Intimate Glimpses

      Transcribed by Joe Stout
 

Many years ago, David Richie showed me th old spring place. Gullies above had filled in the hollow so it was some feet down to everlasting water and I have a deep hole there for stock water. My earliest memory of this hollow was it had much water in it and too wet to cultivate. Many years ago when John Overton was yet alive he and I were over in my pasture looking at some cattle and as he neared this old place he spoke of remembering Isaac Galey as aged and worn riding a yellow mare. Another old man spoke of Isaac Galey many years ago when he and I were in that part of my farm. He said he remembered when he died and pointed out the old road he was hauled to Meridian over. Another old man told me when he was a boy he went to school in an old log house where a now old dead walnut tree stands. In those days men of means had schools taught by paid private funds. It is now only a legend that such a man really existed but from all those reports of him I judge he was a kind and good man.

In these days of rock salt for stock in barnyards and pastures, you do not realize that people used to salt their cattle with the brine salt left after aging their meat. They did not put it on the ground but a tree was cut and limbs removed and notches out in it with an axe. The salt was placed in these notches. If it rained and melted the salt the log absorbed the salt and it was still good licking. This is the meaning of "coming up to the licking log."

It has been my pleasure to see one of these licking logs when as a small boy at the home of Uncle Bill Reid right in Skullbone at his old place in the river bottom.

In Skullbone territory was two men, Bob ELINOR and Billie FLIPPIN, with a pill manufacturing machine located at the old FLIPPIN home near Camp Ground. Both men owned many farms and loaned much money over their ability to sell these pills which many people thought the best on earth. It was my pleasure to know them while yet alive and notice their winning way and business ability.

One of the Skullbone's early families was the HOLT family. Captain William Carroll HOLT was a Union soldier and had the ability to escape from the Confederate Prison at Andersonville. He was a great politician and served as Postmaster at Dresden. Esq. Perry HOLT served for 24 years as magistrate in Weakley from Nov. 15th. Pete HOLT was a good lawyer and never attended a law school. This same family claims a well known preacher, Audie HOLT.

Just beyond the Seminary graveyard is the Old Claybourn home site. 

That old big well with its two oaken buckets was great work to put down and curb. It was hand dug. The dirt being pulled to the top by rope bucket and windlass in the hands of a man on top. Many times the digger would be overcome by what was then called "damp." There were fine cypress trees in the river bottom from which the curbing was split in circle shape in lengths of ten feet. These part circles were notched and a strip of wood was nailed on making a round curb. These old curbs really did last. 

The grave for the dead used to be dug different. The coffin was usually out of walnut without any box and was placed in a hole just big enough for the coffin and white oak boards layed across the coffin on the dirt bench on each side. Then dirt was filled in.

In those happy days of yore livestock of all kinds had a free range on land unfenced. Fields were fenced by rails split from logs in 19 and 12 foot lengths. Those rails off the ground lasted many years. Ten rail high fence was considered a good fence. When clearing all good cuts or log lengths easy to split were used for rail timber. 

When spring came neighbors were asked in to log rollings which meant piling the logs to burn. Hand sticks of seasoned hickory were used. These sticks were run under a log and a man would get to each end of the stick. The many who could not come up with his end of the stick was said to be "pulled down." The women always had a good dinner awaiting the men at the noon hour.

The shingle industry was great in Obion bottoms. Cypress blocks were got out to a shed where it would not be overflowed and shingles were made at odd times and put up in ables of two hundred and fifty. 

This used to be great goose country. Every family had a large flock of geese to make feather beds. Esq. BRUFF bought so many geese there seemed to be no other than a goose track thereabout so we had a new place called Goosefoot. 

In 1853 the first SMITHSON  was placed at Meridian. A son and grandchildren are there now. In other old days the SMITHSON farm was a busy place. Brick were made here, a cotton gin was run here and it has had a well grounded graveyard in other days. here across the line at another farm was Add OVERTON'S store. Later on Tom OVERTOAN put up a new store building on his father's old farm with and Oddfellow's Hall above. Somewhere on the other side of this old SMITHSON farm was a race track in early days where horses were run.

Gypsies came most every year telling fortunes and swapping horses. 

On this same side is Holt's Schoolhouse and the sight of where a shelter for preaching was done. 

