Jack Ferguson
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Jack Ferguson
Ella Andrew Nunn at age 93
We do not have the name of the first teacher of this pioneer school; however from the records that have come down to us it would seem that the early settlers were not too fortunate in their choice. He was an uncouth Irishman who had drifted on some chance tide to the backwoods. His unfitness for business and his aversion to any kind of labor forced him by necessity to fall back upon some trade such as teaching for a living. Lazy and illiterate, he was in fact too ignorant for even the rough unlettered backwoodsmen around him. He was besides a slave to drink, and often he would gather school but becoming too drunk to teach, would sit or lie in a drunken stupor while the school children had a boisterous holiday around him. One day he stood up before the school and bantered the school children to give him some problem in arithmetic which he could not solve. Young John Smith, whose burning desire for education was rapidly turning to disgust, asked him: "Master, how many grains of corn would it take to make a square foot of mush?" The youngster took a special delight in pestering the would-be educator. One day while he slept in a drunken condition, young John took a shovel full of hot burning embers from the fire and poured them into the large open pocket of the teacher's linsey coat. The rest of the children stood aghast at the deed, then seizing their books they fled to the woods. The schoolteacher slept on until the smoke of his burning coat awoke him. In a rage he reported the matter to John's father, but the settlers had had enough of him; one of them, getting the articles of agreement into his hands the next day, burned it. The school was at an end, having lasted only three weeks. The pseudo-schoolteacher soon left the neighborhood and was seen in Stocktons Valley no more.
The lot of the slave in Clinton County was by comparison mild. Slaves and owner occupied a closer and more personal relationship than was possible in the traditional South. Lacking, for the most part, were the abuse and cruelty of the system made familiar in "Uncle Tom's Cabin". The slave was fed, clothed, and sheltered in return for his work, which was comparatively easy. He was allowed to join the church. Indeed there were some enlightened men of that period who deplored the existence of the slave system and emancipated their slaves voluntarily. One early document of Cumberland County deals with several slaves, giving the dates when they should become free, ranging for 1790 (then in Virginia) to 1810. The will of John Cowan, filled July 13, 1840, provided for the emancipation of such slaves that he might own at the time of his death.
From an article in the New Era of February 12, 1915, we learn a very interesting tradition concerning this iron kettle. According to the story handed down by the family, at one time the kettle was sold by Aaron Hopkins, when just a small boy. When the purchaser came after it the boy's mother refused to let him have it, saying that it could not be sold and must be kept in the Hopkins family. The man told her he must have the kettle or his money back. The youngster had already spent the money. The purchaser agreed to give the boy's mother eight days to weave eight yards of tow cloth with which she could redeem the pot. This she did, and the utensil remained in the possession of the Hopkins family.
Footnote: This historic kettle was the subject of a signed certificate dated November 26, 1921, by Scott W. Dowell, in which Dowell certified that he had "known John R. Hopkins and....Heard him talk about the pot that was brought from England by the Puritans in the ship Mayflower in 1620". At one time Hopkins kept the pot in the bank at Albany. When he later moved to Texas, he took the historic pot with him.
"We planted cotton. We would pick the cotton from the patch. When we went to school, Saturday was cotton picking day. Each was allotted our rows and in winter heaps of sweet clean cotton was piled down and allotted to each child to pick seeds out and we finished before we could read or do anything".
"Glee and I carded and spun thread before we could band the wheel. Mother would give us our task and we never played or wasted any time until our task was done, that was one/half yard each - enough to weave one/half yard of cloth. This was cotton. Mother wove cotton for dresses, indigo color, underwear, sheets, pillow cases, even feather bed ticking. Shirts for the men folks was all made at home. Mother sent the wool to the carding factory and we spun that to weave our dresses for winter, underskirts, blankets, coverlets. They were all sewn by hand. We made the yarn to knit our stockings and socks. I knit my stockings before I was ten years old. Mother would take off the heel then I would knit the toe. She would take it but I soon got so I could complete the stocking. I wove before I was eleven years old and coverlets when I was fourteen years old".
