Since I first started researching and reading up on the Old Gillum's a few years ago, I have done a lot of thinking. I'm very good at thinking. One of the major frustrations in my wife's life is that when she starts talking to me, often I do not respond appropriately, causing her to look more closely at me, then realizing, no one is home. I am off some where, just thinking. Not necessarily thinking with great insight, not necessarily productively thinking. Just thinking.
With enough thinking, anyone, even one such as I, can begin to get some good insight. Even a blind hog finds an occasional acorn, if it roots around long enough. I don't believe anyone influenced a generation of the Gillum Clan more than Grandma Martha Jane “Mattie/Tennessee” Tucker Gillum, even though she was not born a Gillum at all. Lets take a look at her.
She was born in 1859, so the first several years of her life was in the midst of one of the most horrible times in our country's history, our Civil War. And I suspect there was no more stressful place to be than the South. At 16, she and her sister were attacked late at night by an intruder, in their house, who was lynched within the hour by her brother and Harry Poynter, her sister's husband. For whatever reason, she left her Father's house and lived with that sister and Harry Poynter until she married John Wesley Gillum.Why? Was it just too difficult for her to return to the spot of the attack? Nobody living seems to know, but I suspect so. Harry Poynter soon became a central figure in the Pope County Militia War, and he took Grandma and her sister up to Clarksville and hid them in a cave. For how long? I don't know. Could have been two years, the duration of that war. Did her sister have babies that were taken along? Probably at least one. She remained very close to Harry Poynter all her life, close enough that two Gillum firstborn sons were named after him, at her insistence.
I have gained a little more knowledge about Grandma's milk cow rustling saga since I wrote the book. There were 4 cows, not 2. The cows were ranging in the south mountains, not the north mountains, close by, as I had assumed. The south mountains are two miles away, across the Fourche River. Since it was a very dry time, very hot, most people probably had to let their livestock range out like that to keep them alive. My Dad once said, 1930 had 100 days over l00 degrees. And, I saw on TV, .01 inch of rain fell in July 1930. It was customary for those growing crops along the river to fence the fields because the bottoms were full of free range livestock. Did the cows of the Gillum Clan get into someone's corn? Did that someone decide to take the cows in revenge? Were all those free range cows too wild to be taken, except for the four milk cows? Anyway, information I already knew is covered in the second or third post of this blog.
We know that Grandma's life was full of enough trauma to make her a very serious woman. She and Grandpa Gillum seemed to be good at business, because before Grandpa died in 1922, they had accumulated a lot of land, lots of sharecroppers, and were obviously doing very well .If you look back at the pic in my last post, you see telephone wires coming into the house. Ironically, the telephone wires appear to touch a hoop, probably used on their covered wagon they came to Wing in. An old culture touching a new culture! The year had to be around 1910. I would guess few mountain folks had phones in 1910.
Their children were all very well educated, for the times. If you look at all of their children, and I mean every last one of them, you see nothing but honesty, integrity, and hard work. The “do right mechanism” was already firmly in place. Think that's rare in a large family? Look around you today. Grandma saved up enough money from chicken and eggs to buy Lula Belle a car. My sister Jonnie said that as a small girl, somewhat unhealthy, she spent a lot of time sitting close to Grandma, in her chair. Though I did not know her, she seems to me to have been a very strong, dominant, serious woman, capable of great love for her family, but probably seldom ever openly demonstrating it. Strong enough to take over when Grandpa died early in 1922, and continue to be a major influence in the clan for many years. Only one lady from Grandma's early life was present at her last birthday party, in 1941. It seems the connection of the Gillum clan to the Tuckers and Poynters died with her that year. If you wish to gain some insight into the impact of Grandma on my mother's life, look in my book at the 1920's photo of my mother, the 1941 group photo of her on Grandma's last birthday, and any 1960's photo of mom. It's all in the book, and, I think, it says it all. Mom seems to have come from a very gentle family, readily able to express their love for each other, never stern and serious natured. Her life became very hard living with Grandma.
When I first learned how Grandma made life hard for my mother, perhaps the sweetest woman who ever lived, I reacted the way I would be expected to. I thought badly of a Grandma I never knew. However, as I found out more and more about her life, I think she was a very strong woman who came along in the history of the Gillum clan at a good time, adding rock-hard stability and integrity to the clan still in evidence today.
TO BE CONTINUED, NEXT POST. THANKS FOR READING!
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