In early days Jonesboro had an early spring grass. In fact of warm winters it stayed green much of the winter. It is now almost all gone. I have tried scattering the seed from what few bunches remain on my place, but I never have succeeded in growing it at a new place, neither do I know its name. The way it looks this winter a few acres would be all a fellow would need for livestock of an ordinary farm.

The wild jap clover has not been with us many years. I have heard old men talk when it was not here, they can't account for it being here. It is some of our best crops for hay. It seems to have come over the country all at once.

Where Alex JENKINS lives is an old home. Here lived an old SCATES family. Alex's mother was a SCATES. Here was
the beginning of Dr. Dan SCATES a great and good doctor who lived at Greenfield for a long time and finished his life at Martin.

W. D. Carlton and son, Will, were the first to ever show a moving picture the first in these parts. 

This country used to be long on calomel. Doctors and people thought they could not survive without calomel. 

When I was a boy I was sickly and in early life my old hat would not hold the calomel, bluemast and santonin I have taken. Pa finally learned there is no use to call a doctor, but just to buy this medicine at the drugstore.

My earliest memory is of Dr. Tom Moore, of Skullbone, who moved to Sharon about1902. I have hear my folks say he gave Uncle Alex Whicker calomel for treatment of flux during his last illness in 1866. 

 Henry Richie was a noted stock dealer. After his eyes got bad he could feel all over an animal and tell what to pay for it. The Richie family was one of the first to come to these parts. I have an abstract deed to a piece of land and it names a Richie as being the first owner. 

The winter of 1889 and 1890 was an iceless season and hardly a joint of meat was saved by most families. Uncle Bill Reid has told me he never lost a joint and the way he did not loose meat is worth telling and I have tried it of warm winters and never lost any meat. During this winter he was living in Kentucky. He killed his meat and salted it down in a box. After a few days he was ready to come back to Skullbone so he had to remove meat and salt from his box in order to load it. After the box was in the wagon the meat was placed back in the salt in the box. When he reached Skullbone he removed the meat and salt and got the box, salt and meat again in his smokehouse in like manner. The meat and salt thus dries out and does not become wet and soggy. The point to remember is to get your meat up late in the afternoon and resalt with the same salt in the morning.

In the earliest days of settlement a DREWRY settled below Shades bridge on the Weakley side. There has been DREWRYS here on this land ever since. Deaths began to occur in this old family in 1837, according to a rock in the old cemetery in Fred ROGERS field where the big cedars are. This old DREWRY [Richard Drewry 1762-1850]  was a veteran of the War of Independence.

Dick Bodkin was a well known and colorful figure. He was one of few who had many books. He was a good carpenter and made and installed the old screw gin presses. He was so strong for "Free Silver" he was dubbed "Silver Dick." He was married four times and all four wives died with consumption. He finally ended at the insane asylum in 1907 at an advanced age.

The families of Argo, Johns, Frazier, Hedgecock and Whicker were related. The connection happened in North Carolina and just which one came first to Skullbone territory I am unable to say. Pa, John A.(Bud) Whicker, married a Weakley county girl, Susan Stout, and bought this old farm I am living on and moved here in the fall of 1872. There were six of we children, only three of which survive. Mrs. Henry Pope, Cheatham Whicker, of East St. Louis, Ill., and myself. 

Pa was not old enough to be in the army during the Civil War. Well if he had been big to his age he might have got in but he was little, but believed in the Union Cause. This brought the Ku Klux Klan to his home and it was surrounded and shot full of holes and I have seen some of the holes in the house things. They knew he had a gun and was waiting for them to break into his house and none wished to go to another world. His good friend Parker Nevels, was with him, his mother and two sisters that night. The old house was thick and strong and no balls hit any of them. But it was a miracle that they were not.

Pa was a member of the Union League and helped bring law and order back. He lived on until Sept. 19, 1928. Ma quit life June 29, 1890.

He bought a new wagon from Jim Hedgecock about forty four years ago. I had it out down to a low wheel wagon and some repairs done after I got it. It is still a good wagon. The Hedgecock wagon did not just begin with Jim Hedgecock. Jim's father was a good shop man and made wagons. 

It is said Jim saw a king of a fore wheel brake on a truck wagon a fellow had made for his son and got the idea for a fore wheeled brake for the wagon, he was making. John Hedgecock lived in Skullbone and he and son had a cotton gin.

