AS I REMEMBER MY FATHER, CAPT

I was only twelve years old when my father died but I feel he had more influence on my character, by his good example, than any other contact that I had the rest of my life. My earliest recollection of him was while sitting around the open fireplace in our two-story log house in Tennessee, listening to him and my maternal great uncle Edd Meredith recount many of their experiences in the War between the States.

He never called it the Civil War, but the War of Secession. He always maintained that it was started because the Southern States wanted to secede, and not because of abolition. As a matter of history, the slaves were not freed until June 19th, 1963, more than 2 years after the war began, and then only in the seceding states. They were not freed in the other states until the 13th Amendment in 1965. My father's family never owned a slave, but my father at age of l8 got on his plough horse and went off to fight for States' Rights and joined Dibrell's Brigade of the 8th Tennessee Cavalry and served four years, being discharged as a Captain.

His brigade was at times a part of General Nathan Bedford Forrest's Army at the Battle of Chickamauga, near Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. He was a great admirer of General Forrest for his clever strategy and maneuvers. I remember my father telling of how General Forrest bluffed a Yankee commander into surrendering to him by marching his men in and out of a clearing in a woods to make it appear that Forrest had them greatly out-numbered. And I remember my father telling how General Forrest would at dark get two infantry men, one on each side of a cavalryman's horse and by the infantrymen holding to the stirrups of the cavalrymen, march them 50 miles during the night and attack the enemy in the rear at dawn and surprise them.

I remember father telling about the Battle of Chickamauga which was a very fierce fight to a draw and stopped at nightfall in a heavy rain and the men "slept on their arms." I remember my father telling about trying to find a log on which to rest his head, but when he laid his head on what he thought was a mossy log, a human hand came over in his face and he found the log was an unconscious wounded soldier. I have forgotten the rest of the story -- don't know whether it was a Yank or a Reb soldier.

Dibrell's Brigade was a part of General Joe Wheeler's command in the latter part of the war, opposing Sherman's March to the Sea, burning and destroying everything before him. That was the first "scorched earth" campaign. General Wheeler was preceding Sherman, slowing him down by burning bridges and warning the people to hide their silverware and livestock. I remember one humorous story about General Wheeler. He was a little man but a brave one. He wore his hair long and rode a big white horse. Most of the bridges were wooden covered bridges. General Wheeler and a small unit would hold the Yanks off until they got the bridge to burning and the General would always be the last man to ride under the burning covered bridge. One time he waited so long that he got most of his hair singed off. The enlisted men got a big laugh out of that.

After the fall of Richmond, President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet tried to escape with what gold they had by coming south on the railroad to the rail's end at Greensboro, N. C,, then by wagon train tried to get to the Gulf, hoping to get by boat to Texas and to continue the war from there. General Dibrell's Brigade was assigned the duty of guarding the wagon train. The South by that time was overrun with Union troops and they had to travel by backroads and fight off searching parties and finally got down in southern Georgia before President Davis decided it was hopeless. He sent his Secretary of War, Judah Benjamin, with part of the gold to Bermuda by boat, and let the rest of the cabinet go home, except the youngest member, John H. Reagan, of Texas, who still hoped that he and Davis could get across in to Texas some way, but the Union troops were after them so hot they did not succeed. I remember Father telling about one of his soldiers of his platoon who was guarding one of the wagon's with gold, saying to my father, "The war is lost, why don't you and I take this wagon of gold, put some hay over it, dress as farmers, and take out." My father was so mad he almost shot the man. President Davis disposed of the balance of the gold by paying each man in the brigade a $20 gold piece and releasing them to go home, which they did after being paroled.

Of course as a small boy I did not remember all those details, but I have since researched Davis' surrender and found documents that verified the above facts.

