[Granville-Hough] 28 Sep 2009 - Aunt Sallie and Uncle Jim Baldwin

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

    Great Aunt Sallie and Uncle Jim Baldwin.

    This family of relatives lived in the Salem Community Southeast of 
Raleigh near where the Richardsons, Arenders, Bowens, and Sullivans had 
lived and near where the Cohay Lumber Camp was established.  They 
accumulated land from the old farms, raised cattle and timber, and were 
as successful as others who moved away.  Some descendants still live 
there.  I remember Aunt Sallie (Arender) Baldwin (1875 - 1952) as a 
normal size woman, not as tall nor as heavy as my Grandmother Mary, but 
a very active person.  Uncle Jim Baldwin (1868 - 1959) was tall and 
spare, with a mustache and a good will.  As I recall, they lived in the 
same house in my youth as they had lived in my mother's youth, and it 
may have been a conventional dog-trot house, but my memory is not clear 
on that.  When I first visited there, the younger children were still at 
home, they being the same ages as my older brothers.  It was an old 
timey place, well-worn with use and many children.  Of course, it was 
made of long-leaf pine, and I'm not sure it ever received one brush of 
paint.
    Aunt Sallie was mentioned as a person who married too young (about 
15) and soon had so many children she did not know what to do.  One of 
the oldest children remembered that the first three survivors, Spurgeon, 
Tarsey, and Plummer, got their suppers each night on the floor in a big 
dishpan of buttermilk with hunks of corn bread dropped in.  The three of 
them sat around the pan and fished out the cornbread soaked in 
buttermilk until they had all they could hold.  It may well have been 
that Aunt Sallie still cooked in an open fireplace, for when Spurgeon 
was very small; his clothes caught fire and he was so severely burned he 
was expected to die.  Somehow, he hung on, but he was forever crippled 
and could never walk normally.  He had crutches, but he also had a 
gentle mule who pulled him all over the community on a sled.  More about 
these three later.
    Bettie, the next child, married Harrison Maddox and lived up the 
road a bit from Aunt Sallie.  I believe Maddox descendants live there 
today.  Pat, Mack, and Annie Dora, I met but do not know much about 
their families.  The ones I remember being at home were Homer, Lyda, 
Ethel (male), and Irene.  I believe it was Ethel who inherited the home 
place and began to acquire cattle grazing land.  My brother, Clifford 
Hough, had gone to the Santa Gertrudis Ranch in Southern Texas and had 
selected a striking Santa Gertrudis breeding bull, which he brought back 
to Mississippi. (The Santa Gertrudis breed, I believe, was a cross among 
Herefords, Texas Longhorns, and Brahmas (from India.)  They were 
resistant to insects and quite tolerant of hot, humid weather.)  When 
Ethel saw this bull, he offered Clifford such a good price, that 
Clifford sold the bull to him.  Ethel took him back to Cohay and put him 
in his herd, and all seemed well.  Within a week, the bull disappeared, 
and finally, following the buzzard patterns, they located the remnant 
remains where the bull had been rustled, slaughtered, leaving only bits 
of hide, head, and guts.  Now, who rustled cattle in Smith County?  It 
happens that it has always been a hazard there to ranchers in the piney 
woods.  After WW II, with cross-country trucks and other equipment 
available, with a much reduced population, it became widespread.  It is 
said some restaurants in the local towns depended entirely on rustled beef.
    Suspicion eventually settled on another group of cousins named 
Bowen.  It happens that the Bowen family came from Wales, where for 
centuries they were famous cattle rustlers.  Great, great uncle Sam 
Bowen had married a daughter of Lod Sullivan, Aunt Ca'line, and they had 
become specialists in Piney Woods activities.  The census takers never 
even found them on a couple of censuses.  My mother spoke of them as the 
most crude but good-hearted people she had ever known.  Their log cabins 
did not even have wood floors, but used white sand from Cohay Creek.  
When the sand got dirty, just add another layer, fresh from the creek.   
Now, it may be unjust to claim our Bowen cousins rustled this particular 
bull, but they were the people who lived close to much rustling 
activity.  So far as I know, no specific person was ever charged.   
    Back to Spurgeon.  I do not know how he survived the fire, but he 
gradually grew to manhood, married, and made a living for his family.  
He was an entrepreneur, and had the local grocery store when the 
Eastman-Gardner Lumber Camp at Cohay closed its Commissary.  When I last 
saw him, he was living in either the old Arender home or in the old 
Richardson home.  He had some task he had to perform, so he left us on 
his sled with his trusted mule.  So far as I know, he is the only 
Baldwin son whose descendants each year hold a reunion.  I have noted 
the announcements in the "Smith County Reformer."  I met his oldest 
daughter.
    Plummer became the nominal leader of the family.  He became a barber 
and eventually settled in Jackson.  This was before the days of 
electrical equipment, and Plummer had large arthritic joints from 
working the hair clippers.  He married, but had no children.  His barber 
shop was a favored meeting place for all family members and other Smith 
County people visiting Jackson.  His death was announced far and wide 
over the state.
    Tarsey married Taylor Mayfield, who was a disabled Spanish-American 
War Veteran.  They also lived in Jackson, and I met one of their daughters.
    When I visited Plummer Baldwin's Barber Shop, I frequently saw two 
young girls about my age.  One was introduced to me as Spurgeon's 
daughter, and the other as Tarsey's daughter.  I, of course, was Aunt 
Mary Richardson's grandson.  Then, of course, we knew exactly who we all 
were, and our relationship, but I'm not sure I ever learned their given 
names. 
    I remember Spurgeon's daughter as a neat, quiet, well-mannered 
brunette, quite attractive.  I was told that Plummer had partly adopted 
her and that she stayed with his family.  She may have gone to school in 
Jackson.
    Her first cousin, Tarsey Mayfield's daughter, was completely 
different.  She had only one redeeming feature I ever learned about.  
She was a fanatic or fantastic checkers player who could beat any of 
Plummer's customers. usually is less than a minute.  I will describe her 
in a flashback I had forty years later.  I was in San Francisco looking 
for my son, Robin Hough, who had left college and joined a hippy group 
in San Francisco.  The group has taken over some condemned buildings  in 
the path of a freeway under construction.  I saw more than one hippie 
group there, but the women all looked the same, dirty, disheveled , no 
bras, short skirts, dirty panties, and I thought: "My God, they look 
like Tarsey Mayfield's daughter."   I suppose Tarsey Mayfield's daughter 
was just forty years ahead of her times when I saw her in the 1930 decade.
    I have been told, but cannot verify, that there was a great tragedy 
in this Baldwin family.  After over fifty years of marriage, it was said 
that Uncle Jim decided he did not want to live with Aunt Sallie any 
more.  They had some sort of separation, which devastated Aunt Sallie.  
It could have been the result of advancing Alzheimer's Disease, either 
one or both.  I have seen such Alzheimer's separations in Leisure World, 
and they are always heartbreaking, both to children and to friends.  
GrandPa.

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Congratulations to all the Sullivan descendants, especially those who 
were able to gather at New Sardus Baptist Church last Saturday for their 
annual reunion.  According to cousins Maxine (Richardson) Watts and 
Mitchell Sullivan, about 75 people took part.  My God bless them all!  .