"We were early risers; would be in the fields to work as soon as it was light. Mother would bring us a lunch at 9 a.m. and a bucket of cold water. I have dropped corn, thinned corn, and hoed corn many a day all day....We worked outside and inside. If it rained and was too wet to work in the field the wheel or the loom was standing ready for application. Very little was bought in the homes - sugar or coffee or salt. I have carried many a pail or maple syrup or water for syrup and even made sugar. It was several years after the war before people could buy even calico for a Sunday dress or anything else. My father was one of the wealthy farmers in Clinton County. People were all in the same boat. I went to the milk gap - as it was called-with mother as soon as I was large enough to milk. Then as soon as Glee could milk she and I did the milking. We children tried to save mother all we could.....Glee and I would go to the well and get water when it took both of us to wind up the water. The well was quite deep".
"Grandpa Snow was a wonderful man. He was sheriff of Clinton County and collected taxes. He walked most of the time. He was sheriff for a number of years. He was well liked and everyone had a good word for him. I remember he was at our home one time. Pa brought several sacks of corn at night to shell to take to the mill. It was shelled and sacked to take to the mill the next day. We ate corn bread twice a day then. The scattering corn was swept up for the chickens. Next morning I was sweeping the room. I got near the fireplace. Grandpa said wait Healen, lets pick up this corn. Don't ever burn anything that anything can eat, that was a lesson I remember. I have always kept this in mind and taught my children this same lesson".
In another passage, she states that her grandfather Snow was a hard-working man. "He would go into the mountains and dig ginseng by day and plow his corn by moonlight".
Footnote: "Glee" was her sister, Glanora Elizabeth Snow, who married William Ford and was the mother of Samuel Clarence Ford, Governor of Montana.
Captain Cross' company left Clinton County on August 25th and arrived at Newport. From Newport they marched to St. Mary's River, where they encamped for some four months. They spent the winter there, suffering greatly from the severity of the winter and the lack of adequate tents and blankets. Cross' application for a pension states that "(the) company was ordered to Cincinnati, where they were discharged" on March 23, 1813. However, another record asserts that the company was discharged at Robert Pogue's in (now) Clinton County.
The same year, in the latter part of July, Kentucky's Governor Isaac Shelby issued a proclamation calling for 2,000 mounted riflemen to meet him at Newport within thirty days. The body was to march to Lake Erie to the assistance of General William H. Harrison, whose army was beset by the British troops commanded by General Proctor and their Indian allies under the great Indian Chief Tecumseh. William Wood raised a company from Clinton County, which served under Micah Taul, who had been promoted to Colonel after reaching headquaters. Wood's company assembled at the home of Robert Pogue on August 22, 1813; they reached Newport and were mustered in on August 31. According to an old record, Capt. Wood commanded Company 53 from "Cumberland County", which consisted of forty seven men, thirty six rank and file and eleven commissioned officers, and which listed "nine rifles"....
On the appointed day, 4,000 men met Governor Shelby at Newport and the Governor took command in person. Crossing the Ohio River at Cincinnati, the Kentuckians reached the shores of Lake Erie just as Commander Oliver H. Perry was landing his prisoners after the Battle of Lake Erie. General Harrison at once crossed over into Canada and fought and won the decisive battle of the Thames, October 5, 1813. The Kentucky troops formed a large percentage of the American forces in this battle, with Wood's company being one of the companies taking part in the engagement. Wood was apparently promoted to Major, serving under Richard M. Johnson; it is said that he was with Johnson when the latter killed the Indian chief Tecumseh.
One of the Clinton County volunteers under Capt. Wood was Alexander Sproul, and was a Revolutionary War veteran; the only other member of the company who had served in the Revolution was his neighbor James Williams. At the Battle of the Thames, Sproul took a scalp from an Indian he killed in the engagement. On the way home, he took seriously ill at a place called Pickaway Plains in Ohio. Major Wood saw that he would not be able to continue the journey so he left him there, detailing his son, Joseph, to remain and attend to him. Sproul realized that he would not recover from his illness, so he sent the Indian scalp home to his family by James Williams. He died shortly afterwards.
