Uncle Harry's Little War - Part one

     My Grandma, Martha Jane "Tennessee" Tucker Gillum, commonly called Mattie, was a hard working woman. She once grew  a large flock of chickens in her yard, and sold enough eggs to the Chicken Peddler to buy her daughter a car. Now, in case you don't know what a Chicken Peddler is, he was the guy that, up until the 1940's came around trading things farm people could not get otherwise for chickens, eggs, butter, milk. A traveling store. Grandma was not just hard working, she was just hard. She also had four milk cows. When dry weather hit in the 1920's, those cows, along with all our other cows, were turned loose out in the south mountains to forage for food. The grass in the valley had dried up. The lead cow wore a cowbell, and Dad would ride his horse many miles to check on them from time to time. On one such trip, Grandma's milk cows were missing.
     It was common practice in those days in Wing for most everyone to do that, when the grass dried up. Many people grew corn in the bottoms along the river, and the practice was to fence the corn patches to keep out the free range cows. Our cows may have gotten into someone's corn patch. Maybe someone figured they would take some cows in return. Maybe most of the cows were too wild to catch. Maybe the four milk cows  were easy to take. This may have been how it happened. Anyway, all I know for sure is, they were missing, and they now seemed to now be in the possession of a man who lived several miles away. But the man made a major mistake. He said they were his.
     Grandma was raised in her teens by her sister Dozie and her husband, Harry. Harry and Grandma remained very close, right up until the day he died. Grandma needed help, and she called on Harry. He was an old man now, so why would she call on an old man for a job such as this? Maybe, If I take out right here and tell you a little about Harry's life, we could all follow her reasoning a little better.
     Harry was 15 when the Civil War started. He fought in many hard battles for the South. When the war was over, he came home. He found the Reconstruction was a very hard time to live in the South; his fighting was not over yet.

      After Lincoln was killed, his plan to move the South back into the fold as quickly as possible was changed. President Johnson liked the plan also, but lacked the power to sway Congress. They and many other government officials wanted to punish the rebels a while. They called it The Reconstruction. In some places, government did whatever necessary to eliminate rebel vote and participation, leaving the ex-rebels at the mercy of greedy and dishonest northern political officials, who hated them.

     Dover had few slaves. Most didn't need or want them. A few acres here and there of rich river bottom land was not conducive to that. The mountains around Dover are tough as a boot. I know. As a young man, I rode in the back of a pickup each day one summer to Dover and worked in those mountains. I wore out two good pair of leather boots that summer. And, hard mountains produce hard people. The vets returning home from the war were a mixture of North and South. And they still hated each other. No rebels held government jobs or offices. Without a strong county government, everybody suffered from roving bands of outlaws, scalawags, and carpet baggers, and much land was stolen by corrupt northern officials.

     Dodson Napier was the first Sheriff. He and his deputy were promptly shot. William Stout, the county clerk, was shot through a knothole at his home. The replacement sheriff was shot while plowing. Later, Confederate Major George Newton was credited with all these killings, but too late to help this situation. Major Newton moved to Texas later and became a preacher.

Feeling a little insecure one would suppose, a Dover native, Elisha Dodson, who had fought for the north, was awarded the job of sheriff. The next clerk, Wallace Hickox, was a Yankee, an able, brave and bold leader. But he was a schemer, made no local friends, and considered the rebels to be some short of human. The rebels hated him. By 1872, John Williams, a brother of a former sheriff, became deputy. Probably with no long expectations of life.           Continued