Reminiscences

Front matter

::JOriTSj aMili^»«>«j

Class.

Book..

CHAPTER I. Birthplace— Family Name— Father's Family— Mother's Family ll

CHAPTER n.

Country Life — Hunting — Trading Points — How We Preserved Fire — Games — Means of Travel — Drinking and Fighting 22

CHAPTER HI.

Our Neighbors 33

CHAPTER IV.

My Early Education— My Teachers : Mr. John James, Dr. A. J. Graham, Mr. James A. Kimbrough, and Dr. A. J. Allen— My Schoolmates in Dr. Allen's School— My First Attempt at Teaching— My Second Attempt at Teaching 47

CHAPTER V.

Mr. George Frederick Mellen — Mrs. Alice Hayes Mellen — Experiences at the Springs — A Mob — How to Destroy Fleas — My First Original Speech $8

CHAPTER VI.

My Third Attempt at Teaching— The Beginning of My Religious Life —Professor Seth Smith Mellen— Joining the Church— Religious Experiences — School at Choclahana 69

CHAPTER VII.

Debating Society — Elected Assistant Teacher — Burial of Mr. Pierce — Miss Virginia Shaw, May Queen — Political Speaking — Fourth of July — Trip on Horseback — First Trip to Mobile 80

CHAPTER VIH.

Mother and Brothers — Mrs. Susan Huntington (Bush) Mellen — Going to College — Dr. George Frederick Mellen — John Parker and the Erosophic Society 89

CHAPTER IX. p^^^.

Tuscaloosa and the University — Religious Club — Mrs. Sarah Banks Sims 98

CHAPTER X.

Dr. Landon C. Garland — Professor John W. Pratt 108

CHAPTER XI.

Professor George William Benagh, A.M. — Professor Archibald J, Bat- * tie, A.M. — Professor William S. Wyman, A.M. — Professor John William Mallet, A.M., Ph.D.— Professor Andre DeLoffre— Professor William J. Vaughn, A.M 119

CHAPTER XII.

Colonel Caleb Huse — Colonel James Thomas Murfee — Captain C. L. Lumsden — Captain J. H. Morrison — Organization of the Alabama Corps of Cadets — Appointed Cadet Quartermaster — Dr. Basil Manly and Wife — The Secession of South Carolina 131

CHAPTER XIII.

The Corps Presented to the Legislature — The Trend of Affairs — Speech of Judge A. B. Meek — Lack of Vision in Our Leaders — Firing on Fort Sumter — The Invasion of Virginia — Sent to Montgomery to Drill Troops — First Visit to Prattville — Dr. S. P. Smith — Mrs. Adelaide Julia (Allen) Smith — Promoted to State Lieutenant — Sent to North Alabama to Drill Troops — My Classmates 146

CHAPTER XIV.

Going into the Army — Colonel Henry W. Hilliard — Hilliard's Legion — Mrs. Mary L. Parker Thorington — Colonel J. Thorington — Legion Sent to Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Cumberland Gap — Experiences at Cumberland Gap — Excursion into Kentucky — Retreat from Kentucky — At Big Creek Gap during the Winter of 1862-63 — Grade's Brigade Formed 164

CHAPTER XV.

Encampment at Cumberland Gap — The Battle of Chickamauga 178

CHAPTER XVL

Losses in the Battle — Consolidation of the Legion — Excursion across French Broad River — Three Men Shot for Desertion — Disillusioned of My Dreams of Military Glory — Return to the University — Captain D. Poynor, Professor Cravvrford H. Toy, Captain John How^ard Murfee, and Mrs. Paul F. Tricou — Dr, Thomas Osmond Summers — Professors E. R. Dickson, B. F. Meek, and H. M. Somerville — Fight at Chehaw — Corps Sent to Blue Mountain, Pollard, and Blakely — Sent with a Guard to North Alabama 191

CHAPTER XVII. Page.

University Burned— Members of Corps Wounded — March to Marion — Corps Disbanded — Starting to Join General Lee's Army — The Assassination of President Lincoln — Back to Choctaw County — The School at Mount Sterling— The Oath of Allegiance— Rev. J. W. Rush— Marriage to Miss Fredonia A. Taylor— The Taylor Family. . 210

CHAPTER XVIII.