I don't want to take up so much time talking about the war stories I heard my father and Uncle Edd Meredith recount, but they did have a lasting effect upon me, causing me to have a great love of my state and my country. I suppose that is the reason that I volunteered early in World War I and stayed in the Reserve Corps of the Army between World War I and World War II. Since I have mentioned Uncle Edd Meredith recounting his experiences, I will tell you one humorous story he told on himself. He was captured and was being sent back up the river on a boat to the Union Prison at Rock Island, Ill. When the boat passed near Memphis, Tennessee, he and another Tennessee boy decided they would escape by jumping off the boat and swimming ashore. They did and lay out in the cane brakes of the Mississippi River for a couple of nights and became so cold and hungry they decided to walk out on the big road and let the Yanks capture them. They were sitting on the side of the road, wet, cold and bedraggled until a detail of Yankee cavalry came along and the Yanks threw down their guns, looked at them and said, "We've got you." Without arising. Uncle Edd said, "Well, it's a hell of a git you got." Uncle Edd had rheumatism after the war and he always blamed it on that episode. He also used his rheumatism for an excuse to drink considerably. He was a good recounter of his battle experience, especially when he had a few nips. On one occasion at a Confederate Reunion, he was telling of a rather wild battle and one of his war buddies said "Now, Edd, that ain't the way it happened, I was there." Uncle Edd replied, "There goes another dam eye witness, ruining a good story." Uncle Edd and his wife, Aunt Bet, lived with their relatives most of the time and were frequently guests at our house for lengthy visits, and he was always good for many laughs.

My father, unlike Uncle Edd, took the War seriously and became an officer. He was a very conscientious citizen. When his hero, General Forrest, organized the Ku Klux Klan and went about with sheets over them trying to scare the ex-slaves into behaving, and not molesting the white women. My father would not join the Klux because he said "I don't believe in covering my face for anything I want to do." General Forrest disbanded the Klux after he found that irresponsible people were putting pillowslips over their heads and going about whipping anybody they did not like.

My father was a very erect and broad-shouldered man, with a quick step and a quick smile which flashed pretty white teeth and twinkling blue eyes. He was an amiable per-son who made friends readily and kept them permanently. When I would go to town or to mill and was asked "whose your daddy," and I told them, I can remember with pride, how friendly they would say "So, you are Billy Hill's boy." It made me feel good all over. He was a leader in his community, on the school board and road overseer. As a matter of fact that is how he met my mother; he was school trustee over Mt. Pleasant School where my mother was a teacher. She was a widow, at 20, and he was a widower, each of them having lost their first spouse. Each of them had children, my father three, and my mother one. We children got along so well we never knew who was half-sister or half-brother. My father was l4 years older than my mother, and my half brother, Matt Hill, was in his teens and he and my mother were great friends. She used to try to keep him from going to "square dances," where she thought there would be drinking and fighting as well as dancing. He would put his shoes outside and slip out in his sox feet. On one occasion she thought she had foiled him by hiding his shoes. Years later she learned that he had borrowed his Pa's boots and went anyway. But he did admit the boots were too big and he got blisters on his heels. Of course, I was not born at that time, but heard my brother and my mother laugh about that and other events of our family life. My brother came to Texas in 1889 to visit my Grandmother Meredith at Hillsboro, Texas. She had moved to Texas, in the 1870's and had run a boarding house as the MK&T Railroad built down through Texas, first at Alvarado, then Hillsboro and Smithville. Her daughters, three of them, married railroad men, and her youngest son, Tom Meredith, became a conductor, and so did my brother Matt. When my brother Matt left Tennessee for Texas, he cut his name on a big beech tree and the date. About 5 years ago I was back in Tennessee and looked for that tree and found it. It was "Matt Hill l889." As the tree had grown the letters expanded to about 6 inches in height. Beech trees do not shed their bark and as they grow so does the carving. That is why they were favorite places for lovers to carve their initials and then carve a big Heart around them. But I keep digressing instead of talking about my father as I remember him.

Due to his popularity he was elected Tax Assessor just at the time White County was building a new court house. I remember at the time the cornerstone was laid we attended. The Master of the Masonic Lodge, Henry Snodgrass, leveled it and put the relics in it. He was the leading lawyer, and an orator. He also had a sense of humor. He put a Bible, a dirk knife, and a bottle of whiskey in the cornerstone, and said the relics were typical of the East Tennessee mountain people, "hard drinking, hard fighting, and hard praying people." I thought that was the biggest court house in Tennessee, and when I returned to, Sparta, Tennessee, from Texas after I was grown I was so disappointed because it was not as big as I had thought when I was a 10-year old boy. The Court Room was the auditorium for all events. I remember when a couple of my father's cousins returned from the Spanish American War they had a big parade for them and they made speeches in the Court House. Another thing I had remembered that the Sheriff's office was the recreation room for all the storytellers and whittlers. Everyone owned a sharp Borolow knife and a soft piece of red whittling cedar. Each one would try to make the longest and thinnest and curliest shaving. The floor would be inches deep in shavings. When I was back there last in 1954, sure enough, the whittlers were still sitting in the Sheriff's waiting room whittling and the floor was covered with cedar shavings just as it was in 1901. Beverly Hill Billies, Jed Clampett, must have gotten his whittling skill from just such a setting.

