to be rich and grandfather selected a good looking piece of farm land and proceeded to make a farm home just that farm was the only white land in the vicinity. It would not produce. Finally after a number of years on this hard scrabble farm, the family left it. I understand it is still known as the Whicker place and a nice gravel road runs by it. It was while father learned to cuss by hearing an old bachelor by the name of Pittman cuss the clouds because no rain fell on them in 1856. Grandfather heard him practicing his new talk, and gave him a good whipping. 

It was while on this farm a big snow fell on winter like the one in 1886. These two snows are said to be the biggest to ever fall in these parts.

At one of the Pillowville boiler explosions Grogan Reynolds was thrown backwards in the well which furnished the mill with water. Staves were nailed across to the corner post of one side to form a ladder to go down in the well and so after the explosion a search was made for Grogan and he was found climbing out of the well on this ladder.

Grandfather had a house for travelers to stop in at his North Carolina home near Winston Salem. One time a drummer brought in a lot of hogs to be killed for meat and grandmother got an immense lot of lard given her. There had been a failure of the Irish Potato crop in Ireland and she sent Gabriel Morrow, her father at Magherford a barrel of lard. He wrote her back that he did not need it and had distributed it amongst the needy.

A black widow spider bit grandfather before he left North Carolina and every doctor in the then center of learning, Salem, was sent to save his life.

When Alex Whicker was about three years old he put out to follow his daddy. He had been gone for some time and the old faithful bloodhound was put on the trail by grandmother and the little fellow was overtaken just as he reached a big mill pond. 

James Whicker, my great grandfather Whicker, was sixteen in 1778, and was left at home to see the family was cared for and the British soldiers came through and turned the buildings into ashes and drove over the cattle for to eat. He joined the Continental army and helped to stop the British at Guilford Court house. He was gone for seven years fighting the British and Indians. He and six other men were returning home after these years of conflict and had nothing to eat nor anything to shoot game with and they found a dead possum with a few maggots already formed in it. They were shook out and the carcass was divided in seven parts and eaten. It is this kind of men who won our independence.

For this service grandfather would not have a pension. He died in 1830 after raising a large family. His name was James Whicker. 

Had you thought what has made you just what you are in beliefs and actions? Well, listen at me a minute and I will get around to a story that happened when I was a boy that made me shy of a gun all my life. 

Most people around here know nothing of the Cuffman family. In looking through the cemetery nearest the road and church at Meridian you will find old stones with the Cuffman name. The old home where they lived on the edge of Bear Creek bottom above Prospect Church is long since gone. The best I remember of them they were a happy family. Mr. Cuffman was a fine farmer and would grow the biggest, sweetest and all round best watermelons that have been grown in these parts.

In 1896 Bud Cuffman was a youth of some seventeen and Will Leggit was a small boy Bud took down the old muzzle loader gun and induced Will to go out hunting squirrels with him. Will's part in the hunt was to make a racket on the other side of the tree when Bud located a squirrel and the squirrel would turn to this side thereby giving him a good plain shot. In the woods near Prospect the tube of one barrel got stopped up and would not fire. By blowing in the muzzle air would come out at the tube if the barrel was ready to be loaded again. In those days the barrels were long so it took both boys to test the tube. Bud told Will to put a finger on the tube over the cap fit and see if any air went through. While Bud was blowing with his mouth at the muzzle of the empty barrel the loaded barrel went off and a great hole was blowed through Bud's mouth and head. Bud was dead and Will was a frantically scared little boy.

People soon gathered to the scene. The gun was examined and it was decided that Bud must have raised the hammer on the loaded barrel by mistake and this hmmer would fall very easily with the least of a jar. One or the other of the boys had given the necessary jar for the old loose hammer to come down on the loaded barrel thus ending Bud's life. If it had ended here it would not have been so bad but unfortunately it is not the end. Bud was Mrs. Cuffman's favorite son and seeing him mangled up so it ruined her mind and she spent many long years in the insane asylum at Bolivar.

A brother of Bud soon sickened and died and was placed at Meridian. The remainder of the family removed to Texas to get away from the scene of their trouble. Mrs. Cuffman lived on at the asylum until some years ago when the only surviving member of her family came from Texas and had her buried by her son Bud in Meridian graveyard. Since then Burnie has passed on and the last chapter of a once happy family is written.

