Annie's Song: Grandpa and Grandma Adcock

Following are excerpts from stories written by my Great-Grandmother, Annie Biggs Adcock as they were written to her daughter Clara.  They were compiled in a book entitled No More The Wild Country by my cousin John R. Coles.   He graciously gave me permission to use these in hopes that future generations of our family will know a little bit of our history. 

"My husband's father Morris Riley Adcock, was a blacksmith. He farmed a little, too.  It was said he raised seven plants of tobacco to chew. Being the only blacksmith in the area, he got more than he could do. Mules had to be shod and plows and hoes sharpened. There was always a crowd at the blacksmith shop.  

He told me he remembered seeing wounded men walking the ridge road going home from the Civil War. After the war, gangs of rough men, some local deserters, decided to make life easier by stealing and robbing anyone in the community.  They rode horses and mules up to a place and took anything of value and rode away. Grandpa Adcock said he saw them coming and ran home and warned his daddy, Carter Adcock.  

The men in the family with the exception of one, sick with fever, took all the food and meat to a cave across the creek above the Blue Hole.  It was a high place on a ledge.   They could shoot them if they came near the cave. But, they rode to the house.   The women offered no resistance, so they pilfered the house, even taking the feather bed from under sick brother, and leaving him laying on the floor. After they were gone, the men returned the food and valuables from the cave.   

Mary Smiley Adcock, my husband's mother was a fine housekeeper.  She spun thread on a spinning wheel and made all their socks.   They had sheep and they sheared the wool and washed it, carded it , and made little rolls abouty a half a foot long out of the wool and spun it into thread on the spinning wheel.   I had never heard one before and it scared me half crazy.  I ran home and got my mamma and we went to see what it was.   We came to where she was spinning on the porch.   I thought it was a terrible sight.   

She quilted three or four new quilts every fall.   They didn't can much.   But, there was no end to drying apples and sliced pumpkins.   They killed hogs and saved every one of the entrails to make soap.   They also raised geese which they picked to make feather beds and pillows.   The creek bottoms were full of geese."