This week is the week of our annual bowling family reunion. It always brings back memories of times, places, and people who have long gone.
My dad was a great oral historian and story teller. I wish I had either recorded or written down all the stories he told with the names of those involved. There were funny stories, scary ones, ones about duplicity and getting even, ones about gun battles and feuds. I remember the stories but have mostly forgotten the old names of those involved.
One story I always remembered and enjoyed was about two men who were neighbors. One had a hog he wanted to fatten up. His neighbor already had a hog or two penned up in a log enclosure for fattening. Back then hogs were marked by the owner and ran free, feeding on the mast in the hills around about. Before they were butchered they would be penned up and fattened on corn and slop.
Anyway, the neighbor with the pen told the other neighbor there was no use building another pen, that he could put his hog in his pen and they would both take turns feeding them. When the hogs got ready to kill, the neighbor with the pen went out at night and had his boys prize up the log and enticed the neighbors hog with slop to stick its head through between the logs, then he let the log down choking the hog to death. Next, he got the hogs head out and went and told the neighbor the hog got sick and died. When the neighbor verified the hog was dead he was going to get rid of it because they would be afraid to eat a sick hog. The neighbor who killed the hog told him not to worry about getting rid of the hog that since it died in his pen he would do it. After the owner left, the man butchered the hog and thought he was real clever because he had tricked the neignbor out of his hog. Back then a hog could mean the difference between a family going hungry or not.
Now, some how the neighbor found out about the trickery. He bided his time. Since their property joined, he made himself a new deed which moved his property line over a few hundred feet and dated it to before his neighbor had bought his property. Back then deeds were just written on paper and dated. They were not recorded at the court house. Whenever there was a property dispute the case was decided by whoever had the oldest deed. He knew if his paper didn’t look older that he would not win his case so he put it up behind the cookstove and smoked it untill it looked really old. Next he took his neighbor to court over the strip of land. Because his deed was dated first and looked so old, he won the case and took his neighbors land, thus getting even for the stolen hog.
There is also another story about two of my ancestors on my Grandma Mary Jane Morgan’s side. This involved two of Mary Jane’s uncles. I don’t remember the names. Anyway, the two were brothers. They lived up on Camp Creek in Leslie County. One had a big corn field just about ready to harvest. The other was up in the mountains logging. The logger accidently let a log loose and it rolled down and destroyed the corn. They fell out over this and even though they lived by each other never again spoke to each other. They both lived for over 20 more years. When one brother got sick and knew he was dying, he made his family promise to bury him around the point so his brother wouldn’t be able to see his grave! And they did!
The Morgan’s are known to be a contrary bunch. My great grandpa morgan was known to get mad at his family and go to bed and wouldn’t get up. He had a big long beard. They said he would lay there and tie his beard in knots when he was upset. He lived to be up in his 80’s. He died after falling through a hole that had been cut out for a staircase on a house that his kin were working on down in Hyden. The house is still there today. Dad said he stepped backward and fell down to the floor below. He lived a couple of days and then died.
Oral tradition says that the first of my Morgan ancestors to come here came from North Carolina after killing a bunch of indians. The story is that some indians raped one of their sisters. The two brothers caught a bunch of indians sleeping in a barn. They bared the doors and set it on fire, burning them all. They had to leave because of this so they came to Kentucky, settling on Camp creek. I don’t know how much of this is true but almost all Morgan oral tradition has some version of a similar story so I guess there is a kernal of truth in this.
There were many stories about ’something’ stalking folks in the woods. Of course, back then there were bears and mountain lions which old timers called ‘panters’. Dad told about him, Lawton, and some others going coon hunting one night. Something started following them, it sounded big. They could hear it breaking twigs. It stayed just outside the light from their pine knots. They finally got so scared they built a big fire and stayed up all night keeping the fire burning to keep it at bay. Just before daylight it finally left. They never did know what it was but dad thought it must have been a bear.
Once grandpa Burhead was riding a horse up from Wendover. The road went around the mountain side. The road side was steep over the hill and up the mountain and there was a big laural thicked there. It was a mooneless night and it was pitch black. Something jumped out of the bushes and onto the back of his horse behind him. It stayed on the horse and he was half scared to death. Now, he had traded for a couple of chickens and had them tied across his saddle horn. He finally realized it was after the chickens so he cut them loose. When the chickens came off the saddle the thing on the back of his horse jumped off to. It was probably a ‘panter’ or a bobcat dad said.
There were hundreds of these stories told around the heating stove on cold winter evenings or on the front porch on cool summer nights. Who, what, when, and where? Daddy knew them all by name, keith, and kin. What a great shame that I didn’t realize their value until he was no longer here to tell them!