 What has made me what I am concerning liquor. I can remember when Lee Stroupe and George ____ sold liquor in McKenzie. I would go with father into those saloons. He would buy a jug of the firewater and mellow its flavor with rock candy. This candy was in hard or rock nuggets, connected by a string manufactured in them to hold them together. You would get a string of this candy and flavor your liquor to suit yourself. The tiny string was very brittle and easy to break and the firewater seemed to dissolve it or I never came in contact with it when drinking liquor from a jug so sweetened.  I kept on drinking a little liquor until Dec. 26, 1901 when I got really drunk. It happened that my older brother, Cheatham, and Buford Mitchell were building a house for Buford to get moved to by the first of the year in 1902 and I went there to kink of assist them. They had part of a quart bottle of this liquor down at this building where they were still having Christmas as they worked. They taunted me that I could not drink as much of it as they.. I proceeded to prove it. They just let the bottle to the mouth and let but a little if any go down at a time. I took long swigs at a time. That bottle was soon gone and I was sent to brother's home after a cocoanut and some candy. I soon felt fine and thought I had better get home and have wood in and feeding done as father would be away until night. 

When I got home I took another swig from the "Christmas jug", and lost the cork stopper. I twisted up a Globe Democrat newspaper so one end went in the jug. I then proceeded to chop fire wood from a pile of poles. Father rode up and found me slinging the axe like a crazy man. He finally got me in the house and on the bed. The liquor, candy and cocoanut was making me mighty sick. The last thing I remember was raising up in the bed and popping my right clenched fist in my left open hand and saying I could whip "Uncle Sam" and his army. Just think of a fellow getting to think he was bigger than his government. 

In those days I was just blooming into young manhood and there was one girl that looked awful good to me. It just had to happen that the step-mother of this young lady had to come through our yard in returning home from a neighbor visit. She asked what was the matter with me and father told her. Ah, well, I could never have any more to do with this girl. I felt mean and bad for three weeks, but it broke me from drinking the firewater.

I have not used coffee since April 1901. Up to that date I drank nine cups real strong coffee per day. I was so nervous I could not do many things and I decided coffee was the trouble. I could hardly eat without it, but I was determined I would quit the stuff and I certainly succeeded and by the spring of 1902 I was up to nearly 240 pounds and a real man in strength. My nervousness was gone. I could eat anything eatable and digest it. 

Christmas morning 1910 I ate my biggest meal. I am counted stingy and close but don't fail to have enough to eat.

In the past, say fifty years ago, girls did try various ways to fathom the future and tell who they would marry. One favorite way was to boil and egg hard, cut it in half, run a knife under the shell and get the eatable part of each half out and remove the yellow, fill each cavity full of salt, eat each yellow with each salted white at one bite. By the time you eat both whites just before going to bed and not to drink any water during the night, and you would have an accurate dream of the man you would marry.

A dumb supper was another way of seeing the future. Girls could not speak a word while setting this supper. It had to contain nine different kinks of food. Each girl set a plate and the man who came in and set at her plate was the one the future had in store for her. It was a solemn time with the girls. Something was always sure to happen. 

One night when a small boy, there were a number of girls set one of these suppers and any number of young men did come in, but I rather suspect some one let them know about it.

One night again one of these suppers was set and I heard chains rattling and a long chain with a big ring came rolling through the hall under the table along about midnight when the girls were all quiet with shut mouths which flew open with frantic screams.

On another occasion an old lady had a lot of girls who had almost given up hope of getting husbands and they and some neighbor girls set a supper. Later in the night the old lady thought it was time for the supper to end, so she tossed an old shoe through the door. The nights stillness was unusual and the girls had sat so long their nerves were over taxed. One of these girls fell over in a dead faint and it took work to restore her. This is the last supper I have ever heard of being set.

These suppers were set the first night in May. If the first day of May was Saturday it was said a girl could take a looking glass to a pool of water by a bluff and her man would appear in the glass. I have seen one or two women who actually said they saw the man they later married. This might have been possible, for it was an open secret that all girls tried this plan and young men might have learned just where the love sick girl he would want to marry was going to look and appear at the right time. You see the girl had to be till with thought, intent on the glass and water.  I have been giving some ways of girls in trying to bring the future back to the present. It will not be amiss for me to tell of some of my trials in finding a wife. Most people do not think much of this when they are young. They just trust themselves to a pretty face and let love do its work on them.

I will not begin by telling you any of my little boyhood loves but the first time I really got in the notion of marrying was just after I had passed a teachers examination. I thought if I could teach a certain school, I would be able to set up to housekeeping. So I applied and the directors as good as promised me the school. A certain fellow wrote out a petition for patrons of the school to sign favoring an old experienced teacher and carried to my "best girl's" father and told him it would not do for me to get the school, as it would be a courting school and his daughter needed to finish her school studies.

So effective were the appeals of the old man most of the patrons signed for me not to get the school. It made me very mad and I let the girl go without marrying. I felt I did not want an old father-in-law that hated me enough to get out and make such an appeal to his friends before they knew for certain my intentions.

