yesterday's tennessee

I Remember

H. J. Bolen

Periclean Literary Society

Henderson County Times
January 7, 1981

The Lexington High School sponsored the Periclean Literary Society, which engaged in debating and oratorical contests each year during commencement week. I would like to recall some of those I remember who participated. I remember Ashley Adams being, the winner one year, receiving the J. O. Brown medal. Then another year Paul Walker, who hailed from Chesterfield, and who fainted and fell backwards just as he completed his lines of what had really been an excellent speech. Then there was Terry Wright, who was always quite deliberative in his expression, and always seemed more mature in his behavior. In fact, he had already picked out his wife and was carrying her books home each day while still in high school. I recall next Robert O. Pope, from Luray, who was a very nice and judicious person. and quite methodical in his ways. I was selected to participate one year. but I never won any medals. In 1924, though, I entered the Southern Oratorical Contest and won recognition. I have always thought, though, that another contestant should have won, for he made the best speech I had ever heard. Paul went on to become a banker in Knoxville, and not too long ago built him a retirement home near his native Chesterfield and goes back there each summer. Terry became County Judge. Ashley became an educator. Bob became a banker and manager of the McCall Insurance Agency, and I became a school teacher, following in the footsteps of both my grandmothers. I am sure all would say that the participation in the Periclean Literary Society helped us all in meeting our goal in life.

When I was in Lexington High School, there was a group of seventh and eighth grade students who formed what might have been thought of as a junior high school group. It was taught by Guy Amis. There was one or two students from this group who ventured to join with us in our Friday afternoon programs. I believe they were Tillman Stewart and Chester Stephens. I could not help note their enthusiasm, and soon they were taking part. It was easy to see that they would one day become outstanding speakers in their own right. I always thought, though, that their ambition was sparked by the opportunities they had as members of the PLS.

While I have never claimed for myself any outstanding accomplishments as a speaker, I must say that through the years I have had to draw upon my experiences as a participant in the little group that formed and became a part of the Lexington High School. We all seemed to aspire to be a Patrick Henry or a Daniel Webster. And we did it without any faculty sponsor or other adult guidance. We students did it on our own. I was always grateful, though, for the donation of the medal by J. O. Brown. He was always an inspiration to us all.

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Byrant Douglas

"I Remember"
By H. J. Bolen
Henderson County Times
January 14, 1981

I wish to write about Bryant Douglas, who was a neighbor in North Carolina of my great-great grandfather, John Bolen, and who settled in what is now the Bargerton area in Henderson County, Tennessee, about the year 1825. I have thought that Bryant Douglas was the progenitor of the Douglas family in Henderson County, Tennessee. Bryant Douglas owned a large plantation in his new-found land, which included all of what was known as the Fred Seller's farm. A neighbor of Douglas', John Mangun, back in North Carolina, had invented a system of terracing, and Mr. Douglas employed the plan on his own land in Henderson County. Bryant Douglas did not use slaves, but employed young men who had reached their majority and who wanted to hire out to do farm work. He had a large commissary, which years later became the Barger store.

The Bargers and Carringtons lived about a mile from Pleasant Exchange, and it was to the Carrington home that my great-grandfather, Reeves Bolen, went on coming to Tennessee, in 1836, as it was Duriney Carrington who was his childhood sweetheart back in North Carolina before the Carrington family migrated to Tennessee. Reeves Bolen and Steve Barger soon set out to pay a visit to the Bryant Douglas plantation, where they both secured farm work. Two years later Bolen married and Barger operated the big store. After some years, and when a post office was established here, the community was name Bargerton. Bryant Douglas must have been a very astute person, for Reeves Bolen, who worked for him and lived neighbor to him North Carolina, once remarked that wherever he went success always followed him. I used to talk with John Douglas, who lived in the Poplar Corner community, and he seemed to be very proud of his heritage. I asked him where Bryant Douglas was buried, and he thought his body must have been interred in an old family cemetery, but another member of the Douglas family thought he might have been buried in the Waller Cemetery.

