The Old Dillard Settlement

 Mar - July 2000

I believe several 4-H Club members are getting their baby chicks in their poultry chain projects. When the Extension Office was in the basement of the courthouse, everyone knew the day of arrival of the chickens. You could hear them quite well in all directions. The children were so excited, as well as their parents.

Once upon a time, Mom had a nice bunch of baby chicks, with a mother hen, which she was keeping up at night for their protection. She didn't notice a hole in the floor. One night a rat noticed the hole and smelled a good dinner. The next morning most of the chickens were without legs. The rat had pulled them off. Mom was very upset and I don't know how long it was before that old hen set again. Daddy tried tying an old hen down on the nest to make her set, but it didn't work.

There were also complications with a bunch of baby chicks when Myra grabbed up the chickens' mother and bartered her a magazine from a paper salesman.

So I guess what I'm trying to tell you is, it takes something to grow baby chicks and it is wroth the try, but there may be a few mishaps along the way.

One think I know in common with us now, wild turkeys to hunt and foot on the table - if you are lucky.

Some have been fortunate to get one or tow. I have heard some tall tales, tired bodies adn sleepy eyes during this period of hunting and have experienced some good eating.

With Willard Stoops, the turkeys seem to almost run over him, or, "I hard them a little ways off." I don't think he ran from them. Louie, his son, heard the fowl somewhere. He used his caller (I reckon that's what you call it) and the answer came back loud and clear - but it was down under the bluff. He gave another call and didn't hear a thing. Would you believe he heard it on top of the bluff, where he had just come from? He ventured back up the steep place, ever so quietly, and the turkey would never see him because he looked like the dirt and forest all over. Maybe the wild thing smelled him ... it flew right from the spot where he had been. He said they flew away and sure were pretty. The bluff was the cause of all of the mishap. The echols from that bluff threw all his hearing off direction.

When Wesley Shipman heard Louie's story (Wesley had also climbed a bluff) Wesley asked, "How high was that bluff?" Louie told him. Wesley dropped his head and said, "You bested me. Your bluff was the biggest."

Once upon a time my Uncle Guy Dillard was the best turkey hunter around. He learned to use his own vocal cords to call the birds and acquired the name of "Hooter." Maybe the men around here need to take heed of a little more of our ancestor's hunting abilities.

Wesley got his quota of turkeys and shared them. I hope he looks more rested this week.

I like turkey talk, even if it is cold turkey!

Freck told Sarah he had no brothers or sisters to take up for him in school and many times the bigger boys ran over him. They verbally abused him about some of his past. As the tears came into both his and his wife's eyes, he continued the story. "One morning while I was working hard on my lessons, I looked up, to rest my shoulders, and the teacher said, "Get that lesson, Freck." This was a heyday for the kids in that one-room school an they laughed as the teacher made a laughing stock out of me."

The poor little boy had lost his mother at the age of 2, and no wonder he felt alone. His dad was a doctor and he had a stepmother, but he felt he had no real ties at home.

The teacher had a habit of ducking his head when he laughed. Little did he know that Freck had a big glass marble in his pocket. As the teacher ducked his head and roared with laughter, that little boy's hand grasped the marble and threw it at the teacher. As the teacher's head was turned toward the big boys, that marble hit his temple, just at the edge of his hair, and he flopped to the floor. Freck declared, "That was the last I ever saw of that teacher or school."

He built a raft with some good sound logs, which were plentiful, and lashed them together with bark. He floate on that raft for several days, eating wild onions, eggs from nests he knew not what, a soft shelled turtle raw .. but the best things he had to eat on this trip was frogs. The persimmons were tasty, too.

At last, he left the raft in search of work and found it with a good farmer. Somehow he came here to the Ozark Mountains and made his home at Water Creek.

He was accepted here to an extent, but was still called Freck and teased about so many things. He realized the men were laughing at him but not his wife, who loved him dearly and never turned away from him, no matter what. He was her only love.

He worked at the cotton gin and gristmill in the community, which was owned by Riley Smith, perhaps, and they shared food and firewood with them in the cold of wintertime. Even the owners of Bruno and Water Creek stores were accommodating, but as time went on business owners had some stormy times and formed a union, trying to put each other out of business. There was competition back then as now.

Some of the people of this long ago time who were in the business world of the little community were Jesse Baker, S A Lay, Ben Mullens and Charles Cummings. Mr. Cummings, who was a bachelor, bought a little sandy field on the creek, worked hard and got a good prospect of a young crop of "sang" (ginseng) in the garden. He made a deal and sold out the garden to Frank Rice. The "sang" garden was where high-priced medical herbs were grown.