Summerfield— Centenary Institute— Dr. A. H. Mitchell and Mrs. Fidelia (Douglas) Mitchell— Mr. and Mrs. B. I. Harrison— Rev. and Mrs. Greenberry Garrett— Dr. John S. Moore— Mrs. S. L. W. Daniel —Dr. S. W. Vaughan 230

CHAPTER XIX.

Bishop James O. Andrew — Colonel Robert A. Baker — Mr. Mark Canning and Wife — Friction between the Races — Personal Feeling toward the Negroes — Death of Mrs. Fredonia A. Massey — Trouble among the Students — Advice of Dr. Mitchell — Marriage to Miss Elnora Frances Dallas — The Dallas Family — Students Who Have Become Distinguished — Colonel Samuel Will John 245

CHAPTER XX.

Move to Mobile— Mr. William Otis— Father Abram J. Ryan— Dr. E. P. Gaines — Dr. Jefferson Hamilton — Dawn of a Brighter Day for the South — The Last Speech of Jefferson Davis 264

CHAPTER XXI.

Move to Tuskegee — Lease of the College for Five Years — History of the College — Dr. Andrew A. Lipscomb — Dr. G. W. F. Price — Dr. Henry D. Moore 277

CHAPTER XXn.

My First Year's Experience in Teaching Girls — Miss Mary A. Barker —Miss Mary Alice Caller— Dr. Mark S. Andrews— Mr. William H. Flowers— Miss Ella R. Smilie— Miss Mary Belle Dallas— College Sunday School — Inquiries Whether I Would Accept Other Places — Colonel D. S. Troy's Opinion — Fine Music Department 289

CHAPTER XXIIL

Conditions That Favored My Work — Loyalty and Cooperation of My Teachers — Professors of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute — Major W. W. Screws — Chautauqua, New York — Changed Conditions — Woman's College of Alabama — Booker Washington — Trials and Their Issue — On Entering My Eighty-Second Year — Our Home 304

CHAPTER XXIV.

In Memoriam : Mrs. E. F. Massey 324

Preface

Perhaps no man in the history of Alabama has lived more usefully or labored more wisely and productively than John Massey, the author of this book of reminiscences. The volume will yield both pleasure and profit to the very large circle of those who have learned to love and honor him both for his own and for his work's sake.

That work has been of immeasurable importance and benefit to the people of Alabama and of other States and has already during his lifetime borne much and rich fruit, which, we are persuaded, is but the promise and prophecy of a much larger harvest to be surely reaped in future years by the multitude of men and women he has taught, inspired, and guided in their school and college years and that other numerous company of us who, outside the privileged circle of those who have sat at his feet as students, have been touched and influenced by the example of his life and impressed with his high ideals and consecrated devotion to duty.

Dr. Massey has rendered one more distinguished service to his people by giving them this book. Its value is manifold.

It cannot fail to be helpful and inspiring to any young persons who, struggling against obstacles, however great and many, seek to secure an education which will fit them for honorable and useful life. The author has himself faced these difficulties and triumphed over them.

The judicious character sketches of well-known men and women who have figured in Alabama and helped to make the history of the last seventy years add much to the interest and value of this work and will be useful to the future historian of the State.

All former students of the University of Alabama, the Alabama Conference Female College (now the Woman's College of Alabama), and of other schools in which the Doctor has taught will be peculiarly interested in these reminiscences and profited and pleased as they read them.

lo REMINISCENCES.

One of the charms of the volume consists in the glimpses given the reader here and there into the heart of the writer, revealing all unconsciously the motives and ideals which have molded his character, shaped his life, and made him what he is.

The writer of this preface deems it not out of place to saythat with characteristic generosity the author donates to the Woman's College of Alabama any royalties that may accrue from the sales of this book.

Assured that its influence will be productive of good, and only of good, to all who may read it, the writer commends it with the wish that it may be as enjoyable and profitable to others as it has been to him. A. J. Lamar.

Nashville, Tennessee, April, 1916.

X

REMINISCENCES.

CHAPTER I.

Birthplace — Family Name — Father's Family — Mother's Family.

