[Granville-Hough] 20 Jul 2009 - Older Farms

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:48:06 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: OlderFarms - 20 Jul 2009

The Older Farms.

I was born and lived during my most formative years in the southern 
quarter of section 5, Township 10N, Range 16W of Smith County, MS. We 
owned the quarter section, less two acres in the Northwest corner, which 
was the homesite for Drummond McAlpin. I know that corner of our 
property better than any other as I climbed the fence every day when I 
went to high school in Magee in the 9th grade. It was exactly one mile 
West to the Simpson county line, and exactly ¾ mile North to the Choctaw 
Base Line. It was exactly five and ­ miles to the Covington County line. 
I met my Sharon District bus just inside the Simpson County line at Carl 
YelvertonÆs home.
The Choctaw Base Line had been surveyed after the last Choctaw Cession 
in order to place the white manÆs grid of imaginary lines on a land of 
ups, downs, streams, draws, and pine barrens. The land was then divided 
into townships and ranges. Township 10 would have 36 sections, each a 
mile square, and it would be 16 ranges of 6 miles each west of a 
North-South meridian in Alabama and 60 miles north of a known latitude. 
The Choctaws saw land as streams, valleys, stream junctions, permanent 
springs, lakes, high land forms, and described it accordingly, just as 
they saw it and used it. With the white manÆs imaginary grid, the land 
was divided arbitrarily, with somewhat disastrous results in the long 
run. It probably prevented some mayhem in the beginning.
When white men first settled the Indian lands, they followed the Choctaw 
trails along the streams or over the higher land forms for short cuts 
and staked out their claims where they found overflow areas for streams 
and valleys of hardwood. The land here would grow crops if it could be 
cleared, and water was available in the springs along the creeks. So 
this is what they set about doing, clearing the valleys, hollows, or 
draws, placing ditches around them for diverting water from the hills. 
They fenced their fields with longleaf pine rail fences, as the woods 
were all open range for deer, cattle, sheep, goats, and other livestock. 
Everyone had their own ear marks or brands, and there were always those 
who were not above rustling an unfamiliar mark. Not your neighborÆs, of 
course. So the life in early Smith County was that of a farmer-rancher. 
Commercial fertilizer was not used and had not been developed. No one 
knew about it until after 1900. No one knew how to drill wells to the 
deep underground aquifers, though open wells ten feet down or so could 
be developed next to running streams.
The quarter section which was our farm was downhill from higher land, 
and that eventually gave us severe soil erosion problems. The hollows 
which passed through our land drained headwaters for two minor streams 
of Clear Creek (Oka Bogue). These hollows were cleared some time before 
the Civil War, and it is said, partly with slave labor, Wares on the 
west and Allens on the east. So we had some land which had been 
cultivated 70 years, some which had once been cultivated and was in 
second-growth timber, and some which was cut-over land which my father 
was able to terrace and develop. It was a mixed lot. Then, gradually the 
cut-over land to our north was developed for row-cropping, with all the 
excess water flowing downhill onto our land. Two roads also passed north 
and south through our property, and there had once been an east-west 
road between these two which could be followed. I did indeed follow this 
old east-west road during my second year of high school at Magee when I 
had to switch to another busing district in Simpson County. That year I 
met the bus near the railroad Ware Cut.
I do not know from whom my parents purchased the first eastern half of 
the quarter section. It may have been Mrs. Seeba (Ware) Yelverton, 
daughter of Newton Jasper and Louisa Ann (Sullivan) Ware, and 
granddaughter of Frederick Sullivan. It contained the old Allen 
developments. The ôHollowö had a permanent spring which we called the 
ôHole of Water,ö as it just stayed at a permanent level. Near it was an 
old well the Allens had used as a convenience. I never identified any 
dwelling site, but there could have been one. The Allen residence was 
about ¾ mile away and we never associated with them as they were in the 
Calvary Presbyterian Community on another road. We were the last 
residence in the Concord Baptist Community. The Hollow was where we grew 
sugar cane. It had tall second-growth pines on the hills adjacent which 
had once been cultivated. The old rows could still be seen. It was in 
the briar patches in these overgrown old fields where we encountered 
copperheads and pygmy rattlesnakes. The Allens had also cleared a swath 
of land up to the north-south road where our residence was built. This 
land had been quite eroded, but it became our fruit orchard. When my 
parents purchased this 80 acres in 1914, it had two dwellings, one which 
they occupied, and the other, the old Batt family home, which they 
eventually moved to become a storehouse at our new house.