Lots more could be said about this community and I will tell more, but back to our Mr. Freck. One day he was feeling poorly and the men at the mill said they would pay him his wages and for him to stay home until he felt better. He thought it a good time to pay the men back for making fun and teasing him. His sick spell was lasting too long and the men were about to run him out of the settlement. He and his wife did leave. He got a gob in the mines at Rush Creek, but not before the post office on Water Creek was named "Freck".

According to Dwight Shipman, a group of men, including Freck, were sitting outside the store discussing what to call the up-and-coming post office. The whole settlement was excited. One of the men said jokingly, "Let's call if Freck." Officials in Washington DC agreed to the name, so Freck it was called.

Freck was heard to say, "I despise that name so bad, I get mad every time I hear it and it makes me nervous." It reminded him also of the time Bow Harris filled his eyes with tobacco juice. He never went inside the post office named after his nickname.

Sarah, his dearly beloved wife, died in the spring of 1912. He married again. He left the area and no one knew where he went, but his mark is still with us.

I believe Mr. Parnell was teaching when, once upon a time, one of th eboys stuck a gun shell inside of a stick of stovewood, making the old stove dance and the stovepipe curve and twist when it went off. It was a Shipman responsible, but poor Ben Davis was accused. When the teacher looked at Ben, pointed his finger at him and said, "Ben, you did that," Ben, who, for a wonder, was not guilty, ran like a chicken with its head cut off and no more schooling for him. Verl Shipman was not left unpunished.

A Mr. Swafford and Mrs. Keeling were also teachers at Freck.

Neville (Davis) and Dwight remembered about 16 children attending school, with Ver, Buey and Odell Davis being the oldest students attending during Neville's time.

Church was also held in the school house. Dwight said he remembered when he went to church hearing Floyd and Gertie Smith's cowbells. He declared that Floyd had bells on every one of them. That was music we heard over the hills once upon a time.

Uncle Tom and Uncle Andrew Davis were very active in church there. Once when a Ray or Roy Barnes rode up on a horse, Tom greeted him and told him how proud he was t see him at church. Barnes said, "It sure is rough roads here." Uncle Tom replied, "Yes, and there are a lot of rough roads between here and Heaven, too."

Vance Shipman remembered the first time he saw a bulldozer. Dee Phillips was the operator and was building the road above the Freck Church and the schoolhouse.

Once when Dwight was taking Aunt Millie Davis somewhere in a wagon, I don't think he was the best driver, at least, something happened tht made Millie fall out of the wagon and roll down the hill. She got up dusted her clothes, slapped her hands together and said, "That's one steep hill.". No bones were broken, though. She used to have certain trails she traveled and has been remembered as such for years. What a wonderful, jolly, good woman the Freck community was blessed with.

Uncle Tom and Aunt Josie Davis always had lots of flowers. Tom decided one year he would decorate all the graves in the cemetery. He felt so bad that some of the graves were decorated with so many flowers and some with none. He picked a bushel basket full of roses and every grave was remembered. It was stated, "How beautiful the cemetery looked with all those red roses."

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to pick a bushel basket of flowers for the living as well as for our loved ones of long ago?

Lee Davenport said Decoration Day over the whole county was where the boys loved to go. I heard of one Decoration Day, once upon a time, around Tomahawk Schoolhouse, close to where the burying grounds were located. A large crowd was gathered and decorated the graves until it looked like a big garden of flowers. (I wonder if a lot of them might have been paper.)

About eleven o'clock the preaching service began at the schoolhouse and when the service was over a gang of tough boys was standing outside, waiting to start trouble, so they accused another young man of lying about something. That didn't set well with this feller and he doubled up his fist and knocked one of the tough boys down - war began.

This tough gang was very much opposed by several of the men who were tired of these boys breaking up meetings of church services and such. During the fight one of the gang saw his bunch falling like ten-pins and he got out his knife made a lunge at one of the strongest men on the good side. This man picked up a club and knocked the ruffian out as cold as a cucumber.

One feller saw one of the smaller boys, who had been sorta pushed out of the way but still wanted to be in the middle of the fight, draw his knife, but he was grabbed by the neck and held. The man holding the boy was so interested in the fight that he had forgotten about what he was doing until he felt the boy start collapsing. He turned the victim loose and didn't return to the fight.

When some of the good guys had let it go on long enough, they yelled at a neighbor to go get his Winchester. He said, "I've settled worse fights than this and I can settle this." The neighbor lost no time in going after the gun. When they heard this and saw that he meant business, the rough boys ran off, never to pick up that fight again. What a Decoration Day to remember.

Lee, I know you were not with this bunch, because this happened around 1899.

... was my grandpa, Charlie Davenport. Once upon a time someone was eavesdropping on him when he was setting a trap. He said to himself, "I wonder if this trap is strong enough to hold a coon." As he began to work it he opened the trap up and it slipped out of his control and snapped on his finger. He was heard to say, "You fightin' right it'll hold a coon!" I don't know if he caught one or not, but he was teased many times about trapping for a whole season and making 90 cents.

