[Granville-Hough] 24 Apr 2009 - Elisha Hough

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Stories of my grandather that I never knew.


Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:48:24 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: ElishaHough-24 April 2009

Typical Self-Made Man of Sullivans Hollow, Elisha Hough

Grandchildren of Elisha Hough have asked me to describe him and his work 
as I recall it. We called him Papa, in contrast to other families, 
where the father was Pa, Dad, Daddy, Father, etc. Of course, 
from my earliest memory, he had suffered heart attacks and was in 
gradually declining health from congestive heart failure. I have been 
told his first attack was a little after he was fifty years old and he 
died in his 58th year. As I was only 13 when he died, I would have been 
5 or 6 years old when he had his first attack. My mother during this 
period became a sad and worried woman, and I suppose depression would be 
the most descriptive term. I have been asked why Clifford, Donald, 
Roland and I were so uptight about everything; and I can say it must be 
because we did not see much joy, laughter, and music in our young lives. 
It must have been different in the 1920s with my older brothers, as 
there was evidence all around us of happier times.

Papa was a man of average size, weighing from 160 to 170 pounds, about 5 
feet, 10 inches tall, very strong and dexterous. My son, David Hough, is 
more like him in size and appearance than any other of his grandsons. 
Elisha had grown up as head of his mothers household after Grandfather 
Frank Hough became disabled and eventually died, and Elisha had to learn 
many survival skills at an early age. Though he had little education, he 
was able to read and write quite well, and he continued to study things 
he was interested in all his life. Unlike other families, we were never 
without a newspaper or farm magazines. Reading the comic strips to the 
children was a daily routine; and I would listen first as Papa read to 
the three youngest, then I would get a chance to re-read them for 
myself. On the comic-reading occasions, he was probably closer to his 
former personality when he would stop and describe the antics of the 
characters, whether Jiggs and Maggie, Popeye, Mutt & Jeff, Dick Tracy, 
the Mulligans, or whomever.
 
Because of his ingenuity and work, we had equipment and facilities on 
our farm which I never saw on any other, that is, all on one farm. We 
had a mowing machine, hay baler, cane (Molasses) mill, 
carpentry/blacksmith shop, garage for car and truck, screened 
(rat-proof) corn crib, cistern for water storage for animals, potato 
storage house, barn, hogpen, chicken houses, two homes for sharecroppers 
(each with barn and garden), an extensive fruit orchard, unburned woods 
with wild plants and wildlife, and a variety of storage houses. What we 
did not have was fertile, level land. Every inch of our crop land had to 
be terraced, fertilized, and conserved in whatever ways we could learn 
about. Soil erosion was a constant menace, and it was a losing battle 
for us as long as we row cropped and exposed the sandy soil to heavy 
rains. We could not win, but no one knew this in the 1930 decade. Papa 
did everything he could, but he died a discouraged man.

Papa had quirks of impatience, and he could not handle mules. Perhaps he 
never outgrew his early handling of oxen. Mules gradually replaced oxen 
about 1900, after he became an adult. However, Dueward had the same 
troubles with mules, so the problems may have been one of personality 
rather than early training. At such times of working with mules, Papa 
was given to outbursts of profanity, which I learned very well. In the 
final years of his life, everyone tried to arrange the work so that Papa 
did not have to harness the mules.

In addition to the normal profane terms Papa would use was one that 
dates back to the Middle Ages; and I never heard anyone else use it. It 
was Plague take the luck, or Plague take your luck, essentially May 
you get the plague before you gain advantage from your evil. It must 
have come from the 14th Century in Europe. I recall one time when he was 
building a wall around a cistern. He had built the retaining form all 
around and was pouring the cement into the form. He had filled the form 
up to about 40 inches in height when the bottom retaining board on one 
side burst out from the weight and the soft cement flowed out on the 
ground. This was on a late Saturday afternoon when a Baptist minister 
had just arrived to spend the weekend with us. The minister was 
observing the work. Papa was angry with the burst form and beside 
himself because he wanted so much to swear to high heaven. He finally 
said, Well, plague take the luck! and the minister was not offended as 
he probably did not know the term. Then my father got braces against the 
form and smoothed and leveled the overflow so that it became a cement 
platform where we stood when we pumped water from the cistern. It was 
most convenient and considered to be a nice innovation by those who saw 
and used it. Little did they know how it came about.

The minister involved was Brother Weathersby. I had gone to Low, by then 
just a railroad siding in the woods, to meet him and brought him back 
home. Brother Weathersby was not popular because he was a divorced man. 
His wife had left and divorced him. My father was a deacon, but had no 
part in choosing him. I believe Brother Weathersby came by train from 
Laurel. Anyway, Papa agreed for the first sermon that he would send 
someone to meet Brother Weathersby when he got to Low. Then Brother 
Weathersby would spend the night with us, go to church, preach his 
sermon, then make his way back to the train for his return to Laurel. As 
no one else wanted to have anything to do with a divorced preacher, 
Brother Weathersby became Lisha Houghs preacher, much to Lishas 
dismay. We went through this routine for several months, until another 
minister could be found and called. So we learned a lot about Brother 
Weathersby. The poor fellow must have felt unwelcome, so he said little 
and had no influence on us. He mostly sat and read his bible or the 
newspaper.