A BOUT two miles from the State line between Alabama ■^ ^ and Mississippi, twenty miles west of the Tombigbee River, and one hundred miles north of Mobile there is a spot that will always live in my memory. This was the scene of my childhood, a scene of sacred recollections, as I suppose every locality is in which a child first comes into conscious being. During the fourth decade of the last century this place was in almost an unmodified state of nature. It was not much changed from the state in which it had been familiar to the Choctaw Indians — for how long, no one could tell. The tribe had been moved to the Indian Territory, though some scattering ones still remained up to the time of my early recollection.

The place is four miles south of Okatuppa Creek, three miles west of Puscus Creek, and near three smaller creeks called Ratcliff Creeks, which are tributaries of Puscus. The country is hilly, with scarcely a level spot, except along the hammocks and creek bottoms. The original pines and poplars, oaks and hickories, chestnuts and sweet gums were still standing just as they had stood for decades and some of them perhaps for centuries. There was something awe-inspiring in the sighing of the wind through these old giants of the woods. There was a charm in the undergrowth of blackjack and dogwood, haw and huckleberry, grape and muscadine.

This was .the native home of birds of many varieties and at certain seasons of the year the visiting place of great flocks of wood pigeons, blackbirds, and wild ducks. The woods were full of squirrels, which furnished sport and meat for the youthful huntsmen; and raccoons and opossums supplied game for

(II)

the nightly hunt. Flocks of wild turkeys and herds of mmblef ooted deer were too numerous to be counted ; while bears and panthers still lingered in the big swamps, so well calculated to inspire the imagination of a boy, whose pleasure is never greater than when mingled with a spice of danger.

The skies seemed brighter than they have ever appeared since. The morning sun peering through the trees had a soulstirring power. The golden-tinted clouds at eventide inspired sentiments that I could neither name nor express. The stars looked down upon us mortals with twinkling intelligence. The Milky Way, cleaving the heavens with its shining hand, provoked many a question as to how it came to be, just as it had evoked inquiry from the men of the olden time. I asked many an unanswered question of the moon with her marvelous man as she continued monthly to repeat the story of her birth. Such were the scenes of my childhood where I dreamed many a boyish dream.

After an absence of fifty-two years I visited this place in company with my daughter Mabelle and Mr. J. R. Land in October, 19 lo. I could exclaim with ^neas as he looked on the pictures of his native Troy, whose glory had departed: "Qiiam miitatiis ah illo" ("How changed from the place I knew in my childhood!") ! No familiar faces greeted me, as of yore. Every vestige of the old homestead had vanished. Of the cedars under whose shade I had spent so many happy hours, there was no sign remaining. The stately old trees that stood hard by lived only in my memory. I could recognize nothing but the shape of the ground and the site of the spring. Even the old hill that used to give plenty of room for my boyish feet now seemed small and hemmed in. Over the spot hovers a melancholy shadow. This change suggested by contrast a brighter world, where

"With the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile,"

and recalled the lines of Mrs. Hemans, whose poems entertained my young mind in this place:

"Dreams cannot picture a world so fair; Pain and parting never enter there ; Time doth not breathe on its fadeless bloom Beyond the stars and beyond the tomb."

Family Name.

The family name of Massey, as some of the branches in South CaroHna and Pennsylvania have traced it, is of French origin. As their accoimt runs, our ancestors went from France into England with William the Conqueror in 1066. The name, they say, was originally spelled Masse, was later changed to Massie, and finally into Massey, which is the usual spelling in England, Canada, and the United States.

Whether our ancestors sprang from that irrepressible strain of Celtic blood that has survived in Devonshire from an unknown past and produced Drake and Hawkins, Raleigh and the Gilberts — the men that first attempted to colonize the New World — or whether they came from Hengist and Horsa and their Saxons who invaded England in 447, or whether they descended from Rollo and his Norsemen who settled in Normandy in 876 and were transplanted to English soil in 1066, I know not nor set any store by. It is evident, however, that our ancestors came from a virile race holding the value of liberty above all other blessings. Whenever they have had a vision of a new land, they have braved the dangers of the ocean and the fury of savage men to possess it. This daring spirit of enterprise brought them from England into Virginia and the Carolinas, and from Virginia and the Carolinas they poured over the mountains into the West as far south as the Mississippi territory.

