The High Sheriff

When we first moved to the mountains, I was charmed with the many unusual and antique turns of speech I heard from our older neighbors. "High Sheriff' was one of these, immediately reminding me of Robin Hood's evil nemesis -- The High Sheriff of Nottingham.  

  

Some states actually have High Sheriffs (usually the head sheriff in the state) and in England it is a ceremonial position. But as far as I can tell, in North Carolina it's not an official title -- just one used by the older people. Maybe a survival from earlier days in England or Scotland? I don't know.  But it's still heard now and again.

The word "sheriff" itself is a contraction of the term "shire reeve" -- a position that predates the Norman Conquest (1066). ( Remember the Reeve in The Canterbury Tales?)  The shire reeve was charged  with keeping the peace  throughout a shire or county on behalf of the king.

The mission is much the same today -- keeping the peace.

 <sup>The picture below from the early Twenties is 'High Sheriff'  Jesse James Bailey -- shown here with a mountain of seized moonshine stills. The Madison County Courthouse is in the background.

Not so much moonshine these days -- meth and marijuana are the illicit substances that today's high sheriff has to worry about.</sup>

Benjamin and Harriet

Ol' Benjamin Franklin Freeman? 
Aye, law . . . Oh, I knowed him . . .

Now that there was some kind of a man!

Borned in eighteen and thirty four

Into a hard place and hard times.

And when the times got harder still,

They say he fought on both sides--

Southern gray, Yankee blue -- he done what he had to do.

When the War was over with -- according to some --

 Ben and his brother laid for a man,

What had rode off with the family's last horse,
Leaving naught behind to pull the plow.

 The thief was one of the Home Guard
Claimed the right 'count of Ben's wearing the blue.

Ben kilt that scoundrel dead and called it even,

Though the horse and its gears was long gone.

Reconstructing hisself, Ben went to Mars Hill;

Studied medicine with the doctor there

Till  he could write a prescription good as any man.

From all round, folks come to him for curing

He couldn't heal what lay between him and Harriet though.

And he went for her lover with a pocket knife --

Meaning to kill the no count feller 
But the durn knife couldn't do no good. 

So Ben packed up his young uns and took off

With ox and sled and tools 
Enough to reconstruct hisself again,

Over yon, on the far side of the mountain.

He lived out another thirty years,

Well content to be shed of that huzzzy,

Watching the young uns growing

Into lives of their own.

In later years he saw his wife once more,

Posed for one last picture at Harriet's side.

Still tall and straight he stood, unbowed by time.

Old age had got her, he told me later . . .

Yet still . . . he'd shook his head and spat before allowing

As she still had that teasing way about her

That had made him try to kill a one time friend

With naught but a  Barlow pocket knife.

Once again I'm using someone else's kin. I posted about Benjamin Franklin Freeman back in February, before I was doing Sepia Saturdays and his story is just too good to pass up. You can go HERE for more about Ben and Harriet.

And for even more pictures and stories of other folk's kin. visit Sepia Saturday.

Selling the Broom

Some years ago, John was talking with a local store owner -- a man who also owned a great deal of property in the little community around the store. The store had belonged to his daddy before him, the man said, and it was due to his daddy's good business sense that the family was so well off.

And he did it all by selling a broom.

It was during the Depression, when it was common practice for a farmer to buy on credit and settle up, as best he could, when the crops were sold. Folks would come in to the store and make their few purchases -- salt, baking powder, coffee, maybe some wheat flour -- and the storekeeper would total them up and put the total in his books.

And there was always a charge for a broom.

This was the scam. The enterprising storekeeper kept a broom leaning up against the counter. He always added it into the total. Usually the shopper just signed the tab or made his mark without noticing the extra sum on the ticket. On the rare occasion that it was noticed, the shopkeeper merely said, "Oh, sorry, I thought you wanted that," and scratched off the charge.

"I don't know how many time Daddy must of sold that broom," the son told John, chuckling at the memory. "But I'll tell you one thing -- when he died, we found a shoebox stuffed full of deeds."

Because, of course, when the farmer's crop failed, as they sometime did, the next step was to offer his farm as security against the ever-growing debt he had to the village store-keeper.

I wonder how many brooms it took to bankrupt a farmer?

And I wonder how the son could think it was a funny story.

Looking for the Cantrell Child

Last Friday seemed like a good day to explore a graveyard. My brother was visiting from Alabama and I enlisted him to go with me to look for the Cantrell child's grave.











But first, some back story . . .






I posted a picture of the Walnut church cemetery a few weeks back and Nancy Meadows, the friend who so kindly shared her aunts' diaries with me, wrote to say that she remembered a playhouse with dolls in it built atop one of the graves in that cemetery.












Well, of course I wanted to know more and soon Nancy replied that it was the grave of a little girl -- a Cantrell.

Nancy said, "The family lived over on Straddle Top Mountain and there were a number of children (I believe that Jeter Cantrell is the last surviving child but could be wrong). The parents left the children alone to go to the store and the girl (who was 3-4 years old at the time) got out of the house and walked off with one of the family dogs. She was found frozen to death in the woods with the dog still beside her. My brother said that Daddy told him you could see the lanterns of people looking for her on Straddle Top Mountain. "




What a heart-breaking story!

Nancy is making inquiries to find out more. The play house is gone but I was hoping to find the grave so my brother and I wandered about, looking for Cantrells.

Some of the markers were illegible and some graves were marked only by rocks.

At least one gravestone was broken . . .

We never did find the Cantrell child's grave -- and I thought of those lanterns flickering on the slopes of Straddle Top Mountain as the searchers criss-crossed the dark slopes, calling the lost child's name.

And I thought of the sorrow that must have come with the morning light.