Since I first started researching and reading up on the old
Gillums 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 often, when she starts talking to me, sometimes I do not respond
appropriately. A single grunt is not good enough. This often causes her to look
more closely into my eyes, then
realizing. Nobody is home. I am off somewhere, 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 can find an acorn occasionally, if
it roots around long enough
.
I have decided that nobody influenced her generation of
Gillums as much as grandma Martha Jane Tucker Gillum, commonly called, early
on, Tennessee, and later, Matty. She was not born a Gillum at all, but let’s
take a look at her.
She was born in 1859. Her early life was emersed in our
Civil War, One of our country’s most horrible times. And I’m sure there was no
more horrible place to be that in the South. A baby in her family was eaten by
a wild hog. A young boy was killed by a runaway horse. At sixteen, a man broke
into her house one night, and attacked her and her sister in their bedroom. He
was caught by her father and brother, a crowd gathered, and the man was lynched
within the hour by her brother and Harry Poynter, her sister’s husband. For
some reason, nobody in the family knows why, she soon started living in Harry
Poynter’s house. She stayed there until she married John Wesley Gillum. Soon
after she and John Wesley began seeing each other, John Wesley started trying
very hard to get her out of Harry Poynter’s house. Nobody seems to know why
that came about, either.
The Pope County Militia war started getting hot and heavy in
1872, and Harry was a leading figure in that conflict, getting into a gunfight
with the County Sheriff, clerk, and deputy, right in the middle of Dover. Harry
killed the clerk, and chased the other two out of town to Russellville,
followed by much flying lead. Harry was cleared by an over the body inquest,
but officials in Russellville disagreed. A thirty man posse rode to Dover to
arrest Harry, and they had no trouble finding him. Leaning against a tree in
downtown Dover, two pistols strapped on and a double barrel shotgun in his
hands. Everyone, even the women, had armed themselves, and swore Harry would
not be taken. The deputy asked for his guns – Harry replied, “I will give up my
guns with my life, and will make the man who takes it pay a heavy price.”
Nobody in the posse stepped forward to be that man, and the posse went back home to Russellville. During
that war, Harry had carried Grandma, her sister Dozie, and babies to a cave 20
miles away, and they apparently lived there for the duration. Grandma remained
very close to Harry Poynter for the remainder of his life, and she seemed to be
the major influence in seeing to it
that, since her first baby that was born soon died, after she and John Wesley
married, named Harry, My oldest brother was also named Harry in honor of Harry
Poynter. (Man, that last sentence was a messed up mess. Hope you got it's message.)
Years later, after the war settled down, Harry
became a leading citizen of Dover, became wealthy, founded the Bank of Dover. But
when Grandma’s four milk cows were stolen. Harry promptly came over to Wing,
chased down the thief, and recovered the cows, no questions asked, no answers
given. But since a man was missing, the Law in Yell County wished to question
Grandma about that event, but, I am told, he was afraid to. She was too close
to Harry Poynter
Grandma’s life was full of enough trauma to make her a very
serious woman. Hard, I suspect, and stern. I think she was a product of her
hard early life, and the sons and daughters she produced were largely a product
of her. Her and Grandpa seemed to be
very good in business, and their farm at Wing prospered, adding sharecroppers ,
more land, and their business of breeding supermules did well. King Leo, a huge
Black Mammoth jack purchased out of
Texas for $1000, was the heart if this business.
A photo of the family
taken on their front porch in the original Gillum home in 1910 seems to show
telephone wires running in. The children were all well educated, producing a
doctor, a school administrator, a Peabody College teacher, and the others went
to the Normal School at Danville, getting enough education to qualify them to
be a teacher, though they never were. After Grandpa died, in his early sixtys, in
1922, she lived on until l941, often visited by Harry Poynter until his death
in 1932. At the final birthday party given for Grandma in 1941, shortly before
her death, only one Poynter woman was present. It seems the Gillum family’s
connection to the Poynters, Pryors, and
others from Dover died that year with Grandma.
Grandma worked very hard as a widow. She continued with her
cattle, and raised Rhode Island Red chickens and eggs, and saved enough money
from that buy Lula Belle a car. Though my brothers, who lived there with her as
small boys, remember her as being extremely harsh at times, chances are they
deserved it. It seems they were a little rowdy. My sister Jonnie, as an infant
and small girl, was often sick, and she remembers her holding and rocking her
most of the time. When she got too big to be held, she sat beside grandma in
her chair and rocked with her. She made many quilts still in use today.
When I was told how hard she made my mother’s life, as they
lived with her, I reacted the way one would expect me to. I thought very badly
of a grandma I never knew. My mother, I knew, was about the sweetest woman on earth. I also know grandma had earlier
picked out another woman for Dad, and he had already built a house for her in
the meadow. After they were engaged, she
died. Sarah Turner said, “The first woman, who died, is put upon a pedestal. No
wrong can she ever do.” I think that was going on here, through no fault of my
sweet mother.
I have three photos of my mom that I placed side by side. In the 1920’s, Mom
was young, beautiful, and smiling. In the 1941 photo taken at Grandma’s last
birthday, she was mature, very beautiful, but there was deep sadness in her
eyes. The smile and the fun were gone. In a 1950’s photo, the joy, the smiling
was back. I think that says it all.
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