Wood's men returned to Clinton County upon the expiration of their enlistment and were discharged at Robert Pogue's house on November 13th.
Wood later commanded another company in the Kentucky Detached Militia, under Lt. Col. Gabriel Slaughter, which took part in the battle of New Orleans, the last battle of the war. He received his appointment on November 10, 1814, to serve for six months. At least two others from Clinton County served in Lt-Col. Slaughter's regiment at this battle - John Wade and James Wood, who were members of Capt. Adam Vickery's company. One account of the battle of New Orleans says: "No troops engaged on the American side did more fatal execution upon the enemy's rank and file than did these Kentucky troops. Every man of the regiment was in rifle range and all did deadly work".
"One of the customs that prevailed in those days among the farmers (and there was no other business prosecuted in the county then, except perhaps a 'little store' or two, within a radius of twenty miles) was to have 'log rollings'. The country was new and heavily timbered, and it often happened that a farmer had in the Spring of the year to clear up a great quantity of large timber that had fallen upon his ground during the Fall, Winter, and early Spring - this he could not do himself, and he would ask his neighbors to help him roll together in heaps the logs cut from the fallen trees, so he could burn them and clear the way for plowing. Sometimes, there would be at such gatherings twenty or thirty (and occasionally more) able and skillful men to help. The good wife always found plenty of her willing female neighbors to come in and help her prepare the meals for the 'hands', and some of the best dinners that ever were gotten up in Kentucky were spread out to those crowds of people.
Ezekiel Perdue was a prominent and highly respected farmer, residing upon his farm, which was about eight miles from the present country town (Albany) on the public road leading from Indian Creek over the mountain through the Guinn neighborhood.
On the 6th day of April, 1832 (sixty five years ago now, in a few days) he had a log rolling on his farm; I was there; the crowd of men assembled and were on the ground at an early hour. There, as I recollect it now, about thirty of them - it was spoken of and regarded as a 'heavy rolling'. With the view of getting more work done, the men and boys divided into two companies of about equal numbers. The field was about twenty acres in size. It was a dry, windy, clear day, and a great many standing trees and logs scattered over the field were on fire.
About eleven o'clock, one of the companies called to the other to come where it was to assist in handling a large pile of fallen trees and logs. I was with the company that was called to come and help.
We did go and help until that mass of heavy timber was piled and arranged for burning, and then a portion of the company that I was with, went off to work at a large fallen tree, which was cut up into lengths of fifteen to twenty feet. Just before we got to it, one of the men directed another boy and myself to pick up a large limb that was lying on the ground, and carry it back and put it on the heap we had just left. We did so and were returning to our crowd, and within about twenty feet of the place where they had their spikes under a log and were trying to turn it over, a tree that was burning fell upon them, and killed six, and crippled anothers.
The first notice that we had of the fall, was the cloud of dust that dashed in our faces, and the noise of the fall upon the ground.
We screamed and yelled for help, ran to the men then dead and dying and the body of the tree upon all but one. The other crowd of men and boys were there in a moment, lifted off the great tree from their mangled bodies. The loud lamentations of the crowd were heard at the farm house a few hundred yards away, and in the shortest time the women and children were all there, and oh! such a scene followed:
There laid a dead father and husband in the presence of his family, all frantic with grief, and there were noble young men, whose fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters were weeping and crying in utter distraction, and the friends of loved ones poured out their sorrows and tears in one common lamentation. The news spread quick and fast all over the country, and before night, there were hundreds of people gathered, all anxious to help and offer a hand in sympathy with the grieving families and friends.
I was then a few days over thirteen years old. The picture of that day, the place, the awful occurrence, the rush of the crowd to get the tree lifted off, the death marked faces of the victims, the cries and galloping on horses, is all as fresh today as then. Three of the men were buried in one grave the next day, there on the farm.