My father being a Confederate Officer, frequently marshalled the Parades, both Confederate and Political. Most of the participants rode horseback and all prided themselves in their horses and riding habits. The women all rode side-saddle and wore long skirts that came well below their legs and feet. I remember how proud I was of my father and sisters in those parades. The candidates for Governor would usually be the chief speakers at the Confederate Reunions. I remember Bob Taylor, the greatest humorist and orator Tennessee ever produced, and Benton McMillan, as two who came to Sparta. They came down the pike from Cookeville, and the Parade would meet them half way and come into town with the band playing and the flags flying. Bob Taylor carried his fiddle and would regale the crowd with his famous speech "The Fiddle and the Bow." When I was back there in 1954 I got a book containing his speeches and a history of his campaigns against his brother Alf Taylor, a Republican. Alf finally became governor after Bob died. They were both great and good men.

But back to my father. I remember him best as a farmer. We always raised lots of corn and wheat, cows and hogs. We did not have much cash crops, about the only cash was for spoke lumber and stove wood, and a little cash for surplus wheat, but we did always have plenty of good food, we had a big spring house full of canned fruit, plenty of chestnuts and walnuts, and we had a big smokehouse full of hams, bacon and lard. We ran our hogs on the "mast" from acorns and beech nuts and the meat was as sweet as anything you ever put in your mouth. It was all hickory smoked. We killed twenty or more hogs every year, and used the side meat to pay our field hands. In our smokehouse we had barrels of molasses, flour, meal and salt. The smokehouse floor was where we children played in the winter while keeping the hickory chip fire going to smoke the hams and shoulders hanging high in the ceilings. It was thought that high ceilings were best as the smoke rarefied as it ascended. Be that true or untrue, I know that hickory cured ham attracted lots of visitors. It was the custom to invite anyone who passed our house anywhere near meal time to "light and set a spell," and they usually "set" until meal time. We had some rare characters among those stop-and set-and-eat visitors. One I remember was a deaf and dumb man named Jim Monroe. It was the custom to keep passing the biscuits and ham as long as anyone would eat. When Jim would get full he would draw his finger across his throat just under his ear, meaning, "I'M FULL UP TO HERE." Sometime some of our visitors would be pretty liquored up, but my father never turned anyone away no matter what his condition. I recall one fellow whose name I had better not remember, who got impatient sitting on the front porch, waiting for supper, and ever so often would shout, "Supper, supper. God dammit ain't we ever going to have SUPPER HERE TONIGHT." That would greatly embarrass my mother who did not "hold with drinking" but my father never "turned a hair" or lost his temper. My father was a '"temperate man" himself and though he would take a dram with a friend, I never saw him the "least bit under the influence." He always kept a quart on the mantle but he would go for days without touching it, only then as hospitality with a friend, when he would put some rock candy in hot water and take a dram for a sore throat. I think his temperance had its influence on me. I have always tried to control my drinks to "two before meals" never after, or during business hours. Parents rarely realize how much more their examples influence their children than what they preach at them. My father used to say to the girls when they dressed up to go out, "Pretty is as pretty does." I think that was the philosophy which guided his actions.

