Friday, March 21, 2008

The Medearis Trip to Texas - Lucy Katherine Medearis Neeld's Account

The following is written by Miss Moore, voiced as it was related to her by her grandmother, Lucy Catherine Medearis Neeld. Lucy would have been about 7 years old in the fall of 1859, when the trip occurred. From The Volunteer Spring 1991.

Early in the year 1859, my father, John T. Medearis, decided to move his family to Texas. he had sold his farm at New Harmon, Bedford County, in Middle Tennessee, "to pay his brother Pinckney out of trouble." Texas was a new state opening up possibilities for a new beginning, and the fact that my mother's brother had earlier moved to Dallas was an added incentive. The move had special appeal to my father "who always had wanderlust in his blood." He persuaded his younger brother, Wiley, who lived near Lewisburg, Tennessee, to join the expedition. To of his friends, a Mr. Phelps, and a Mr. Mann of Franklin, Tennessee, asked to join the party.

For months we were very busy with our plans and preparations for the overland trip. First, arrangements had to be made for our Negroes. (Granny never used the word "slaves" in speaking of them. They were always "our Negroes." her father would not sell any of his Negroes, nor would he separate families. It was decided that one family, Jim and Huldy and their children, would accompany the family. The other Negroes were transferred to a relative where they were reunited with their own families.)

In September 1859, our preparations were finally completed and we were ready to set out. Our outfit consisted of a huge prairie schooner drawn by four mules, a wagon for our Negroes drawn by two mules, and two two-seated carriages. There were several horses to draw the carriages, and for the men to ride, including our pet mare, Old Jane, whom my mother sometimes rode.

The schooner carried to large tents which were homemade of tent cloth. One was for the use of the family; the other for our Negroes. The loaded schooner also carried eight feather beds, four for each tent. These were rolled up in carpets. In addition to these items, we carried clothing, food supplies, and other necessary articles.

When we left our home our party consisted of my father, John T. Medearis, my mother, Frances Dean Medearis, and five children: Mary, age 9; myself, age 7; Harvey, age 5; Wash (short for Washington), age 3; and Frances, age 11 months. There were also our Negroes, Jim and Huldy, and their children. (I am not sure how many children, but I think four or five. Huldy's youngest child was less than six months old.) Mr. Phelps and Mr. Mann and his body servant completed our party.

Our first stop was near Petersburg, Tennessee, where we were joined by Uncle Wiley Medearis; his wife, Mary Lipscomb Medearis; and their son, John, age 6 months; and my paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Medearis Yowell. (Mary was the daughter of Frances' sister; thus was Frances' niece. Elizabeth Yowell was the mother of John T. and Wiley.) Baby John was carried on a pillow and a small trunk contained many things necessary for his care.

Our next stop was at Lewisburg in Marshall County. "When we got within sight of the town, Wash saw the sun shining on the spires of the courthouse and cried "Yonder's Texas!" We spent one night in Lewisburg with Cousin Will Cowden.

On the following day, we made our real start on the westward journey. Near the end of each day's travel, Uncle Wiley and Mr. Mann would ride on ahead to choose a camping place and get feed for the stock. After we arrived at the camp site, the tents were put up and hay was spread on the ground underneath them. Then the carpets were unrolled laid over the hay. The feather beds were put in place in the corners of the tents. (I still marvel at Granny's retentive memory. She was able to describe in detail the arrangement of the feather beds and exactly who slept where. She was also able to relate where each person road in the carriages and who drove them.)

Some days later, we reached the Tennessee River, which we crossed in a ferry pulled by ropes. our first camp after crossing the river was at Black Fish Lake.

Finally we reached the home of another cousin named Caldwell "who lived somewhere in West Tennessee." My mother was not well and the Caldwells insisted that we stay there until she felt better. But she would not be persuaded because she wanted to complete the journey. My mother worried a great deal and was apprehensive. She worried about her father's heart condition and feared she would never see him again. She worried about my father's health and feared he would die in Texas and leave her a widow with five small children in unknown surroundings.

We continued our journey through West Tennessee. One day Sister Mary and I, being tired of riding, were allowed to walk. "We fooled along the road" and fell behind the carriage/wagon train. "A big black dog scared me and I cried." We came to a fork in the road and did not know which way to go. Sister Mary said dogs could follow a trail by scent, so she crawled on her hands and knees sniffing the ground. Fortunately we chose the right road and finally caught up with the train which had stopped and was waiting for us. We found my mother crying and begging my father to ride back to find us. He had refused saying, "that we needed to be taught a lesson." He was right. We learned our lesson and after that, we never walked again.

We crossed the Mississippi River at Memphis by steamer ferry. On the Arkansas side, we found houses and roads that were built up on poles. The roads were narrow with occasional wide places for passing. Further on, the roads were what was called corduroy. They were made of heaps of dirt with trees and branches laid crosswise. Always the roads were bad and dangerous. One time we had trouble keeping one of the carriages from turning over. The bridges had no banisters. Old Jane was skittish and was afraid of the cracks in the corduroy roads and the bridges.