A son of Bryant's lived in the Rock Springs neighborhood, and was reputed to be quite wealthy, having sacks of money sewed to his body clothing. While feeding his hogs, and seated on the hog pen fence, he was shot on July 2, 1901. A neighbor by the name of Joe Coffman was charged with the crime, with only circumstantial evidence being that Coffman was known to be spending money quite freely the next day following Douglas' murder. A preliminary hearing was held at Wildersville the latter part of July, 1901; and Coffman was bound over to Circuit Court and later convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary. This episode, though, ended the original Douglas family that came to Henderson County, Tennessee, in 1823, and gave us one of the most noted families in the annals of the county's history.

I have noted in this sketch an account of Steve Barger, who was a brother of James Barger, and who without schools became educated. James was an inventor and photographer, and who for fifty years went all over the county taking pictures and tinkering with everything mechanical. He left the county for Texas in 1910, and lived to be 100 years old. The Reeves Bolen mentioned in this sketch, too, married the daughter of Sion Carrington, in 1838, lived in the Carrington home until he acquired land adjoining the Carrington land, which also adjoined the Barger farm. He built the only home he ever had in Henderson County, Tennessee, where he reared his family, and both are buried in the garden area of the Sion Carrington home, which is still owned by members of the family. The Bargers were buried in the garden of their home, just north of the old Barger house, one half mile from the Carringlon home. I remember a large white oak tree stood in the yard of the Bolen home, and which was blown down in the 1930's. The house stood about half way between Wildersville hill and the Wildersville Cemetery, on the old Trenton road.

All references are merely incidental except the one about Bryant Douglas, for his part in Henderson County's history is one that does not allow us to dismiss lightly. The Douglas family has made great contributions to the advancement of the county almost from the beginning. It is interesting, though, to note that the Bolens, Carringtons, Bargers, and Douglases came from Orange County, North Carolina, where they were neighbors. It might be noted, too, that the Reeves Bolen's father and his eldest son bought the Carrington farm in North Carolina when the Carringtons came to Tennessee.

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William Robert Wilson

"I Remember"
By H. J. Bolen
Henderson County Times
January 21, 1981

William Robert Wilson, one of the most versatile men ever to live in Henderson County, Tennessee, was born in Hardeman County. Tennessee, and migrated with his parents to Union County, Illinois, when, he was two years old. He entered school when he was six and enrolled in a school taught by my grandmother, Hannah Elizabeth Ican, at Mt. Pleasant, Illinois, in Union County. Mr. Wilson's father and William Essary, who also migrated to Illinois and lived there until after the Civil War, became good friends, and he also felt that Mr. Essary had great influence on his father in resettling in Henderson County after the war. Mr. Wilson always indicated that his father, Mr. Essary, and my grandfather, John W. Bolen, became good friends which continued to be close until their deaths. Mr. Wilson's family returned to Tennessee in 1868, when he was nine years old. Mr. Essary returned in 1867 and John W. Bolen, who in 1866 had married Mr. Wilson's teacher, Hannah Ican, and with their two children, returned in 1870.

I have already mentioned about the versatility of the man, and I would like to mention now the positions he held and did well in all of them: a teacher and principal, county superintendent of schools, editor and publisher of the Lexington Republican, county surveyor, City Recorder of Lexington, half owner and manager of City Drug Store, and a man whose civic interest extended to all the county at all times. I shall always remember when he was county agent and visiting me when I was in the field chopping cotton and taking my hoe, he showed me how to hoe the plants and leave just one plant to a hill. It seemed so easy for him, and I was sorry when he turned the hoe back to me. I also had him as a teacher and he was truly one of the world's great. In fact, he served well wherever he responded to the call of service to his fellow men.

Mr. Wilson was a man of integrity, and he could not tolerate deceit and fraud in other men. I recall a traveling representative selling him some sort of article for his home which, when delivered was grossly misrepresented. He told the salesman in no uncertain terms what he had done to make a sale, and the salesman decided to take advantage of his being younger and whip Mr. Wilson. Then he saw Mr. Wilson shedding his coat and rolling up his sleeve, so he started running down the road rather than face an irate man who had just enough Irish blood in him to be fearless when the time came to defend right against wrong.

