[Granville-Hough] 28 Sep 2009 - Great Aunt Sallie and Uncle Jim Baldwin
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough-trust at oakapple.net
Thu Sep 28 06:13:43 PDT 2017
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:02:20 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Aunt Sallie and Uncle Jim Baldwin - 28 Sep 2009
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.
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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! .
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