[Granville-Hough] 1 Sep 2009 - Confused Family
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough-trust at oakapple.net
Wed Dec 22 05:53:30 PST 2010
Confused family.
Granville Hough remembers one tenant family very well as that of W. P.
Allen, the last sharecropper to live on the old Ware land. This was in
the year of 1938 when his daughter named Ruby Gay was born. W. P. Allen
did not get along very well with the Hough family, and his tenancy was
not satisfactory. He had one emergency after another, and Lizzie Hough
advanced him money to take care of his needs. He belonged to some
religious sect, probably Holy Rollers, and he preferred to argue about
religion to working hard. At crop gathering time, when the value of the
remaining crop to be gathered was of the same value as the incurred
debt, W. P. Allen abscounded, leaving the Hough family of Lizzie Hough
and her four young children to gather what they could. The reason W. P.
(Wiley Pete) gave was that there was nothing remaining in the crop for
him, which was financially accurate. He was not stupid, but more
accurately described as cunning and calculating.
Later, or perhaps during the year, the Hough family learned that W. P.
Allen was not an Allen at all, but a Sullivan, though he had gone
through school as W. P. Allen. The circumstances were not made clear at
the time, and there was absolutely no interest in obtaining them. It
seems from census records that he was associated with Allen families and
was related to them. One descendant noted that he was partly reared by
George Hunk Allen after his mother died. This must be why he was known
as W. P. Allen. The wife of Hunk Allen was sister to Willie W.
Sullivan, whose life has never been satisfactorily documented. It seems
Willie W. had a common-law wife who had three children before she died,
W. P., and two daughters. W. P. lived with Hunk Allen, and other
relatives took the daughters. It seems that W. P. never knew his
sisters. I was able to locate them in 1930 census records, and I recall
them as being married with families in or near Mount Olive in Covington
County. .
Despite the bitter personal memories held by Granville Hough, he hopes
the children of W. P. have success in all their endeavors. Granville is
also pleased that Wiley Pete Allen/Sullivan found some success later in
life as an itinerant carpenter. The 1930 decade must have been a very
hard one for him. He apparently never had contact with his two sisters,
as there is no indication that Wiley Petes children understood the two
women were their aunts. The parents of the three children, Wiley Pete
and his two sisters, and the life of Willie W. Sullivan, their apparent
father, is the most mixed up of any Granville knew in Sullivans Hollow.
--------------------------------------------
One should never be afraid of what they know, but genealogy sometimes
tells you what you don't want to know.
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