Annie's Song: When I Married Your Daddy

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. 

Standing:  Morris Riley Adcock with hand
on Myrtle Adcock.  Seated:  Annie Biggs
Adcock holding Clara Adcock. 

"In the late Spring of 1910 at my parent's home I married Morris Riley Adcock.   There was no one except the family at the wedding, and Tom Smiley who was Morris Riley's cousin.  My brother Jack Biggs went to Joelton in his horse and buggy and got the Reverend George Miliken, a Baptist minister whom we all knew well.   He performed the ceremony.  

After the wedding we had a nice supper consisting of chicken and dumplings, turnip greens, and potato salad.   Plenty of coffee, cornbread and biscuits.  The Reverend Miliken ate supper with us.   Then brother taken him home.  

My husband and I went to his home and made it our home for about three and a half years.  We lived with his father and his brother Dave Adcock.  His mother Mary Frances Smiley Adcock had been dead for about a year.   His father did the cooking as I being about seventeen years old did not know how to cook.  I took training from his father and soon knew how to cook.  

We lived with them til we moved into a house my husband bought.  We had two little girls named Myrtle and Clara.   Their daddy would get one on each knee and rock them every evening.  My husband's father moved in with us.   We would leave our children with him and go fishing at night. 

We lived on the creek.  We hunted in the woods.   At that time we never had any extra furniture.   Nothing more than we had to have to use.   We had no means of travel other than a two-horse wagon and two mules.   The creek was between us and everyone who lived around.   When it got up, there was no getting anywhere.  

It was in the days of the coal-oil lamp.   If the creek got out of the banks and the oil got low, that meant no light.   If the matches gave out there was no fire until the old man got out his musket and loaded it with powder and cap, with cotton in the end of the barrel.   He shot it and then picked up the cotton and blew on it to start a fire.   Those were the happiest days of our lives."