After Mr. Wilson's wife died, whom he loved and adored until the end, he purchased a monument for their gravesite in the Wildersville Cemetery, and wanted me to go by there and see it. In reading the purported line he wanted inscribed on the monument, he went on to tell me that life for him during and following the War Between the States, and all though life had been most difficult, and he had no desire to repeat it. He felt this expression on his tombstone said it better than anything else. So when the inscription was completed it read: "To Sail Life's Troubled Sea No More." And true it was, his life had sailed many troubled seas and overcome many obstacles, he also knew of its joys and blessings in serving mankind.

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Farmville

"I Remember"
By H. J. Bolen
Henderson County Times
January 28, 1981

I wish to write an account of my memories of one of the earlier communities of Henderson County, Tenn. By the early 1840's Farmville, in the northern section of the county, was well settled by some of the country's finest people. Among the early settlers, we find such names as the Owens, the Mossers, the Jordans, the Morgans, the Dabbs, the Cozarts, the Walkers, the Cullivers, and others. A Mr. Terry Weaver operated a general store, and the Mr. Culliver, above, operated a large mercantile establishment. A saloon, or grocery, as they were then called, were operated by Therrell Brothers, Eph Jordan, and J. I. Hester. There were four medical doctors who lived and practiced in the area; namely, McKaney, McCauley, Still, Townes and Boyd. Dr. Boyd was the last practicing physician with his death on March 25. 1926. My father gave the eulogy at his funeral, and it was his father who sent the first call to Dr. Boyd when he set up his practice in the community. Dr. Towne operated a drugstore and set up an apothecary shop there. He was from Farmville, Virginia and he named the town after the Virginia town. Many early settlers came to Henderson County from this area.

When one researches the censuses from 1830 to 1860, he confirms the fact that the Farmville settlement had people of more wealth than any other [part of] Henderson County at the time. Many owned slaves, and there were more professional people living in the community. One lawyer lived in the Farmville community who brought a kind of fame to the town when one began to hear the statement in making comparisons, with the expression, "As big as the nose on Bradbury's face"; for William Bradbury had such a huge nose it was understood when one wanted to make an easy comparison.

Farmville had a log school house, and an older brother and sister attended school in it. There was also a Farmville cemetery, just situated on a plot of ground near the home of J. I. Hester, whose son Richard Hester, was a noted teacher in the Farmville school. He later went to Memphis and joined the Bowers chain of stores, becoming superintendent of the operation, and inducing Mr. Bowers to give $5,000.00 to the Henderson County storm sufferers in 1913. A cousin of his, Joe Hester, was long the county court clerk of Carroll County, and his cousin, Miss Eunice Hester, taught the first school

in the new building, and where I attended my first school. I taught the school myself 20 years later and the first grade reading chart was still in use in the building when I went back there to teach the school. To go back to the Bowers gift to the Henderson County storm sufferers, I might. add that Mr. W. V. Barry, who edited and published the Lexington Progress, paid an editorial tribute to the generosity of Mr. Bowers. Mr. Bowers had more than fifty stores in his chain, and all of them were noted for their red fronts.

The last store to operate in Farmville used the Masonic Hall. The lodge dated from 1840, moved to Yuma in 1901, to Wildersville in 1917, and then merged with Constantine Lodge at Lexington. My father and grandfather served the lodge as masters, and when it was the Farmville Lodge it had the largest membership in the county.

The racetrack at the old Pleasant Exchange was moved to Farmville, and it continued to operate until about the year 1890. So many horses showed up for the races at one time, someone called it "just a bucksnorting place. This was about the time of so many western "broncos" were run in races. Then for many years the place was nicknamed "Bucksnort." And if you mentioned the place right now to Jim Bolen, he would call Farmville by that name still.

A very terrible and tornado hit about 1850 in the wooded area just northeastl. of Farmvill~ and cut a ten mile~swath~. for a distance of fifteen miles, leaving not a tree or a house standing. For many years, and even today, you may hear of the area being known as the ‘Hurricane."

A new cemetery was started in 1901, with Dr. Boyd giving the land for it and his son was the first interred in it. About the year 1950 the name was changed to Farmville Cemetery.