A great multitude of people gathered about the grave, the three coffins containing their treasures were placed upon poles laid across the great pit dug and ready for their reception. Then an aged man named Kelsey stood at the head of the grave pit, with uncovered head, and read that old hymn:
'Hark from the tomb a doleful sound, Mine ears attend the crye; Ye living men come view the ground, Where you must shortly lie', etc. which was sung in solemn tone by the congregation and then the men made public prayer, following which the coffins were carefully lowered with boards, and then the great grave was filled with the fresh earth that had been dug from it".
Not only did the early settlers have to contend with rigorous cold weather, drought, and the like, they faced other problems as well. Disease, epidemics, and other health conditions were a constant concern. In the summer of 1856, an epidemic of flux swept through the county causing many deaths. Flux was the name commonly used at that time for dysentery caused by infected food or polluted drinking water. Jesse and Mariba Ewing lost three children within a week - Pernetta Jane died July 27, Mary Ann Eliza died July 29, and Thomas Wood died August 2nd. They were five, six months, and two respectively. An ailment called fever was very common. A letter written by Reuben Wood to his Uncle Abram in Illinois September 5, 1842, makes reference to this problem. "The relations are generally in good health at this time. Aunt Mary Wood (wife of William Wood) has had a spell of the fever, but is a getting about. There has been a great deal of fever in this place, as many as 35 or 40, but only two fatal. One cousin Nancy Cross and the other Canada K. McComas, he was a tanner and a very stout man, only 7 days ill. Jesse Noland has lost a black girl and his two children been very low for a long time, say 7 to 8 weeks, not able to walk. Dr. Ragland lost a child with the same kind of fever, the doctors are not very successful in managing of it".
A friend of mine, Ronald Gibson, told me once that he had heard that Haag's Circus was coming to Albany from Burkesville, on a certain day. His father told him if he, and his brother, Lee, would work hard during the early part of the morning, they could come and sit on the fence and watch the parade go by. In these days every child had to help with the farm work, especially if it was the last cultivation, so they would be ready to enter school, which began the second Monday in July.
The first silent movie that came to Clinton County was in 1901. An Indian by the name of Maudekle from Somerset traveled through Wayne County and on down to Clinton County where he had his first show at the Caney Gap school house. My father had heard about the show and told my mother to have an early supper and we would go to see it. The admission price was five cents for children and ten cents for adults. A small phonograph was kept playing, while the show was going on. It really was something for us to see, we had seen what was called a magic lantern or slides, but we thought that this was wonderful. This time being just after the Spanish American War, I remember some songs were sung about Manila Bay, talks about the war and about Cuba. I believe that he went on to Albany with the show. He wore his black hair braided hanging down his back, and looked like a Cherokee Indian.
The first theatre was operated by M.A. (Crow) Brummett for almost six months in 1924. He had a small size screen and he showed silent movies. The second one was operated by a Mr. Mayfield in 1937. This theatre was located where Mrs. Vie Ringley's Beauty Shop is now, but a different building. About this time there was a theatre in what was then the Dan Dabney building. This building was of wood structure and located next door to where the Sheriff's office is now located.
In 1938, W.H. Nunn and Everett Hassler purchased both of the theatres and closed the one in the Dabney building, but continued to operate the one they had purchased from Mayfield.
They operated the theatre for some time and then bought the lot and built the building, where the Department of Human Resources offices are now located. The building was completed in 1939 and it was modern in every respect, having neon lights in front, a balcony in the theatre and comfortable seats. I believe the admission was 11 cents for children and 15 cents for adults. Technicolor was shown in the new theatre and many people had never seen a movie in color before. People came from all over the county to see the movies. Many people came from Pickett County, Tenn., as there was no theatre there. I remember Fate Rich, who lived near Static, would always bring a truck load of people, especially on Saturday nights.
by Duane Bristow
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As a boy growing up on a farm in Clinton County Kentucky in the 1950s and early 1960s I especially remember Saturdays. Families stayed home and did farm work during the week. Kids either went to school, did farm chores, or entertained themselves at home. Unless a piece broke on some item of farm equipment requiring a trip to town for repairs people only went to town on Saturdays. But on Saturday morning about everyone in the county came to town to get groceries, shop, talk to one another, do business and join in the doings. There would be one or two preachers on the town square setting up camp on one side or another of the courthouse singing gospel songs accompanied by an old guitar and yelling about hellfire and damnation. Each preacher would have a small group of people gathered around him or her and others would be sitting on benches on the courthouse yard or on the sidewalks across the street from the courthouse. Old men would sit there whittling, chewing tobacco and spitting on the sidewalk and young mothers would sit nursing a baby while several other kids played at their feet. There would be a crowd in all the stores all day long and cars would be lined up driving around the square.