The son made enough money at this gin to attend Medical School and became a doctor at Sidonia with a large practice.

There have been many people baptized at the old Channel at Shade's. It was my pleasure to attend many baptizing's at this old place and it gave me a feeling of the Jordan River Baptizing more than at any other place of immersion I have ever been.

Just this side of Prospect Church is an interesting place that connects up with the past. It is the Delaney old home site. I can remember when a pine log house stood there. It was here that Frank Delaney and his old maid sister spent their days. They had a fine farm and bad luck and too much sympathy for those around them caused them to lose much. Once I have heard it said he had some hog sold at McKenzie and killed them and dressed them and had one of the old Mitchell men to take them to McKenzie on a cold day. The party he had contracted with would not receive the meat and pay for it. So Mr. Mitchell had to bring it back. It was late when he got back to the Delaney home and the meat was left uncut and not salted until next morning and by that time it was frozen so hard it could not be made into shoulders, hams and middlings. When it did get so it could be cut up and salted it turned so warm the meat soured.

As bad luck was coming to Mr. Delaney good luck was coming to Ike Cox. Mr. Cox was able to buy each piece of this farm as Mr. Delaney had to sell it. Mr. Delaney's aged sister finally passed on and the last parcel of the farm was taken over by Mr. Cox. He built the nice residence on the hill where Clyde Smith lives. He lived there for many years and finally sold to Jim Ward and son-in-law, Dr. Smith. Mr. Ward has passed on and Dr. Smith is the owner. He like Mr. Delaney, trusted friends too much about Greenfield and got tired of living at Greenfield and went to Dickson, Tenn. where he enjoys a good practice as a dentist.

Mr. Cox went to Dresden and bought a small acreage in the edge of town and had a fire to sweep his fine home and left him a comparatively poor man, but his eldest daughter married Joe Eaves, who was trustee of Weakley County and was ever attentive to Mr. and Mrs. Cox in their last days. Mr. Delaney wound up life as I remember, with some relatives who saw to his needs. He was too kind and good a man to end without kindness being shown him.

There are many, many old places where you find some pieces of dishes or brick bats where an old house has been. On my home place there are eight places where homes have been built. If any of the Horn family or descendants are alive I would take pleasure in pointing out the site of the Old Horn Home where the family lived nearly a hundred years ago. A mulberry tree stood at the old home site until I was a big boy and a rose bush of the old stock springs up here and there at different times. It seems all old homes had a mulberry tree for these berries are sweet and were used to make a sugarless pie.

Dewey Norwood is conceded by all to be just about perfection on the making of baskets out of white oak splits. He comes by the trade honestly for his grandfather Aaron Norwood was a leading basket maker and was around ninety when he was found dead in his home. He had much sickness and death in his family but was always able to work on and meet the great expense of his large family. Dewey is just another chip off the old block.

Around many old homesites you see bear grass. It is long bladed grass which has a tendency to cut like a knife. It stays green through the winter and was used to hang meat by our forefathers. In summer it has a long reed in the center with many white flowers which turn into seed pods. Some people have a hedge row of this grass around their front yard. This grass is deep rooted and is not affected by dry weather. You can dig it up and in a little while it is back but it does not spread very much even in a generation or two. It is not suited for livestock and they leave it alone.

George Grooms has seen more than his three score and ten years and does not go to church much, but here comes the idea I am trying to convey. One day I was returning from the store with things that did not need to get wet and a fellow who cries around in church and tells beautiful experiences passed me by without asking me to ride in his empty truck when on this trip. A short time after this I heard the brakes of a car suddenly screech by my side in the road and George saying, "hop in Roy, I will get you home before it rains." A man like this is going to have a mighty good chance when he knocks at the heavenly gate.

The name Pope has been here for those many years no none knows just when they came. The old road from Jonesboro to Dresden was one of the first roads to the county seat. Where it crossed Spring Creek was called Popes Crossing. Sol Pope was one of the first Pope's. Henry Pope it the oldest Pope now living. He has bought the Abernathy fine old home. 

Ballard Abernathy lived there for many years and was quite wealthy when he gave up this life. He was a great good man and I have dealt with him and found his dealings fair. He was a mill man, farmer and good business man. Before Mr. Abernathy this fine home belonged to the Overtons. They were fine farmers.