Not a building or a house stands today where the town of Farmville once stood as the home of some of the finest families ever to settle in Henderson County, Tennessee."

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Bedford Washington Walker

"I Remember"
By H. J. Bolen
Henderson County Times
February 4, 1981

Bedford Washington Walker was a neighbor of ours, and a good one. He was the son of Levi Walker of the Farmville area, and who was a brother of Washington Walker of the Chesterfield section of Henderson County. I remember Washington Walker visiting his nephew, "Bud" Walker, the name he was familiarly known by, along with his brother, Levi Walker, who lived in the Yuma area of Carroll county, and I listened to an interesting conversation which began with the telling of the migratory journey of Levi Walker and Washington Walker from North Carolina to Henderson County, Tennessee. All the way over they fought and argued over the North-South controversy and when they arrived they refused to settle in the same locality, Levi stopping in the Farmville area and Washington going on to Chesterfield, which was long known as Lone Elm. Such family misunderstandings were common preceding, during, and following the Civil War. It is interesting to note, too, that the Levi Walker family were adherents of the Democratic Party, while the Washington Walker family was for the most part Republicans, and this division seems to have continued to this day. I remember hearing Mr. "Bud" Walker say, after voting for Ben W. Hooper, a Republican governor of Tennessee, that is was the first time he had ever voted for a Republican candidate. Of course, a good many Democrats had to vote Republican to elect a Republican in Tennessee at the time. Politics, in my day, did not seem to divide neighbors. Wildersville was for the most part a Democrat community, but the visitations among them in our home seem never to produce any political misunderstandings of any kind.

When hog-killing time came, the neighbors all came in to help with the job. It seems the rifle-man who became the official "executioner" was always Mr. "Bud" Walker, and he never missed his target. The dinner my mother prepared for the "killers" was always a sumptuous one, and the "guests" were always ready after getting on the job before daylight and working hard slaughtering hogs, cutting and trimming, grinding sausage, and cooking off the lard. Perhaps these neighborly acts superseded all political aspirations.

I remember Mr. "Bud" Walker giving me a baby goat and telling me I would have to nurse it from a bottle every day. He called it a "kid" and said that all baby goats were called that. I note now that both parents and teachers call children "kids." I don't know whether we are elevating the goat or depreciating the child. I have had the pleasure of raising a goat and of rearing a child, and I must say that it takes longer to rear a child and the job, is much harder to achieve.

I should like to mention this one other connection with the fine Walker family, which began with Levi Walker. I kept hearing the reference to him as "Old Man Levi Walker" in my young days. So when I visited the New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery, I looked up the marker to Levi Walker's grave and found that he had died in his forties. Then I thought that my own great-grandfather, Reeves Bolen, died in his forties, too, and was always spoken of as an old man. I guess old age is what you have experienced, for our pioneering fathers went through many hardships to try to expand our land and bring opportunity to their posterity.

The Walker family has evidenced its convictions or issues that concerned them when they settled in Henderson County, Tennessee, and these convictions have followed them as they passed them on to their children and grandchildren. The county, state, and nation are better because of the family heritage it left us.

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J. I. Fesmire Family

"I Remember"
By H. J. Bolen
Henderson County Times
February 11, 1981

I wish to write something about the J. I. Fesmire family who lived on almost the exact site of the town of Red Mound, name of a community in North Carolina from whence most of the early settlers came to Henderson County, Tennessee.

Mr. Fesmire was reared by his mother and grandparents, the old home being situated just about a half mile from his later home on the farm he bought from Mr. Zelmer Scott. Mr. Fesmire married Miss Nora Bolen, who was a daughter of S. M. Bolen and wife, Amanda Melton, and their children were:. Vera, Ennis. Raymond. Ivory, Mamie, Lester, and Onis. With his old original place. he not only added the Scott place, but later bought the Tommy Murphy farm.

Mr. Fesmire and his boys went to work to pay for the land he had bought. They cleared all available land for planting cotton, and the family was soon producing more bates of cotton than any other family in the area. Knowing what a working group they were, Mr. Sam Murphy, a very astute man, selected his son Raymond to run his cotton gin in Wildersville.