The girl wound up by marrying another young man and has been an inmate of an insane asylum for years. I think her father sent her there by his actions.

Another young lady who worked in a newspaper office set my news letter in type and became so interested she had the editor to bring me around to see her. We liked each other from the start. A girl friend of hers came to the field where I was dirty and working hard and found me very unsatisfactory and went back to my girl friend and told her it would never do to take me. This did not react on my girl friend so the other girl went to her mother. Ever after, the old mother would manage to watch every move I made when in a certain town. Again I decided I did not want a girl where her parents hated me. I would abide time and trust to luck.

The girl finally married a man who mistreats her and left her and the old mother went and brought the daughter home.

Now years later I have three girls who seem to be confirmed old maids, with two away holding down good jobs. When they have been interested in a boy I have tried to see some good quality in him.

One of the most interesting men from Civil War days down to early in the year of 1909 when he died was Ben Robertson. He joined the Union Army and was placed on a horse. He was for some reason no good as a soldier. He had his home really where he was. 

He carried seeds, eggs, chickens and any news or seen about any business you told him to see about for you. He even carried love letters for the boys and girls. For this service he got his living. If he cam along by a home he got what was in the safe to eat, if he wanted it. He bothered no one or anything but what he needed to eat. In those days, when there were no telephones, he was a great service to neighbors who were busy and much business was carried on through Ben. 

He always walked everywhere. He was blind in one eye and could only see enough to go places in the other. People said he would land in the poorhouse when he got so he could not walk about, but he did not. Early in 1909 he fell ill with pneumonia and died. The people saw he had a Christian burial and a rock at his grave in the Meridian Cemetery.

Mineral Springs on what is now Dr. Elinor's land had a very peculiar beginning. Old man Bill Crawley has told me he never had the slightest idea that springs existed or rather would show up there until his hogs rooted a deep hole there and water boiled up and has continued to do so for lo those many years, no matter how dry the weather. 

Every sping has a different taste. The bad tasting spring has now been allowed to fill up. There used to be a pretty maple grove of topped trees around these springs. 

When a boy, I used to ride behind Pa on the faithful old mule "Mike", and I really saw places. One of the wonders I saw was twenty acres of springs in Obion bottom. It was known as Panther's Springs. It was covered with small bushes and a water weed which had pretty flowers on it in the summer. When you saw this flower you must not put your foot in there. 

More than forty years ago, Bud SMITHSON and I were between these springs and the river. I was on a mule and he a big horse "Rube." It come up a cloud with lightning and much thunder. We lost our way for a time and our stock wanted to go places. Bud said, "See there, Roy, my uncle John SMITHSON had a young mule to run in yonder springs and disappeared. I don't want to go that way." 

During prohibition days, it is said a causeway of lumber was laid into this watery muck and whiskey was made there. It is now a rich and dry piece of bottom land in cultivation in that bottom.

In those dark days of Civil War, Mose Cox, lived some distance to Bear Creek from the place he died at, where his son Douglas lives at Prospect Church. The Prospect Church farm was the home of the large FEATHERSTONE family, which consisted of ten boys and one girl. So the family changed homes after the war. 

The house where Mose Cox moved from needed a new roof and Mr. FEATHERSTONE and boys found some money hid by Mr. Cox during the war under the roof tucked away very nicely. Featherston knew it was Cox's money and gave it to him. Oscar FEATHERSTON, a famous lawyer in Arkansas were among those ten FEATHERSTON boys.

It was while the Cox family were at their former home that Dock Cox took small pox. A doctor was finally secured and he said it was this dreadful disease. People who were their scattered like so man rats when you dig in their den.

There was no one who had had this disease but the Clayburn family, the family of the terrible Clayburn gang. It was just get them or die. Mrs. Cox was in very delicate health at the time and she went with a relative, thinking she might not have the disease. She and the relative both died with it. The Claybourns were very attentive to the Cox family and all the remainder were saved. 

Mrs. Sis Galey who is past 63 is one of this Cox family. She remembers well the afternoon when the word was passed around the neighborhood for all available men to meet at the Claybourn headquarters to kill them. There was no law in those days of war but neighbors could not stand them any longer. Her home was some two miles away and that night of the killing she could hear the awful yells of those suffering and shots being fired. Next morning, she and some others of her family ventured over there and found Elisha Claybourne, the biggest dead old man she has ever seen lying dead in the hall. The others were wounded or was later hunted down and killed. Some were buried at Seminary and others at Blooming Grove. Along after the turn of the century, Mrs. FEATHERSTONE and a daughter of this large FEATHERSTON  family took small pox and died.