The Will Guffee home where his son Tulson lives has been in the Guffee family for these many years. Will's father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Jim Guffee saw the needs of Jim's grandfather and grandmother Guffee during their last years and got this farm for their service to this aged couple and that is as far back as I can go on the Guffee family - five generations.

The Moore family is a large and scattered family. The firs Moore got a big tract of land some distance west of Christmasville from the government and some of the Moores have been around ever since. Dr. W. R. Moore was of this family. Coleman, Tucker and Cletus Moore were the preacher's of this early family. H. B. Moore, of Greenfield, the noted broom maker is of this family.

The Stafford family have been around for those many years. I cannot remember anyone ever saying where or when they came to these parts. The founder of the Stafford Milling Co., at Martin, is said to be of this old family.

Buck Bobo was one of the old has beens. His old home sight was up east of Monnie Bates home. He had much land and ran a store. It was at this store , so I have been told, that a fellow by the name of McCargo came on Sam Maynard and Mr. Maynard cut him with a knife on the arm and he bled to death for the want of attention, as every one was scared. Mr. Maynard came clear as it was done in self defense.

In 1910 I took the census and the best I remember Mr. and Mrs. Bobo had been living together longer than any other couple in the two districts in which I worked. They were hale and hearty at this advanced age and the way Mr. Bobo did love to talk for an old man. He was still making his own way and with the old age law in operation it seems strange to hear much younger men now talking about old age assistance. Mr. and Mrs. Bobo sleep at Meridian with a nice rock at their graves. They had a big family, all of which are gone now.

In other days, when hunting was good, one fellow gave an hundred acres of land for a rifle, so I have heard old men talk. Another thing about land deeds were the witnessing of deeds by two persons without a notary. When Dick Bodkin passed on it was found one of his deeds had been witnessed in this way around half a century and never had been recorded. As it happens one of the witnesses was still alive and came about that time from Texas to see some of his folks and appeared before a notary and made a sworn statement of how the deed had been witnessed by he and the other fellow. Then to save recorders fees people who had never had their deed recorded would have the last owner to have their deed recorded to make a new deed to the last purchaser. The land had maybe passed through as many as three owners without a record of the deeds being made although tax records would show the land had been assessed to these three owners without a deed record.

In those old days of the loom and home made cloth there were bed covers called counterpanes and coverlids. They were woven just alike as best I remember and the only difference in them that would require two names is the counterpane was woven out of cotton thread and the coverlid was woven out of wool thread. When you had a number of quilts over you on a good old goose feather bed with a wheat straw bed under the feather bed and one of those wool coverlids over you the wind could howl and the temperature could go well below zero and you would be warm in an old log house with a puncheon floor. This old puncheon floor was made out of large yellow poplars split into flat slabs and hued to match so no crack would be had in the floor. White sand kept on a new puncheon floor with the family's many foot falls on it would wear it slick and pretty after a time. You see sand is rough and did not create a dust to get on other things. I have heard it said a neighborhood dance would be given to plane a new floor covered with white sand. Of course these floors do not exist any more, but when I was a small boy, I had the pleasure to see one of these floors in an old log home which has long since burned.

In the long gone past, I have a memory of my older brother Cheatham, and Tom Mitchell coming in home one afternoon and telling of the trouble at Dunlap's School over on the big branch. I believe John Moore was the teacher. Several boys and girls were just beginning to feel love's young vision of a great future and one boy would want some others best girl and trouble somehow arose. When the trouble had ended what is now Dr. T. Z. Elinor had cut Bud Freeman's throat with his pocket knife. Bud recovered and T. Z. came clear of punishment for it. 

When it was so dry during prohibition days, the thirst for the firewater was so great those who liked the taste and effect it gave would just drink anything that looked like liquor. Vernon Cobb, Thomas Cobbs son, was one of those kind. He was visiting at the second home east of my home when he returned from a ball game on a certain Sunday afternoon. He and wife get in the car and left for home. He shoved so much gas and power on the machine a streak of fire was coming out of the exhaust pipe. He made the curve this side of Bear Creek the Moore Crossing but he hit the edge of the bridge and his car toppled over in the channel and his head was buried in the sand and life was at an end. His wife suffered ribs broken and other injuries but recovered. It would not or was not ascertained where he got the liquor and one more old father and mother who had tried to raise ther boy right was saddened.