With jobs in a small town hard to get, some of the rest of us would go to Mr. Murphy seeking a job like he gave Raymond Fesmire. He always told us we did not like hard work. I did get a job clerking in the store of Joe P. Parker, which went by the style name of Parker Mercantile Company. I thought this job would be secure, but I soon learned that it was harder than running a cotton gin. Building a fire in Mr. Parker's house, and one in the store each morning, too, salting away and shipping hides, cooping and shipping chickens and geese, buying and selling hog lard, opening banana crates, selling shoes and clothing, selling and loading barrels of flour and salt which would strain a six-foot-130 pound 18 year old boy. It was not unusual for me to be selling a pound of lard one minute and selling a suit of clothes the next. I remember I also weighed cotton when Mr. Parker was tied up with other matters. In short, a store job in those days meant doing almost anything that came along. I remember one time a coop of geese got out and I had to run them down and catch them and then get them back into the coop.

The Fesmire children went to school with me, and I recall going home with them and spending the night. I remember seeing their grandmother sitting in the corner knitting. The grandmother lived to be nearly a hundred, and the whole family seemed to be devoted to her. And all the children except Raymond, Ennis, and Vera went to school to me at Parker's Cross Roads. The children were all loyal and dependable. They would help clean the school building each week. I would run footraces with Ivory, and I always thought he let me win each time. He was always so kind and considerate. I always said that he was one of the best boys I ever knew.

His sister, Mamie, who was next to Ivory, had a childhood crush on Lloyd Rush, another fine boy who went to school with me, & I really thought that they might one day' marry, but Mamie married Jean Derryberry, another fine boy, and whose brother Tom also attended my school.

It was my first school and the year was 1919. I remember one summer selling insurance to earn money to go away to school, and going to Ennis Fesmire to sell him a 20-year endowment policy. Forty years later I asked Ennis about the policy while he was going with me over the Wildersville Cemetery (Jones) a few summers ago, and he told me he still had it and it was now worth much more than its face value. I could go on extolling the virtues of this fine family, but may it suffice just here to say that no finer family ever lived in Henderson County. They seem to have inborn in them the feeling that honesty and hard work have their rewards.

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Winfred Lancaster

"I Remember"
By H. J. Bolen
Henderson County Times
February 18, 1981

I remember many good friends I made during school days, and some who remained friends right on through the years. I recall Winfred Lancaster who, from high school days, remained my friend right on to his death some years ago. He was the son of Judge W. H. Lancaster, but was given to his brother to rear as his own. The brother, Judge T. A. "Ack" Lancaster, and his brother W. H. "Bill" Lancaster were more than just blood brothers, as we say, but they were very devoted to each other's welfare and found mutual understanding and respect virtues in their lives. After our high school days together, Winfred went to a Jackson business college, along with Claude Fesmire, with Glenn Jarrett and I going to Union University. We managed to get together some, though, with Jarrett boarding the same place. Winfred made arrangements for me to speak at one of their chapel programs, and what an introduction he gave, no one knowing we were good friends. When his uncle, Judge T. A. Lancaster, was appointed U.S. District Attorney of West Tennessee, he made Winfred his secretary, and they got me a teaching job in Memphis and told me to go to night school and study shorthand and I could have a secretarial job in the District Attorney's office. Yet, when the summer of 1928 came along I went to the Peabody College employment office and got a school position in Florida, which had the reputation of paying more than any other state at the time. Although I left the state at this time, Winfred and I kept in touch and never lost contact with each other.

When Judge Lancaster went to Washington to see about his appointment for the District Attorney's post, he came back to Lexington and there was some kind of reception held in the law offices of the Lancaster brothers. My father seems to have been invited to attend and when he came back home he was telling us all, with some degree of pride, that Judge Lancaster had described President Coolidge by telling the group that he looked to him as being about the size of W. R. Bolen. This event and the days that followed were great ones for Winfred, as he felt that his uncle, father, and friend was now one of the nation's greatest men. Another Henderson Countian, William R. Wright, was also appointed to a federal post, that of U.S. Marshal for the U.S. District Court for West Tennessee. Just previously to this recognition for Henderson County citizens, Judge John E. McCall had served as U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Tennessee, he having died in that office.