My immediate ancestors came from South Carolina into the "Bigbee country," which now constitutes Washington and Choctaw Counties, in Alabama. Like the Hebrew worthies of old, they plainly declared by their actions that they were ever seeking a better country. Carnegie says: "The best blood of a nation emigrates — the energetic, the most courageous, the most self-denying, the most hopeful. The dullard, the laggard, and the coward do not adventure much for better things."

Whatever records I had O'f my immediate family were at the University of Alabama and were destroyed in the burning of the buildings in the early morning of April 4, 1865, which event will be described later in these reminiscences. All the accounts I can give, therefore, of my family and my early life are dependent on my memory.

Father's Family.

My father, Drury Massey, was born about the year 1775 in Spartanburg District (County), South Carolina, near the present city of Spartanburg. He grew to manhood in that section, where he received his two years of schooling under Mr. James Threadgill, who taught in that district. I remember seeing some of his old copybooks containing the copies set by Mr. Threadgill in a very beautiful hand. My father had an older brother named John and another named William. These were common family names, as I learned from Governor A. B. Moore, who was from Spartanburg District and knew my father's family well. While I was associated with him in camps of instruction in 1861 he gave me some account of my South Carolina relatives.

In his early manhood my father moved from South Carolina to Tennessee and settled on Duck River. About this time his imagination was captivated by the glowing descriptions of the Indiana Territory, which was being settled. But in the summer of 1813 the whole country was excited on account of the slaughter of the whites by the Creek Indians in the Mississippi Territory. So he enlisted in General Jackson's army and marched to what is now Alabama to fight the Creek Indians. On November 9 the battle of Talladega was fought; and on March 27, 18 14, occurred the most celebrated of all the battles with the Indians, the battle of Horse Shoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa River, near the site of Alexander City. The Indians had collected all their forces in this bend of the river, which is in the form of a horse shoe. They had fortified their position to the best of their ability. They were staking their fate on this battle. They fought with desperation until they were all killed, except a few who made their escape by hiding in the water among the brush on the margin of the river. Their defeat broke the power of the Creek confederacy and made it much safer for white settlers to move into the Territory. In this battle Jackson used some artillery against the Indians, who said : "Captain Jackson did not fight fair, because he shot wagons at us." When his cannon balls and grapeshot gave out, he folded up trace chains and shot them at the Indians.

After destroying the Indians at Horse Shoe Bend, Jackson and his army went to Fort Toulouse, which was founded by the French about a hundred years previous, near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, a few miles above the city of Montgomery. The fort was thereafter called Fort Jackson. From this point Jackson went to Pensacola, Florida, where he captured a Spanish fort which was friendly to the English and was furnishing the hostile Indians with guns and ammunition. At first the Spaniards refused to surrender; but when they saw Jackson's men preparing ladders to scale the walls of their fort, they ran up a white flag and surrendered, thus avoiding the bloodshed that would have occurred if Jackson had been forced to carry out his original plan. Soon after disposing of the Spaniards in Pensacola, Jackson marched his forces to New Orleans, where he defeated the British in the celebrated battle of New Orleans on January 8, 18 15. In this battle Jackson had his men posted behind breastworks. He ordered them to withhold their fire until the British came near enough to show the whites of their eyes. The Tennesseeans being trained marksmen, the volley from their guns was most deadly when the order to fire was given. The British never recovered from the first repulse, in which their general. Sir Edward Michael Pakenham, was slain. Peace had been declared fifteen days before this battle ; but neither army knew it, so slow were the means of communication in those days. Sailing vessels were the most rapid news carriers.

Soon after the battle of New Orleans the Tennessee troops marched back home through the central portion of what is now the State of Alabama, along what was afterwards known as the Old State Road.

Father was a great admirer of General Jackson. In politics he was a Jacksonian Democrat. To show how widespread and enthusiastic the admiration for Jackson was, I have heard him state with evident pleasure that, wherever you might go, you would find the country full of little dirty-faced children called Andy Jackson in honor of the hero of Horse Shoe Bend and New Orleans.

On one occasion during the expedition against the Indians and Spaniards some of the troops whose time of enlistment was out started home. The General rode around and got before them and told them in his positive tone : "By the Eternal, I will shoot the first man that moves forward. If you go home, you will go over my dead body." They remained with Jackson.