On Saturday night the boys who were old enough to drive would come to town often with a car load of their younger siblings or neighbors. They would meet their girl friends there or get together with groups of boys they ran around with. They would sit on car hoods around the courthouse or cruise up and down from the courthouse to the stockyards about a mile South of town where they could turn around, drive back and drive around the courthouse once again to see and be seen. It was the adolescent courting ritual.
On Saturdays when my mother got groceries, she would always get a carton of six bottles of Coca Cola and a few candy bars. On Saturday night after supper everyone in the family was allowed their one bottle of pop and one candy bar of the week. In December though there was more candy and fruit and nuts available as Christmas approached. When I was in the eighth grade we got a Philco Television. Before that our entertainment on Saturday nights was usually to sit on the porch and watch the stars come out and listen to the owls and the whippoorwills. Sometimes we would catch lightning bugs. But after the TV came we had certain shows to watch each night and on Saturday night we would have our weekly pop and candy while watching "Gunsmoke". We would eat and drink while Deputy Chester ran stiff legged up the main street of Dodge City and burst into the Longhorn saloon yelling for Mr. Dillon. Marshall Matt Dillon would be sitting there talking to Miss Kitty and Doc.
We had electricity as long as I can remember but I remember we got a phone when I was a freshman in high school. When we were small my sister and I had to carry two and three gallon buckets of water from the spring about 100 yards from the house but, I guess, by the 6th grade we had hot and cold running water to a sink in the kitchen. We never did have a bathroom in the house though as long as I lived there. We always took a sponge bath with washcloths and wash pans on Saturdays whether we thought we needed it or not.
Summers off from school were spent hoeing corn, tobacco, and gardens, hauling hay, wading and swimming in the creek and lying under a shade tree in the yard reading a book about adventures in far away places. I usually spent Sundays in the fall, winter, and spring wandering in the mountains that surrounded the valley containing our farm. I would take a pack of hot dogs, a can of pork and beans, a honey bun and a canteen of water and walk for miles to the top of the mountains to see the scenery or looking for caves to explore or tracking deer and rabbits in the snow. I would go in almost any kind of weather and I would make camp at noon, sometimes under a cliff or beside a big rock, build a little campfire and heat my lunch. I would return home from mid to late afternoon tired but happy.
I attended Cowan School for the first eight years of my education. It was
a one room school with all eight grades and usually had a total of 20 to 30
pupils. There were two in my graduating class in the eighth grade. There was
no graduation the year before mine because the only pupil in that class got
pregnant and dropped out of school before graduation. I walked to school and
back each day. I was fortunate in that I lived close enough to the school
that I could walk home for lunch and did not have to bring my lunch as did the
other kids. When I came home from school in the afternoon tired from a hard
day of studying and playing my mother would fix me a bowl of soup beans, a
glass of buttermilk and a piece of corn bread which I would crumble into the
milk or the beans.
At school the pupils carried in coal for the pot-bellied heating stove which
sat in the center of the room and they carried buckets of drinking water from
a spring on our farm about a quarter of a mile from the school. The water
bucket sat on a table with a dipper and on shelves above it each child had his
own drinking cup. The owner's name was on a piece of adhesive tape on the
cup.
At Christmas we always got fruit, nuts, chocolate covered cherry candies, any clothing needed and one or two toys. I remember my favorites were science books, a chemistry set, a microscope, an electronic building set, and an archery set. The science books were part of a set of about 24 called All About books. They were written to introduce kids to science. They cost $2.95 each and I hoped to someday get the entire set. I would usually get one or two each Christmas and sometimes an extra one during the year. I finally ended up with twelve or fourteen of them before I got too old for them and went off to college. I remember some of my favorites were "All About Prehistoric Animals", "All About the Sea", "All about Snakes", "All About Radio and Television", and "All About Electricity".