Dan Gant is living on a very historical old farm which he bought of Oscar Galey. Oscar and first wife spent happy days here. Oscar got it form Buck Boaz who put up this nice home. Buck got it off the George Carter heirs. Here it was Mr. Carter passed on about the end of the last century. He was well off in worldly goods and was said to have much money buried. Many holes were dug about the old house site hunting the buried money. Still further back, Rev. Mack Barber lived on this farm. There is said to be an old graveyard on it and that Mr. Thomas for whom Thomas Chapel and School were named was the last to be buried there. This old log church and school was located on the south side of the road where it forks to go around to the Carl Boaz old home now owned by John Mitchell. 

I turn back the pages of time to 1911 and note Jack Mayo and Tom Holt healthy and alive. Mr. Mayo had cleared a piece of land around the road from where you now turn around in Jim Cantrell's lot. The road then cut across Mr. Mayo's farm from Jim's horse lot to Tom Holt's home. It had been a road for many years and Mr. Holt felt that it should not be changed as it was straight right out to the other road. Mr. Mayo felt it should and made a good road around and fenced in his newly cleared land.

Mr. Holt brought suit in Esq. Dudley's Court for the old road to be opened. Mayo won out. The trouble kept on brewing and both men getting madder until one day Mr. Holt started to Greenfield and met Mr. Mayo returning to this farm from being home for dinner and met in the long lane known as Moseley Lane just before getting to the last gate going into the north field of this large Moseley farm.

Mr. Mayo had his pitch fork he was going to use on his farm that afternoon. When the two met the old flame of trouble flared up again with renewed strength, and when it ended, Mayo was shot and Holt had had the pitchfork used on him.

Mayo died in a few hours and Holt went to prison for a number of years and when he returned home he had consumption and was never well. 

Here were two neighbors who once thought well of each other who went to an untimely end by being stubborn over just where and old road should run.

I am human, and get mad and say things I should not, but I have maintained a whole skin by getting suddenly cool and reasonable when the other fellows get on "high keys." 

Sometimes pure fun good naturedly applied can really be murder when not intended to be and this is what really happened in the end of Charlie Snider some years gone by. He was a good and upright citizen but just could not stand to be teased and joked. One night some boys got a cow bell and went down in his corn field a rattling it like a cow would pulling off ears of corn. It brought Mr. Snider out of the bed and he went all through his corn and when he would get too near the bell would cease and move to a new place and the old man would take up the chase again. He was thus out in the dew in the dead of night and had a hard shake that left him a nervous wreck. 

The next time fun started at a hog killing and Mr. Snider fell in the boiling water and died thinking he had been pushed over in the water when eyewitnesses said he just became unnerved and gave way on his own accord and went in the water. I went to see this old man just a few days before the end came and I never would allow fun for me to go to such lengths as this had gone. This is the only case I have ever known where a man's best friends have put an end to a good old citizen and had the least idea their good natured fun would so end up.

One of the first things the early settlers found out about our soil was its stickiness in the making of the old stick and dirt chimney. The next thing after the red soil was uncovered the way brick could be made from it. 

A brick chimney was the sign of a well to do farmer. When the land began to wash in gullies it was seen that pure porcelain clay underlies all our soils. 

When the pump well was put down at Meridian School, I was told the pump was driven through a hundred feet of such clay. Think of the fine dishes and aluminum there is under there. 

While I am on clay and brick, the old part of the Dean Grooms brick home has seen four generations of Groom's housed in it, so it seems that the timber has mostly been cut but we can go deeper and still find the land of milk and honey. 

It is this sticky clay that has washed down in low places where springs once were and put a cement like filling over them that will not let water rise above it as for instance in the Panthers' Springs area where there were a lot of springs. After a hard rain, you can see deposit right here among us. The sand and gravel in gullies mixed with cement and water from nearby springs can be turned into concrete blocks for building thus making a gullied piece of land valuable. Some places have sandstones big enough for building stones where gullies have
laid them bare.

My good boyhood friend, Bob Sawyers, told me of the ancient city of Pillarville when there at Martin's Store. It seems in modern times to be called by everyone Pillowville because it is now sleeping on a good thick pillow of good dirt washed down from the surrounding hills. 