Great Grandpa George, I have been told, loved to argue on the on the Bible. Sometimes (probably to get the best of someone) he would quote a verse wrong. When he got home he woul ask his wife Martha (Moore) to go make amends and tell them the right quotation and she would reply, "You do it yourself." I don't know if he did or did, but if the next time they argued another way the scripture fit better rightly quoted, he would say it right. I wish I'd known him. I've never head of his fishing and hunting as his sons loved to do. George's father and mother are buried at Stone Cemetery. I wonder what his likes and dislikes were.

George and Martha are buried at DeSoto, where several of their children are. Next to their grave is Aunt Betty Ann and Tom, their son. Betty Ann had died and Grandpa George was going over to their place and died before he got there. This must have been a bad time.

Aunt Julie (Davenport) McClain was George Davenport's sister. Bill, her son, told me some interesting things of the two. Once upon a time when Bill's Uncle George was pruning peach trees, Bill was playing around and, as most boys at the time, loved to ride the trees to the ground and bounce on the limbs. George saw him riding one of the peach trees and gave him a good bunch of "peach tree tea" (a whipping). This made Aunt Julie angry and she lost no time in telling George off. The next morning Bill hid behind a stump with a piece of timber in his hand and as Geroge walked past the stump Bill whacked him across the knee. He made it to his sister Julie to give full details. Aunt Julie replied, "I don't blame Bill one bit. You deserved it."

They didn't stay made at each other, Bill said, but he didn't say he did his uncle that way again. Kids were kids back then, too.

It wasn't the safest way of travel, I grant you that, but most of the time that was our way of going to church, the river to swim or the woods to work, but the police never stopped us to see if we had seatbelts on, nor did they stop us when four, five or more were in the cab. I remember when the CCC Camp was located out here, they also had what we called an outside theater and I remember one time when there were around nine people riding in the dab to go to the show.

As time went on, more cars were appearing and Daddy asked, "What do you want, a new car or new house?" Mom was outnumbered. We got the car, or pickup. That's always the way it was. She did get a new house, though.

Transportation was wagon or horseback and electricity was unheard of. Running water was only in creeks, springs and rivers, where washing was done. Buckets of water were carried to the house and springhouses were for keeping the food longer. Cloth was hand-woven for clothing and old remedies wee used for the health of individuals. She lived through three major wars; Mexican War (1848), Civil War (1861-65) and Spanish American War 1898. She even survived the Bushwhacker problem.

It has been written: "You survived eight births without anesthetic or hospitals. You were talented. You could play the fiddle and had the ability to make a happy home - singing, playing, knowing and recognizing your needs from your wants and accepting the situation."

For hard work in the fields, raising your family, serving as a midwife, even perhaps a barmaid, and digging ginseng roots to keep your family together, we salute you, Grandma and remember you this weekend. We will celebrate your memory, the ways you left for us to always love one another.

She got a gas washing machine, but Billy Frank, one of her sons, experimented with the motor and I don't know if he got it put back on the washing machine right or not. He learned a lot from his everyday play and experimenting. I guess that's why he is such a locksmith, and he didn't even have to change his name!

Aunt Alice, when a little girl, checked on her daddy Doc's watermelons by cutting a plug out of each one. When she told her mother, Mama knew she was in bad trouble. Grandpa Doc found this out for himself and stormed into the house and yelled, "Bett!" She knew what before she answered, "What?" All the watermelons were rotten and poor Betts had to tell him it was his daughter, Alice. This provided her with her first whipping (I bet it was the only one) she got from her daddy. Mary, her daughter, said her mother said, "It hurt my pride more than it did my backside."

Her big brothers didn't make it easy for her to forget, either. They would slip around her and laughter and snicker because she got her just reward. Brothers!

Once upon a time when she had a desire for such a custard, she built a fire in the wood cookstove, just a slow, easy-cooking fire. How she got the right temperature remains a mystery, and as I stood by watching the procedure she told me every step of the measuring, even when to add those freshly-found eggs, stirred it lightly and showed me how to slide it carefully into the moderate oven.

As it cooked and sent the delicious fragrance into the whole house, my mouth was made to water, just anticipating how it would taste with a hint of nutmeg sprinkled on the top.

Here is the special way Mama guarded her success with egg custard; she gently slid the custard out of the oven onto the oven door, took a think knife, inserted it in the middle of the custard and if the knife came out clean, it was done.

When we were ready to eat it I could see the anxious look on Mom's face. She carefully sliced the golden goodie and when she served it the slices stood upright without any disturbance of running. It was a success ... and good!