But, getting back to my association with my father:

He would usually take me with him to town on Saturdays and park me in Mr. Jim Mitchell's grocery store, with a few peppermint sticks of candy while he visited and did a little politicing with the boys in the saloon next door. On one occasion there was a circus in town and quite a crowd gathered. We had a City Marshal, Bill Pasons, who was as fearless a man as ever lived. He would walk up and take a smoking gun out of a man's hand without ever pulling his own gun. On more than one occasion some of them took shots at him and once or twice he was hit but never seriously. So his reputation grew until people said "Nobody can kill Bill Pasons." On this day I was about to relate, a little sawed-off mountain boy had come to town with the avowed intention of showing the other folks that Bill Pasons could be killed. This runty boy was in his shirt sleeves but had on a vest. He was in the saloon getting himself fortified, when Bill Pasons walked through the swinging door of the saloon. The boy pulled out a pistol and shot at Pasons. The bullet struck a big silver belt buckle that the Marshal always wore. It knocked Mr. Pasons down. Several people grabbed the boy and threw him down and took his pistol, but he reached around in his hip pocket and drew another pistol and shot at Mr. Pasons as he lay on the floor, but this bullet struck the Marshal a glancing blow in the shoulder. The by-standers took that pistol away. Then the boy reached inside his vest and got a third pistol and shot the Marshal a third time, but again it was only a flesh wound, and again the by-standers disarmed the boy and took him to jail. He later got 20 years in the pen. Mr. Pasons' reputation for invulnerability was truly well established. He re- mained the City Marshal for several years longer but eventually someone killed him. That was after my father died and we had moved to Texas. When I read about the young and crazy acts of some of our boys these days, I realize that it has happened before the days of T.V.

I could recount many other events of my first 12 years with my father, but none so violent as some of these. We had many pleasant trips together, some of which I made riding behind him on horseback and some of which I made riding my little brown pony "Toby." Toby was the foal of a skinny old mare that my mother had traded for because "Old George" our family buggy horse was getting too old. The old mare was skinny but full of fire. My sister Annie was teaching school at Finley's Chapel school, and I had to take her to school each Monday and go for her Friday. Returning from one of the trips the old sorrel took fright at a train and ran away, right down a hill and through a bridge over the Calf Killer River. I was sawing on the reins and slipped

down in the floor of the buggy. Finally the mare slowed down and someone stopped her, but not seeing me they thought I had been thrown into the river and there was much excitement until I stood up. Anyway the old skinny sorrel mare had a colt, "Toby," which I petted and raised and started riding when he was only a year old. He turned out to be a 5-gaited saddle horse. I rode him everywhere the grown men went rounding up the cattle which ran the mountain range pasture about

20 miles from our farm. I remember one night we were returning after dark and it seemed to me it was the darkest night I had ever seen. I had gotten lost once or twice on the mountain and I was afraid I would get lost again so I tried to keep close to one of the men who was riding a white horse, the only one I could see. Soon after that my father died and we sold our farm and moved to Texas; it broke my heart to leave "Toby" behind.

Before telling about my father's last illness and death, I want to recite one other event. We had a large log barn, and a separate slatted corn crib, alongside of which was a shed where the reaper and the wagon were stored. We children dearly loved to climb up on that corn crib, which was rather high, and play. When I was too little to climb, the girls would put me in a "bushel" basket and pull me up with the rope plow lines. On one occasion when they started to let me down, I got scared and would not get in the basket.

There was quite a commotion "until my father came and brought me down in his arms. After supper my father would usually go up to the barn and turn the horses and cows out to night pasture. I would go along and make myself useful by holding the big gate open while my father drove the stock through. One night while I was holding the gate open I laid my hand back on the rail fence and a big chicken snake was disturbed and crawled off the rail across the back of my neck. I can still feel its cold body on my neck. I let out a terrified yell just as the horses came galloping through the gate and my father thought I had been run over. He was so relieved that I was not hurt that he forgot to spank me for being afraid of a chicken snake, which is not poisonous.

We had a lot of milk cows, seven I think, and as soon as I was big enough I used to help my father milk. Our cows ran in the pasture where there were lots of blackberry vines, and many times their teats would get scratched and when you attempted to milk them they would kick. We had one old red cow that would kick like a mule, so my father always milked her in a quart tin cup and tried to remain very alert; but one night she kicked that tin cup half-full of milk right back in my father's face. I have said that he was seldom mad, but this time he had just cause. He picked up a piece of rail that was lying near and swung at the old red cow, she dodged and he knocked one of her horns off. He remained so mad at that old cow that he would not doctor her broken horn, as he usually did when he dehorned the calves, by putting axle grease on the raw places to keep the flies from blowing it and getting screw worms in the wound. So old Red paid dearly for her quick kick.

