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"I have all the old places mentioned, and I will take off in another direction. The War had paralyzed the country. Negroes were freed and I suppose Mr Stegall sold the blacksmith shop down near Jerico Bridge to the negroes for a church. It was moved north of the road in a big grove of fine oaks. The government sent two white women down to teach the negroes, a Miss Waterberry and a Miss Dowd. They ate, slept with the poor poverty stricken negroes and taught school at old Jerico. These women were neither looked at nor spoken to by the white people.
At the time Mr Stegall was doing all he could to save his fortunes. He brought in a colony of Swedes and settled them at the old Meadows Mill. They were all mill rights and carpenters and knew nothering of our way of farming. Some were graduates in the Swedish language. The men wore gold ear rings and some gold rings in their nose. As I have mentioned, the mill was on this side of Bull Mountain. Mr Stegall had one of these Swedes tending the mill. One day a brother in law of Mr Hard Dyer who was living near the mill, ran by, threw his gun on the porch and said, "I have killed Johnson." That was the last ever seen or heard of Allen Livingston. Mr Dyer's young sister Myra came screaming for my daddy. Mr Stegall was riding up through the bottom, heard the mill running and hurried on. He and Dad got there at the same time, found Johnson lying in a pool of blood and the mill just ready to catch fire as the grain had run out. The men of the community and Smithville got there, made big pine know fires and laid the dead man out up stairs with one little candle.
Ath this time there was a close friendship between this man Johnson and an old woman, Miss Van Hoosier, over at the mill. She had thrown a white cloth over her head, walked through the dark bottom alone and entered the back way. Two of the townsmen, John Clayton and Bob Ray went up to see about the corpse. Just as they reached the top of the stairs the woman rose up from the side of the corpse. They let out a yell and fell down stairs almost frightened to death. They thought the dead man had come to life. That was the biggest wake ever held around here.
Mr Stegall buried him behind his home in the family lot. By this time the infirmness of finance and age was getting him down, but this did not hinder him from taking a fifth wife, a widow lady with four grown children. The late Walter Boggan of Becker was her oldest son. Of this marriage was born one daughter, the late Mamie Richard Stegall, who died in Birmingham three or four years ago. She fell heir to the home and farm of Aden Moore. She was a beautiful lovely woman. Mr Stegall had deeded all his lands to his other children. After once saying he would not die satisfied unless he was the wealthiest man in Monroe County, he died penniless.
I shall now have to retrace to where the institute was built into the hotel at Greenwood Springs and to the old Standifer settlement. Somewhere between the old Antioch Church ground and Hatley, a famous botannical doctor, Dr Gid Lipscomb opened a crude sanitarium. He split out long pine boards and built cabins for his patients, and compounded his medicine from his garden of herbs. He had seven sons. Occasionally Mrs Lipscomb would have the settlers in to a sewing bee. The old doctor was a great fiddler. At night the young people would enjoy a bid dance. My grandmother, Susanna Armstrong, danced with Bob Stockton who played such an active part in helping to adjust the affairs of Monroe County in the stormy Reconstruction days. I suppose the New Hope Cemetary was started from the Lipscomb Clinic. The county poor house was in the Parham Gin area, and the county potters field was plowed under a long time ago.
Another character was Doderic Masengill, a Cherokee Indian who spent his life in that community. The county is full of his descendants, all prosperous substantial citizens but very few bear the name of Massengill.
I am now ready to take off on the old Russelville road from the old Jerico church. I mentioned the hight school property before. The home where Mr Crouch lives was the first on that piece of land and was built not many years ago by my brothers, Tolie, Plummer and Locke Pierce.
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