Bob says he dug down on his farm where the old mill site was and found a good log wall built up high for he suppose to be where the big mill wheel was kept and the water turned in on it on grinding day. Old dishes, tin, iron scraps and what not at another place or places. All of these buried deep. 

He also pointed out the sites of the three boiler explosions, the last of which I was feeding sheep when a boy when it went off and I was scared and jumped high. It killed a neighbor man, Hiram Perry, who had helped me on with my brass toed boots only a short time before. He had only taken the job of firing the engine that afternoon of the explosion. It was said the explosion was caused from the water having some kind of a mineral.

Bob showed how the boiler rose in the air and came down and dug a hole in the ground and then rose and cut the top out of a tree in his field. The other two explosions were bad and if I remember well killed and wounded a number of men. The old watermill house was used for many years as a barn and was finally pulled over when Bob's tenant thought it dangerous. You may be saying now why did he say pulled over. Well, it was put on big white oak pillars or posts hewed out square and sunk deep in the ground and extended several feet up and the mill building was setting on these big pillars above high water mark so grain, meal and flour
would not be water soaked. These old pillars were more decayed on one side than on the other side, hence the word pulled down was used.

If Pillarville did not get its name that way, no one around there could tell me a better reason. So no use to go to foreign lands to see the site of a buried city - Just go to this place and see the good pillow of rich alluvial soil over the ancient city of Pillarsville, and see the modern village of Pillowville as it sits atop of the once soil of the surrounding hills. As you speed along the blacktop road notice Hubert Dunlap's home with its pine grove. Martin's store, John Dunlap's modern shop, Levi Killion's new brick residence. The famous tall old Swaim house is no more. 

Before the Indians there is said to have been a race of people known as mound builders. There was one such mound in Bear Creek bottom in Dr. W. R. Moore's field. The bottom kept filling up and finally some one leveled it and now there is no trace of it.

When a small boy, I went with Pa to Peck's shop and turned down the bottom on a road near this mound, and it was a sight to see a big hill of dirt planted in level ground. This old shop had a post office and a hole to put a letter through if Mr. Peck was not around.

Wagon tires that become too loose in those days were cut and welded back and thus made tighter. This was a public place then but now it is way back among old fields and the cross roads where Stafford's Store and Ed Galey's Store is now acquired the name Pecks.

Along about this mound, a big branch followed the bluff and the branch was counted the line between two farms. In time so much dirt came down it changed the course of the branch. Then a levee was built straight to the old crossing and a good ditch or channel was made and those landowners got in trouble with their line. A suit was had over it. On the other side of Bear Creek, Call Foster had a fine field suited to grass hay. Now much sand has come down and scattered over it and it is not he field it once was.

When I was a boy, stock ran outside on free range pasture and great droves of stock would come to the spring branch in Ed FEATHERSTON'S woods pasture for water in preference to other watering places. In early life I would hear old men snigger and laugh and say this and that man would never have been called "pap" if it had not been for getting the daily drinking water at this spring. It was on this water course where Mose SWINDELL had his sawmill and his pretty clear pool of water walled in with yellow poplar plank. Here is four the whitest sand I have ever seen in these parts. 

In an old field between the Pittman's Old School place and Shades Bridge I was showed the old home site where Jess Reid killed Wylie Holt by hitting him on the back of the head with a grubbing hoe. Mr. Reid had Told Mr. Holt to never come to his home again and Mr. Holt went this once too much. This is the only man I have ever heard of being killed with a grubbing hoe. It occurred many years ago. I can remember Mr. Reid, but not Mr. Holt.

While looking back on things that were once here, I think of the boys who were with me fifty years ago in school. There is Norva Galey, Luther Cooper and Claud Curlee who lives close. Rev. Clint Cooper, of McKenzie, Will Carlton, a watch fixer at Greenfield, Ivie Overton, who now owns and lives at the Jim Caudle fine old home, Edgar Stout who lives in Missouri, and maybe Herman Cochran. I have not hear form him in years. How long will we be here and who will be the last to knock at Marse Peter's gate?

The old log school house at Meridian burned about the time I got old enough to go to school. I just went a few days to school in that old log building. It took sometime to get enough money and a new plank building up. Tom Stout built it and Jim Earls put the first coat of paint on it after school started.