Peevish Pen: Smith Farm History

Smith Farm has been in my family for over a hundred years and through three generations.

On that farm, my grandparents Joe and his wife Sallie raised their family—Russell, Myrtle, Belva, Virgie, and foster daughter Laura—and grew old together until Joe died in October 1959. Then my daddy bought the farm at auction. Since 1969, it's been mine. The cabin was made of logs, but Joe had a sawmill and made the boards that covered the logs. Here is how the cabin looked in 1936:

The original part—on the left—was where William (1833-1907) and Gillie Ann Bernard (1839-1897) once lived and raised their family. The Bernards are buried up on the hill. To the left of the back of the cabin was where Gillie Ann's kitchen once was and where her lilac bush grew. The right side of the cabin was added later and a dog-trot built between the two sections.

In 1967, the cabin still looked the way it did in 1936.

My great-grandfather, Will Brown, bought the farm from William Bernard's son for $440 in 1905. The deed below references points such as "three persimmon trees in Jno. R Robertson's line," "a dead red oak, thence with Dudley's line," "to a chestnut, a corner of Creed Bernard's lot," etc. The trees, like the people whose land was next to the farm, are long gone.

In 1906, Will Brown financed the farm for his son-in-law Joe Smith. Joe paid him back over a period of years and kept the receipts for payments he'd made.

Joe also kept a record:

. . . and finally the debt was paid.

The farm, the cabin, and the outbuildings have changed a lot through the decades. The only remains of Gillie Ann's kitchen—which my Aunt Belva once told me "fell in" when she and her sister were children—are some rocks, but you have to look close to see them. The lilac bush has died out; I'm glad I got a slip from it years ago.

Several out-buildings are now long gone. This open space in back is where the hen-house, smoke house, and a shed for the buggy used to be:

In front, three other buildings stood—one was a corn-crib, another a wheat house, and a third one was for storage. Now only one building still exists.

When Joe and Sallie celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1954, they stood in front of that remaining building, but you can see another building to the right:

This picture of their oldest daughter Myrtle, taken when she was 16, shows two and part of a third out-building:

Joe never had a big barn. This building, beside the entry road, was where hay was stored.

Above: Front view (facing the cabin): Below: side view

On the back side of this barn were once two stalls, now long gone and only a part of the roof remains. The last two animals to occupy those stalls were Kate the horse and Gen the mule. I can barely remember them. Before them were other horses—I think Maude might have been the one before Gen, but she was before my time—and before the horses were a team of oxen. My daddy once told me their names were Hiram and Roger (Rajah?). I remember once seeing the remains of their ox-yoke.

Not far from where the stalls once were, two iron wheels and part of an old wagon's frame remain.

Just past the barn, the farm road leads to a now-paved state road that the Smiths called "the racetrack" because boys used to race their horses and buggies there. I can remember when it was a red clay road that turned to mud in rainy weather. On the deed, it's called "racepaths known as the Union Hall and Bethel Church road."

Tucked in the woods near the farm road is an old tobacco barn. Tobacco was the money crop in Franklin County back in the day.

The house is showing its age. The top of the original stone chimney was replaced with brick years before my time.

When Gillie died, William Bernard cut the little window to the left of the chimney so he could keep an eye on her grave up on the hill beyond the pasture while he sat by the fire.

William joined Gillie on the hill in 1907. A few decades later, two of Joe and Sallie's grandchildren—Myrtle's son Clyde and Russell's son Robert—both of whom died as infants, joined them. Joe and Sallie's son, William Everett Smith who was born and died in 1911, is supposed to be buried near the Bernards, but there's no trace of his grave.

For over a half century, Gillie's grave has been hidden by the woods that took over the pasture, and—long after William joined her on the hill—the brick on the chimney beside the window is falling in.

High on this chimney are these initials. A date—1852 or 1853, I forget which—used to be visible to the right.

The back of the cabin is also falling in. The porch and its roof collapsed and fell over a decade ago.

These notches show where the back porch roof once was attached.

The spring, where water was fetched a couple of times a day, was down this hill and and across a creek. The Smiths' cow also lived down here, but was fenced out of the spring and spring box. A branch ran from the spring and eventually connected to the creek.