We traveled on for many days through Arkansas, always heading in a southwesterly direction. My mother was ailing and feeling worse every day. One Sunday night she became very sick and the men decided we could not go on. The only place we could find to stop was near a cotton field. We found only one house where people were living, but they were very poor and could not take us in. Finally the men located a cabin with a dirt floor in the cotton patch, so we sopped there. Planks were nailed in into two corners of the cabin and slats were laid across them to make beds. The next day, Monday, Aunt Mary also became very sick. She and my mother were put on beds and the rest of us slept in our tents. The nearest town was Brownstown. (Brownstown is in the extreme southwest corner of Arkansas. It is near the Red River which forms part of the boundary line between Arkansas and Texas. Actually the travelers lacked only a short distance from reaching Texas.)

The men rode into Brownstown and located a doctor who returned to the cabin with them. "He said my mother and Aunt Mary had brain fever." (In all probability it was typhoid.) There was nothing we could do for them except try to make them as comfortable as possible. I would brush my mother's hair because she said it made her feel better.

We stayed in the cabin for one week. My mother died the following Sunday, exactly one week after she became so sick. Aunt Mary died the next day, Monday. After their deaths, there were to neighborhood families who were kind to us children and took us into their homes. A Mrs. Merrill was especially nice.

My father and Uncle Wiley tried to buy a double coffin. Failing this, they bought two single ones. The Negroes wagon was unloaded and the coffins were taken to Brownstown where they were buried in a single grave. "None of us children ever saw our mother's grave." Years later when I grew up, I ordered a tombstone to be sent to mark her resting place. But these were the troubled days of the Reconstruction Era, and I never knew if it got there.

After the burial, we had a family council to decide what to do. My father asked us children what we wanted to do and we all said we wanted to go back home. Grandmother Yowell, who knew she would have the care of all of us, said 'she was too old to bring up young children in a strange land and she wanted to return home. My father also thought we should go back to Middle Tennessee.

Uncle Wiley, Mr. Phelps, and Mr. Mann, however, decided to continue on to Dallas. Uncle Wiley asked us to bring Baby John back with us and take him to his maternal grandmother, Aunt Lou Noblett, to raise.

We stayed at the cabin only long enough to get our belongings together. Then "we headed back in a straight line to the Mississippi River." We reached the river at Gaines Landing which was about a hundred miles below Memphis. My father and Uncle Wiley divided the possessions, uncle Wiley taking the schooner and team, part of the bedding, and one male Negro. From this point, our party went separate ways, Uncle Wiley taking his group to Texas, and my father bringing the rest of us back to Tennessee.

At Gaines Landing, my father loaded us and all our belongings on a riverboat heading for Memphis. Everyone wanted to get home as quickly as possible. After we boarded the riverboat and got under way, we discovered that our boat was racing another one and our captain refused to stop at Memphis. We finally landed many miles up-stream and had to take another boat, the Lucy Hawkins, back down the river. We were on this boat for two nights. During this trip down to Memphis it was hard to get food for the babies, (there were three under one year of age) and our Negro women sat up all night caring for them. One plantation owner gave us children some warm light bread.

We finally reached Memphis where we spent the night at a boarding house and then took a train home the next day. My father had all our belongings shipped to the home of my maternal Grandmother Dean in Bedford County.

Knowing of Grandfather Dean's heart trouble, my father was fearful that the shock of learning of the deaths of his daughter and granddaughter would prove too much for him. He had written a letter to Grandfather in an effort to break the news to him as gently as possible before our arrival. When we got near Grandfather's house, we ran into Uncle Mannon Dean, my mother's brother, and discovered that he had the unopened letter in his pocket. He had forgotten to give it to his father. It was decided that he would ride on ahead and tell Grandfather the sad news before we got there.

"We lived at Grandfather Dean's house until my father married again -- which wasn't very long" (I can still see the wry expression on Granny's face as she said this! And indeed it was not very long. In 1860, he married Harriett Jane Noblett and fathered eleven more children. With a bow to his classical leanings, he named the tenth Nellie Decima!)

Uncle Wiley also married again in Texas and returned home only one time. This was to get his son, John, from Aunt Lou Noblett. He took John with him to Texas and "never came back."

After our return to Middle Tennessee and after the outbreak of the war in 1861, two of our Negroes, Myra and Pete, stole Old Jane and a grind horse and ran away to the Yankees. They could not get through the Yankee lines at Tullahoma, so they turned the horses loose, probably figuring their chances were better on foot. The horses wandered about and were discovered by a Negro boy near the home of a Mrs. Pearson, whom Sister Mary and I used to visit. She recognized the horses and sent them home to us the next day. There was general family rejoicing at Old Jane's return.

The remainder of my notes do not properly belong to the telling of the Texas story, but I'll mention briefly that Granny's father became a tanner. In 1864 he moved to Fayetteville, Tennessee, where he bought a tan-yard. He was very successful and his business prospered and expanded. Because of his trade, he was exempted from military service during the war. The government sent soldiers to work in the tan-yard making shoes for the Confederate Army. In a further expansion after the War, he built a woolen mill. With machines imported from the North, he carded, spun, and wove fine woolens. His prosperity was short-lived. In the War's bitter aftermath, the Reconstruction Period, he lost everything he had.)

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