The land had not been surveyed so that our parents were not sure where 
the section lines came. The most critical was the line just south of the 
dwelling house where they lived. The neighbor to the south, a very 
aggressive accumulator of land, Mr. Jim Meadows, was sure the dwelling 
house would be on his side of the line. As the surveyors came through, 
they passed 20 feet south of the house, and cut the garden in half. Mr. 
Meadows had to be content with that, plus part of the field that my 
father had been using. Eventually he did get part of the land north of 
us, which my parents wanted but had no money to pay for it.
When my parents got ready to build their new house, the road had been 
moved east so that the new house and barn were built right over the old 
road, which had gone up the ridge to what is now Highway 28. Just west 
of our south chicken house, we could see the sides of the old road. This 
old road had been the way to Low, the railroad town where Jasper Ware, 
Tommy Amason, and others had been postmasters in the 1900 era.
Just before I can remember, we purchased the western half of the quarter 
section from the McAlpin family, who had inherited or purchased it from 
the Frank Ware and Jasper Ware estates. Frank Ware had homesteaded the 
land and had built his home there. One of his daughters, Keturah Ware, 
married Lawrence McAlpin and had settled up the road in the next 
section. Newton Jasper Ware md Louisa Jane Sullivan, daughter of 
Frederick Sullivan, inherited the home place and lived there all his 
life. The Ware property on the stream ôthe meadowö became a small center 
of community life. The Batt family was on the cross road, and the old 
site can probably still be identified. A well had been drilled there at 
some point to avoid the long trek to the sunken barrel in the reed brake 
next to the meadow stream where there was a ready source of water. In 
the field just west of the meadow, we sometimes came across red clay 
where we would not otherwise see it. Mrs. Keturah McAlpin explained that 
was the site of the schoolhouse where she went to school as a child. The 
red clay bits were remnants of the old chimney. At the upper end of the 
meadow was a cotton house which had once been used, but it looked more 
like a primitive dwelling house. It could have been slave quarters. The 
hills had once been cultivated, but were covered in second-growth timber 
about 40 years old. There were old gullies grown over. On the side of 
the main hill between the Jasper Ware home and the meadow water barrel 
was the site of an old cotton gin. It was mule-powered and on the side 
of the hill so gravity could be used in the flow through the ginning 
mechanism. I never saw one, nor did I ever hear an explanation of how 
they worked. . The tracks for the mule, going round and round, were in 
the side of the hill and are probably there today. I do recall ôOld Man 
Joe Robertsö explaining that he saw someone pick up a bale of cotton at 
the Jasper Ware farm when he was a small boy, about 1885. A bale of 
cotton weighs 500 pounds.
When we acquired the old Frank Ware home, or the Jasper Ware home as we 
called it, it was made of longleaf pine logs which had been squared by 
hand. It had longleaf pine shingles. The longleaf pine logs still exist 
in my brother Clifford HoughÆs basement as the house support.
When Frank Ware built the home, he put it on high ground on the road. 
That got away from the mosquitoes and other insects which lived along 
the stream. There was a reed brake (an outgrowth of reeds) which circled 
a natural spring, in the meadow, so he sunk a barrel into the spring, 
and had a source of water which had to be transported to the house, up 
the hill about 400 yards. The barrel was still there, and I would get a 
drink from it when working in the meadow. When we got the property, a 
regular deep well had been drilled at the house.
On the far edge of the property, Frank Ware established the Ware 
Cemetery, which is maintained today, though it has had no burials for 
the last 60 years. Our Hough sister, born in 1914, and Uncle Ligie Hough 
are buried there. Uncle Luke RichardsonÆs first wife, Aunt Maggie (Ware) 
Richardson, is also buried there. Except for the two Hough graves, all 
the others are Ware relatives. On the back row are 17 unmarked graves, 
all victims of the 1918 flu epidemic. Drummond McAlpin recalled how he 
as a small boy attended one of the funerals. Those moving the home-made 
coffin with plow ropes were so sick and weak that the coffin slipped and 
fell into the grave sideways. They could not right it and it began to 
rain. They just filled the grave and went home to bed where most of them 
were themselves dead in less than a week and buried alongside. The 
graves were left unmarked as there were no family members left to mark them.
I did not intend to end on a sad note, but as one goes across the 
quarter section from east to west, you end at the cemetery. So it is in 
life. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of 
the Lord. Blessed am I that I have these memories to share. I do not 
know what they mean to someone who has not lived on that land, but I put 
them down in memory of those who worked so hard there.