Sometimes my father would be visited by one of old pre-marriage cronies. 
One such man was Lige Turner. (Much later after doing much genealogy, I 
discovered that Lige Turner was a distant cousin.) Anyway, I got an 
insight into Papas character after such a visit. Lige Turner had come 
and invited my father out to his car where he produced a bottle of 
whiskey and he and my father settled down on the running board of his 
car, which I recall as a Model A Ford. They passed the bottle back and 
forth taking sips and talking about olden times. Some time after Lige 
Turner left, I told my father that I was under the impression he did not 
like whiskey. (He would certainly allow none in the house.) No, he 
said, you have it all wrong. We do not have whiskey in our house 
because I like it too much.

Papa got along well with black or colored neighbors who worked hard. He 
was impatient with anyone, black or white, who seemed lazy. Once he was 
in a nearby town when he was approached by a black man looking for a 
Hough, any Hough, or Hough descendant. The man said he was Tom Boykin, 
and that his parents had been slaves on the Hough farm in 1860 when Zeno 
Hough died. His parents had gone with son-in-law James Boykin to north 
Smith County and had adopted the Boykin name after the war. He had lived 
with the Boykin family for many years, then had moved as a share-cropper 
to the rich farm lands of the Mississippi Delta (the land between the 
Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers.) He wound up on land so rich that every 
acre was in cotton, without even a garden being allowed. You had to buy 
all your food at the owners store. By the end of the year, your debts 
were always greater than your crop was worth. It was worse than slavery. 
Did my father have any land he could work?

My father had never heard of the family, at least not by the Boykin 
name. He did have some land where he needed a tenant. So he agreed to 
take on the family. He went to the Delta in his T-model truck and moved 
the family into what was then his former house. (He had built a new home 
about 1918). Tom Boykins family had to learn how to grow corn, and all 
the garden crops. They listened carefully, learned quickly, and had a 
remarkably successful year. Crops were good and prices were high. My 
father was able to buy new Model T car. Tom Boykin was able to pay off 
all his debts, and he also bought a new Model T car, just like my 
fathers. My father did not have enough land for Toms growing family, 
so he found him a larger farm he could work with a Wells family, in our 
same community. Tom moved to that farm and still worked there ten years 
later when my father died in May 1936.

At my fathers funeral at Sharon Presbyterian Church, the time came for 
viewing the remains for the last time. The funeral director, Mims 
Mitchel of Magee, announced that, by special request of the Hough 
family, that negro friends be allowed to view the remains. He then 
ushered in, through the back door of the church, Tom Boykin and his 
family. They quietly and respectfully viewed my father, then nodded to 
us, and went back out the back door. How many times this happened I do 
not know, but I never saw or heard of it at any other funeral in that 
era. I cannot remember the Boykin family while it lived with us as I was 
about 3 or 4. I did see them from time to time in the following years, 
and I saw them at the funeral. Few people would believe this story, but 
I was there.

Another colored family lived with us a year or two later named Clem 
Duckworth. He was tri-racial, less than one-quarter negro, the remainder 
white and Indian. His wife, Miz Callie, was about half-white. Their 
children were nearly white, and there were several of them. Clem hired a 
black woman to help with the children. She was probably dim-witted, but 
sexually active, which attracted the attention of black men. Clem had a 
successful year with us, then moved to a larger farm. Toward the end of 
the next year, Papa got an urgent message from Clem that he was in 
Raleigh jail and needed help. Papa learned that Clem had found a black 
man fooling around with his woman, the dim-witted hired person, and 
had cut the mans throat. Clem had been arrested and was facing prison 
for manslaughter. Papa went to Raleigh and talked someone into releasing 
Clem into his custody, saying he would vouch for his good behavior. For 
some reason, Papa brought Clem to our house, but he would not allow him 
to come in. I must have been five years old. I went outside and found 
Clem and said: Clem, they say you have killed a man. Is that true? 
Clem thought it over and said: So that is what they are saying. That 
isnt good, is it? About then Papa came out, I think with some money 
for Clem, and told him he had to get rid of that woman and take care of 
Miz Callie and his children. If he got into trouble again, he, Lisha 
Hough, could not help because he had promised there would be no more 
trouble from Clem Duckworth. Clem would go to prison. Clem agreed and 
left. So far as I know, he did not violate his parole. (It may be of 
interest to social historians that one white man of good reputation in 
Smith County could get a black man out of prison on the promise that the 
black man would not cause trouble again.)

It occurs to me that I do not know from whom Papa bought the original 
land we owned. I know it was after Dueward was born on Little Cohay in 
1913 and before our sister was born at the old house in 1914. It was 
possibly from Rufus Yelverton. It was the eastern half of the quarter 
section we eventually owned. The western half was the old Frank Ware 
settlement which had passed to Jasper Ware, then to Lawrence and Keturah 
McAlpin. We bought it from the McAlpins, but it was before my time of 
memory, probably about 1926.

I should remember more, but have to charge what I have forgotten to old 
age.