Winfred Lancaster was later appointed to a position with the state veterans service, and Claude Fesmire became a banker with the First National Bank of Lexington, with Glenn Jarrett setting up a dental practice in Lexington. I boarded with Claude Fesmire at Judge Felix Davis's home one year, sleeping with my friend, Ashley Adams, with Claude and Tipton Powers across the hall in another room. Claude always entertained us with his jokes that were taken from country settings which spiked good humor. After a life of dedication to education in Henderson County, Ashley closed his educational career as county superintendent of schools. Tipton taught for many years in the county schools.

Winfred Lancaster was a very intelligent person, always full of fun and effervescing with humor. He joined me at Wildersville when ex-Sheriff John Franklin led a posse of citizens seeking the killer of Sheriff W. H. McBride, which lasted a whole day. I had my father's single-barreled shotgun, which got quite heavy during the long trek, and the only one with a shotgun. Winfred poked fun at me all day, and found something funny about my participation for years to come. And again when Allan Sweatt broke a stick of crayon on my nose, throwing it from across the room during a French class session. When I learned who threw the crayon. I jumped on Allan as we went down the hall. Such, a confrontation was always the delight of Winfred. Winfred was always a true sport, and ever true to his friends, and I never heard him speak ill of anyone. I remember him as one of the finest specimens of manhood ever to come from the heritage of Henderson County.

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Jessie Hester

"I Remember"
By H. J. Bolen
Henderson County Times
February 25, 1981

I remember Mrs. Jessie Hester, a widow, who lived all her life in the Farmville community, on a farm left to her by her husband, in the early 1900's. She had one son, Truman, whom I remember quite well, and who, I recall was crippled. He was older than I, tall and gangly, and who suffered many falls trying to run races on the hilly mound on which the schoolhouse was built. I don't know why, but I always felt sorry for him when he suffered such falls. His mother, "Miss Jessie," as she was affectionately called, never reflected poverty, although I know she was not wealthy. She always wore a choker, and her dress was usually decorated with broaches and cameo pins. Of course, she married into the Hester family and the family by this name always seemed to enjoy good living standards: I feel sure, though, a widow with a young son who was not able to run the farm would have had to have financial help if she had lived now. Miss Jessie sent her son to the Farmville school, and that must have been the extent of his education. He had two cousins who were teachers of the Farmville school; namely. Richard and Eunice, the latter being my first teacher and who taught me to read and write. She later taught the Murphy's Valley school, and boarded in our home. "Miss Eunice," the name she was known by for many years, married Lytle Laws, a successful farmer of Parker's Cross Roads. Her sister, Ruby, and another cousin of Truman's married Sam Laws, Lytle's brother, also, a successful farmer. I remember very well visiting in the Will Law's home and hearing the boys, Lytle and Sam, kid each other about their girl friends. Sam and I used to go about over Carroll and Henderson Counties debating wherever we could get anyone to listen to us. I noted in the Will Laws home, who was a smart and unique man, and who was a farmer and rural mail carrier whose mule and large buggy was quite a load for them when he got in with his 300 pounds of weight. The Laws family was related to the Pearson family, and the family was noted for its high intelligence. Will Laws' brother went to Muscogee, Oklahoma, and became a noted surgeon. It has always been interesting to note how the Hester and Laws families, both noted for their high mental caliber, were attracted to each other.

I seem to remember that the humorous side of life has always seemed to interest me. I recall an incident that gave me a good laugh at the expense of Truman Hester. I was weighing a wagon load of cotton at Mr. Parker's Wildersville gin, driven by his son, with Truman, the father, standing beside me. All at once, the son drove off before we could finish toward one of the other competitive gins and buyers, and when I looked up at Truman in amazement, he quipped: "He must think he is the ‘Pappy'," and walked on in search of his son. In later years I had his son in school, and found him to be an obedient and understandable son. The father, Truman, though, was always my hero, for he overcame great odds.

"Miss Jessie" was a heroine, too, for she must have had a hard and rough road to travel. Yet, she was always petite looking and impressed you with her delicate taste.

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