So pleased was father with the splendid Alabama country that he moved from Tennessee a few years later and settled in the western part of the Territory, in the upper part of Washingston County (afterwards Choctaw), where he remained a quiet farmer to the end of his life, in 1848. So, owing to the fact of his coming to Alabama instead of going to the Indiana Territory, I suppose I am an Alabamian instead of a "Hoosier."

His first wife was a Miss Lowry, by whom he had three children — William, Dorothy, and James. His wife died when the youngest was an infant. I once heard him mention the sleepless nights he had spent walking the floor in watchful solicitude over this child that was left to his sole care. These children all grew to maturity and married. Dorothy married Mr. Alfred Swann. She died early, leaving one child, Dorothy ("Dolly") Swann, of whom I have a pleasant recollection. William and James married cousins, each named Susanna ("Susie") Shoemaker. They moved to Mississippi sometime after father's death, and I never saw them again after they left Alabama.

Mother's Family.

My mother's family also came from South Carolina. They belonged to a race that loved liberty and were of the Patriot party during the Revolutionary War. The people of that colony were divided in their sentiments into V^o parties, the Patriots and the Tories. The Patriots were fighting for the freedom of the colonies ; the Tories were the party that still clung to England. My maternal grandmother, whose name was Ann Vaughn, was a girl eight or ten years of age and was in a section that was overrun by the belligerents. So vivid was her recollection of the movement of the soldiers and the firing of the guns that she used to entertain us with thrilling accounts of the engagements between the British "Redcoats" and the ragged Patriots. Living then in South Carolina was as hazardous and harrowing as it was in the border States during our Civil War.

When my grandmother grew to womanhood, she married Mr. Christopher Gorham, by whom she had four children — Tabitha ("Bithie"), Vashti, Christopher, and Sarah. Several years prior to 1813 they moved from Chester District, South Carolina, to the Bigbee country, as it was then called, in Washington County, Mississippi Territory, and settled on the west side of the Mobile River just below the "cut-off," They came all the way from Central South Carolina in covered wagons, crossing the Chattahoochee River near the present site of Columbus, Georgia, passing through the Creek Nation, which was not at all friendly to the whites. In those days there were two lines of travel from the East to the Bigbee country. One passed by old Fort Mitchell along the Chunnannuggee Ridge in a southwesterly direction through the territory now embraced in Russell, Bullock, and Crenshaw Counties. The other ran farther north through the place where Tuskegee is now located, passing about ten miles east of the site of Montgomery. Through this northern route Aaron Burr was carried from Washington County to Richmond, Virginia, in 1807; and through this it is probable that the Gorhams came several years later. They crossed the Mobile River near the "cut-off."

The Bigbee country had captivated their imaginations — an easy thing to do, as pioneer blood flowed through their veins. Not a great while after their arrival in their new home Mr.

Gorham died and left Mrs. Gorham with her four children to be reared in a rough and uncivilized country surrounded by ravenous wolves and savage Indians. In the summer of 1813 the Indians became alarmingly hostile. The whites had to go into forts to protect themselves from slaughter. Mrs. Gorham and her children went into Fort Stoddart, on the western side of the river, near the present Mount Vernon. Besides Fort Stoddart, there was a fort at Saint Stephens and another on the eastern side of the river called Fort Mims, from the name of the man who owned the ferry at that place. Fort Mims at the time contained over five hundred people. Under the leadership of William Weatherford, the celebrated half-breed chief, the Creek Indians butchered the occupants of Fort Mims on August 30, 1813. I knew an old gentleman, Mr. Isam Kimball, of Jackson, Alabama,, who was a lad in the fort at the time of the slaughter and who thought that he alone escaped to tell the fearful story. A few others, however, besides Mr. Kimball made their escape. The people in the other forts were in daily expectation of a similar fate. My grandmother had a bloodcurdling recollection of those awful days which she sometimes painted in colors that made our hair stand on end and showed that the country of Daniel Boone was not the only section that might have borne the dreadful name of "Dark and Bloody Ground." The news of the slaughter at Fort Mims spread all over the country and brought armies from Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. This was the occasion of the coming of General Jackson and his Tennesseeans, as stated above.

