Annie's Song: A Square Dance

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. 

A Square Dance

"One family gave a Square Dance.  Most had been invited, some boys were left out.   This was meant as a slight.   While all were in the house having fun with music and laughter, these boys slipped up to the old man's hen house and plucked every feather off his chickens.   Since it was cold weather, the man and his wife had to make clothes for the chickens to keep them from freezing till new feathers grew.   Music was by Dave Adcock on banjo, my husband on fiddle and Dan Raymer on guitar."

Annie's Song: Hospital at Joelton and A Terrible Noise

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. 

Hospital at Joelton

"Dr. Lang came to Joelton from Lansing, Michigan, and ran a hospital at what is now the funeral home.  Grandpa Adcock stayed in the hospital for about six weeks in the summer of 1914.  he stayed out in a tent as the house was full.   He got better and my husband went after him in an old buggy.   There is a lot of things I have to tell that can't be brought up because of the present generation. " 

A Terrible Noise

"My husband and I planned to go fishing one evening.   We lived just below a well known hole of water called the Blue Hole.   Just the other side of this hole of water there was an old log house two stories high.   The old log house had been hand built by my husband's grandparents about ten years before the Civil War.   They had spent their days in the old log house and died.   The old house was vacant.   We was sitting on the big rock of the Blue Hole fishing, when all at once we heard a terrible noise at the old house.   It sounded like something running up and down the steps.  My husband said he was going over there and see what all that noise was.  So, he did.  We had heard all kinds of tales about what was going on around this old house.   Well, he tried to slip up and see if he could find out something and he did.   

I had one brother and he had been up the creek for something.   he lived close to us and he was going home when he also heard the noise and stopped.   He went in this old house and there was a bunch of goats that had got inside and, somehow, got the door shut.   They was running up and down those steps.  My brother was chasing them just to hear the racket.   We all laughed and went home." 

Annie's Song: The Corn Crib

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. 

"Shortly after my husband and I moved into our new home with our two girls, my husband's father moved in with us.   He had a little red mule he called Mike.  He rode this mule everywhere he went.  Part of the time he had our oldest daughter Myrtle with him in his arms.  While we lived there Ruby and Ernest were born.  Myrtle and Clara followed their daddy and his father to feed the hogs and mules every night.   One evening, Clara laid down by her father while he was shucking corn to feed the stock.  He didn't see her and threw shucks all over her while she slept.   When he got through feeding the animals he thought Clara had already gone to the house.   I looked coming.   My husband was coming with his father, who had Myrtle, but, I didn't see Clara.  When I asked where she was, they said they thought she was at the house.   We looked everywhere.  We thought she might have fallen in the creek or that the hogs got her.   Finally, my husband looked in the corn crib.   When he opened the door, Clara woke up and raised up out of the corn shucks.   Her daddy wanted to whip her, but, I was so glad to find her I picked her up and ran to the house.  

Grandpa Adcock would get up and go back to the old house every day and work in his blacksmith shop.   He told me one time, he heard the ghost of his wife in the old house, which was up on a hill from the blacksmith shop.  He said she would walk from the table to the stove.   He would listen at eleven o'clock every day for she would come on the porch and call him for dinner.   He said he would sometimes walk up under a big apple tree which wasn't far from the house.   There he said, he couldn't hear her anymore."  

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."     

Old Liash McGraw and A Big Fight

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. 

"Old Liash McGraw"

"Old Liash McGraw was an old witch so Granpa Adcock said.   He loafed around the Smiley Settlement.   Come to our house one time. My daddy gave him a quilt to lay down on and he stayed all night.  

Morris Riley Adcock (1840-1919)

He first went to Grandpa Adcock's and he run him off.  Then he came here.  In the morning he wanted to sew up a hole in his britches.  I got a needle and threaded it for him.   He took the needle on with him.   

Grandpa Adcock said he buried that needle, and if I ever stepped over the place, I'd die.   That tale scared us so bad, my daddy wouldn't let him stay anymore.   I could write some that would take legs and walk.   But I'd better not."  

"A Big Fight"

"This was an occasion I attended in 1902.   This happened at the old Turn Hole bottoms, where the bridge goes up Huffman Road, better known as Dividing Bridge Road, just a little above the small creek called Bednigo.   They had fruit stands, about three of them, just a square made of planks and shelves where they had ice cream and cold lemonade, and sandwiches.  

Two big places built about two feet high for the musicians, which was mostly violins and banjos.  They had sawdust from the saw mill hauled up for to dance on.  There were two areas.  Each was big enough for about eight couples to dance.  There was a young man dressed up, sitting on one of the stands.  He was already drawing the bow on his violin.  His hair was curly and a rich auburn red.   Eight years later I married him.  

Well everybody was having a lot of fun when two men got into a quarrel over a small girl who was dancing.   She was about sixteen years old.   From that the big fight started.  There sure was a battle. Two men from Springfield almost got cut to pieces with knives.  Everybody got to leaving. I'll never forget that dance.  It was the thirty-first day of July, 1902.  There was several got hurt in that fight.   They had to be carried to the doctor's.  The young man I mentioned playing the violin, put his violin under his arm and up the creek he went."  

My Great Grandmother Shares Her Life

I am going to be posting a series of blogs that contain stories that my Great Grandmother, Annie B. Adcock wrote to her daughter my Great Aunt Clara.  My cousin, John R. Coles compiled them together and has graciously consented to share them with me in hopes that more of the Grandchildren can know this fascinating woman.

Grandmother (Mammy to most of her Grandchildren) was born on March 9, 1892.  She had eleven children of which my Grandmother, Myrtle Harris, was the oldest.   She died February 7, 1978 at the age of 85 and is buried at Forest Grove Cemetery.   

Unfortunately, I don't have very many memories of Grandmother.   I do remember going up to her house up in Joelton,TN with my mother when I was about 5 or 6 years old.   I remember that there were lots of people, and lots of food and the floor of their house kind of sloped.   I sat at the kitchen table, and there were huge biscuits offered to me.   Another memory is when Aunt Ruby brought Grandmother up to our house in Clarksville to give my sister Mary Tom, a white bible engraved with her name on it, for her graduation from high school.   I was so jealous of that beautiful bible.  

"Annie Biggs Adcock wrote a series of letters to her daughter, Clara Adcock Coles, telling her of her life.   She begins about 1901, when she moved to the land around Sycamore Creek in middle Tennessee.   I have included these letters just as she wrote them.   I knew my grandmother well and heard her tell most of these stories when I spent my childhood summers at her farm."  - John R. Coles  No More The Wild Country

Stay tuned for the actual letters....