We also had a big old yellow cow who gave a lot of milk. On Christmas and other special occasions my mother would make an egg custard drink which was a delicious dessert and very yellow, and my father told me the yellow custard came from the old yellow cow. I really feel sorry for kids that have to be raised in town and do not know where their food comes from. Some of them think the milkman makes the milk. They do not know how many hands were employed in planning, plowing, reaping, gathering, sifting, baking and serving all the things they enjoy at the table. I can remember how great it was to get in the wheat bin in my bare feet and how we used to take it and the corn to mill to grind. There was a mill, Simpson's Mill, about 2 miles away, where I was frequently sent with a sack of corn or wheat to have it ground. This was a water-wheel powered mill, and the grain was ground between two huge grinding stones, which turned in opposite directions. But before you got to your turn, the miller would take out a "peck” a fourth-bushel, from each sack as his "toll." While waiting for their turn the men would play "ring men" marbles. Each man would lag for his turn at shooting from a line some 10 feet back of the ring. All of them had favorite agate marbles for "taws," and some of them were remarkably accurate in hitting the middle-man marble on the first shot which gave them a second shot. I tell about this only to give you some idea of the past times games that were prevalent in those early days. It was a primitive life. People made nearly everything they used, even their own tools from which they split the logs that built their houses. They made their own plows and plow points and hoes. Some of them even mined the iron ore from which they later forged their tools. Elsewhere in this family history is a picture of one of those early homes so built from scratch. By that I mean from the time they scratched the iron ore out of the ground.

It is a pleasure to reminisce about my childhood and I could run on for pages, but I must stick to my father's story as I remember it. His last illness was brought about by his working too hard while putting in 20 acres of wheat with a walking planter. He got a heart lesion which developed into what they called "dropsy" in those days; water, or edema, as the doctor called it, would accumulate to carry away the poison and it would cause him to have asthma and gasp for breath. Sometimes in the middle of the night he would be gasping for breath, and I would get on horseback, ride across the mountain and bring Dr. Gaines, who would come and "tap" him and let some of the water off. But, finally, one day, June 2nd, 1901, he fell out of his rocking chair dead. It was a tragedy to our large family consisting of 6 girls and a 12-year old boy. So my mother could not run farm with that help.

My father's family cemetery was the Anderson Graveyard where his father, his grandfather and great grandfather were all buried, with their wives. But the little graveyard was down in the woods and my mother was afraid it would someday grow up in bushes. So she had my father buried in Old Bethelehem Church yard, where many of his cousins and uncles were buried.

The old Anderson Graveyard at Doyle, Tennessee, did not grow up in weeds. After I became interested in genealogy, joining the Sons of the American Revolution, I visited this cemetery and found it well cared for and the Daughters of the American Revolution had put a special headstone at the head of Thomas Hill's grave, showing him to be a Revolutionary soldier in the Militia of North Carolina, Martin's Regiment, Leeks Company. He had three enlistments, returning home to plant crops and going back to fight some more. It was most remarkable that 3 generations of my father's family and their wives were all buried in one small cemetery, all the graves well marked with sandstone slabs stacked (up-side-down V shape) to protect the graves. I found one of the stones on the grave of my great grandmother, an Anderson, broken, so I had it replaced. I will always regret that my father was not buried alongside of his forebears, so I had a memorial headstone placed along side of them to show his relationship, with my name, my son's name and my grandson's name on it. We are also including in this Family History the "obituary" or autobiography of Reverend Abner Hill, son of Thomas Hill, our Revolutionary grandfather. He tells very interestingly of how Thomas Hill and his family came from North Carolina to Georgia to Tennessee.

A great many people never look back at their forbears, mostly for fear that they were unimportant people. I think that this country was not built by generals, but the men in the ranks; the government is supported by the unknown citizen, the taxpayer who built the schools and the court houses and who still has to defend those institutions and his right to choose his leader, to choose his profession, his religion and his wife. It is important that we let our progeny know what some of those citizens - unknown to the printed page -were like. As a boy I was proud to be "Billy Hill's boy," and I am still proud of the name.