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Here is one such story: First Name last
initial: Kathy D.
Location of Story: northeast Alabama
submitted on Saturday, April 05th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Story: A Sand Mountain Family About 140 years ago in South Carolina, Joseph
Chapman decided to move his family to greener pastures.They
moved to north Georgia, where he tried to make a living by tenant farming. Then
land became available for homesteading on Sand Mountain in northeast
Alabama.The menfolks went in a covered wagon loaded
with their possessions. Two cows walked behind the wagon. Joseph's wife Dorcus,
the girls, and the baby of the family, John, travelled by train to Valley Head.
When the family arrived at their new homesite, 80 acres near the town of Ider,
they built a brush arbor and lived in it until they could build a cabin. ( A
brush arbor is a shelter built of small trees and branches lashed together with
more branches piled on top to keep out the rain.) They did not have much to eat
until they got the land cleared, planted, and harvested. They ground corn in a
hollowed-out rock and made mush. They also had some salt pork. Joseph told his
children that during the Civil War he had fought in the Confederate Army. He had
wanted to fight with Federal troops, but had been unable to make his way north
to get with them. He told his family that at times food was so short that the
southern soldiers picked grains of corn that had passed through horses out of
the manure, washed them off and ate them. All of Joseph's sons bought land and
settled in the Ider area. However, one of them, Monroe, left the mountain when
his farm was confiscated by the law to pay off a debt he had incurred by making
bond for a friend who had been caught making whiskey. The "friend" ran away, and
Monroe was left with the debt. (information provided by my mother, the
grand-daughter of Monroe Chapman)
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