[Granville-Hough] 1 Sep 2009 - Confused Family

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:42:05 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: ConfusedFamily - 1 Sep 2009

Confused family.

Granville Hough remembers one tenant family very well as that of ôW. P. 
Allen,ö 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 ôHunkö Allen after his mother died. This must be why he was known 
as ôW. P. Allen.ö 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 PeteÆs 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 SullivanÆs Hollow.

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One should never be afraid of what they know, but genealogy sometimes 
tells you what you don't want to know.