My Aunt Tabitha died in her early womanhood. My Uncle Christopher Gorham married and had one son named Hebron. He lived in what was then Sumter (now a part of Choctaw) County, on Tickumbum Creek. About 1845 he moved west and died some years afterwards. My Aunt Sarah Gorham married a man named Ethelred Jones, who was called "Dred" Jones. To me he was rightly named "Dread" Jones, for he was at intervals addicted to immoderate drinking. He sometimes came to our house during these spells and would attempt to take me in his arms and make much of me. On these occasions I would leave and remain hid out until he was gone. I have had an aversion to a drunken man ever since, a feeling which I have found difficult to overcome even when I have sometimes had to render assistance to my drunken friends.

Mr. Jones was one of the best farmers in all that country and commanded good salaries as superintendent of some of the largest plantations in Mississippi. His habit of drinking immoderately at times was his only serious fault. ' Mrs. Jones was a bright, cheery woman who bore the conduct of her husband with striking fortitude and without a word O'f complaint. She was a faithful wife and mother. She had four daughters — Nancy, Caroline, Rebecca, and Narcissa — who occasionally visited our home. She also had one son, John, who died in early boyhood. They lived about twenty miles from us, across the Mississippi line. Some years before the war Mr. Jones died; and Mrs. Jones moved to Raymond, in Hinds County, Mississippi, where I visited her in the summer of

My father had been a widower fifteen years when he and my mother, Vashti Gorham, were married. Upon their marriage they came to live in a log house on the hill described in the first paragraph of these memoirs. In this house I was born on December 16, 1834. Soon afterwards they built a new log house, which was as good as any house in the neighborhood at that time. In the new house my brother Joel was born in 1836 and my brother Drury in 1838.

My Grandmother Gorham made her home with us as long as she lived. I have overheard it stated in conversations among the neighbors that I was thought to be grandmother's favorite. If it was true, I did not merit this preference. Whether it was true or not, I owe her a debt of lasting gratitude for her tender care and entertaining companionship. She was my first teacher in any matter pertaining to books. Among other things, she taught me the names of the books in the Bible in the order in which they stand in the King James translation, a knowledge that has aided me in finding readily any book in the Bible. If you wish to live In the pleasant memories of people, teach children something which they can use advantageously all their lives. In the use of this acquirement names will come up by the laws of association. Referring to the books of the Bible always brings up the thought of my grandmother.

She was also one of my first teachers in morals. On one occasion I had not told the truth in some matter about which I was questioned. After I had gone to bed and was supposed to be asleep, I overheard her tell mother that she did not care so much about the transgression, but it grieved her "to think that John would tell a lie." She said nothing to me, but this burned into my conscience like fire. She had put an emphasis on the turpitude of lying that I could feel. By her grief revealed to me in this indirect way she had taught me a lesson I could never forget, a lesson which has enabled me to understand what true repentance is. When I am conscious that my sin grieves God, I hate sin and I wish to have nothing to do with it. I know now that I should have had more candid, straightforward honesty and have gone to my grandmother and confessed; but this is one of the hard things to do In repentance, the thing which I did not do. If I had done it, I would have come out into the clear light of forgiveness. I would have done the only thing which the sinner can ever do to blot out his sin and open the way between him and his fellow men and remove the cloud between him and God.

I heard grandmother refer with manifest satisfaction to the reputation she bore in her earlier years of being "the most beautiful woman that ever drank the waters of the Bigbee." From the fine profile of her Roman nose and well-shaped features even in her old age when I knew her, I can easily believe that she was justly entitled to this distinction, I am sure that her character was as beautiful as her physical form was handsome.

She and all her family were Methodists. My mother, after her marriage, joined the Baptist Church to be in the same Church with her husband.

In the early summer of 1848, a few weeks before father died, I heard grandmother say to him very kindly and tenderly : "The doctor does not seem to be doing you any good. I am afraid you have not long to stay with us. If you have any preparation to make, I think you ought to make it soon." He said very quietly : "My preparation is already made. Whenever it is the Lord's will to take me, I am ready to go." She was evidently gratified at his reply. About one year later, when she was, I think, in her eighty-fourth year, she knew that her departure was at hand. We were all called in to see her pass away as peacefully as if she had been falling asleep.