The book "All About Prehistoric Animals" introduced me to Roy Chapman Andrews who was a palentologist with the Museum of Natural History in New York. He was one of my heroes because he discovered Tyrannosaurus Rex. I wrote to him once and received a nice letter in return in which he encouraged me to pursue studies in science. Another of my heroes whom I wrote to and received a return letter from was Jesse Stuart, a Kentucky author, who wrote stories about the land and the life and the kind of people I knew in Kentucky.
We once had a one armed bachelor who lived on our farm and worked for us. His name was Paul Pruitt. He was a great fan of World War II and had a huge collection of books about the war. He read them a lot and he and I would talk about the war when we were working together on the farm. Probably a lot of my interest in history is due to Paul. I don't know what ever happened to him.
My dad paid farm workers $3.00 a day plus their dinner. We would often have two to four farmhands having dinner with us during hay season. My mother would spend all morning in the kitchen cooking a large pot of soup beans and pans of corn bread. With that the table would have fried potatoes, sauerkraut, beet and cucumber pickles, large bowls of home churned butter, pitchers of milk, coffee for those who wanted it and fresh tomatoes and onions sliced. After several helpings everyone would sit on the front porch to cool off and maybe take a ten minute nap before heading back to the fields. Farm hands generally worked from 7 am to 5 pm. Before they arrived and after they left we would do the milking. We milked by hand and usually milked from 2 to 6 cows every day morning and night. When I became old enough for high school the milking became my responsibility. I would get up at 5:00 in the morning. By 5:15 I was way back in the fields getting the cows to the barn. In winter it was still dark then but I could do it by moon and starlight. By 7:00 I would have finished milking and have half an hour to eat breakfast and change clothes before time to catch the school bus. I would do the same thing again after school at about 5:00 in the afternoon.
When I was 16 we rented 20 acres to a group of people to grow a commercial crop of green beans. In July and August they brought in truck loads of workers to pick the beans by hand. There would be 20 or 30 workers in the field picking beans for a day or two each week for about three or four weeks. It was then that I got the highest paying job I had ever had. Those guys paid me 75 cents an hour to load 100 pound bags of green beans on the truck. By working from 7:00 to 5:00 I could make about $7.00 a day. That was big money.
My dad put the first laundromat in Albany and I had a job while I was in high school cleaning the laundromat after school. I would walk from the school to the laundromat each afternoon and sweep, mop, clean washers and dryers, fill candy and cigarette machines, etc. for one to two hours. For this I was paid $1.00 per day plus I got to keep any lost change I found in the washers. Sometimes that would be as much as another dollar.
For a few summers we grew green peppers to sell. After planting and hoeing them for a couple of months they would begin to ripen and be ready to sell in late July or early August. Two days a week we would pick peppers until 4:00 in the afternoon. Then we would take a truck load of peppers to the buying point at Byrdstown Tennessee about ten miles away. There we would have to sit in a long line of trucks with other farmers waiting to unload the peppers. We were paid on the basis of their grade and weight. I looked forward to these trips because we usually had to sit in line past supper time. They had just replaced the 5 cent, 7 oz. bottle of Coca Cola with the big 10 cent, 12 oz. bottle and the smaller Baby Ruth candy bar which sold for a nickle had also been superseded by the ten cent Baby Ruth which, I think, weighed a half pound. If we were late getting home my dad would buy me this huge bottle of Coke and giant candy bar for my supper. I thought that was great.
I was active in the 4-H club from the time I was 8 or 9 until I was about 16. I had a champion holstein cow which I had raised from a calf and which I showed in a number of dairy cattle shows, once winning a district championship. I won a number of projects at 4-H competitions including public speaking, seed identification, etc. I attended 4-H summer camp each summer where I learned swimming, boating, leather work, archery, and folk dancing among other things.
Last revised February 27, 1999.
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