section 27 township 6 north range 22 east

the particular is beautiful. 

we know with great precision where sion and kitsie were for about 10 years...from 1854 to 1864...give or take. 

in november 1854, sion paid $10 for 40 acres under a new federal law to unload all the public available after native americans were conveniently removed.  in the local case, the creeks were packed off to oklahoma. sion purchased a 16th of section 27 of township 6 north, range 22 east.  the paperwork exists in the national archives. 

land purchase statement

click on the image to see it enlarged.  and here we have it...sion's mark.  his "x" is at the bottom right. he left, as far as we know, no other sign on paper of his passing through this planet. 

section 27

luckily, usgs topographic maps include the township and range grids. make a mental division of section 27 into 4 squares. pick the bottom right square and mentally divide that into 4 equal squares.  of those 4 smaller squares, pick the bottom left one and you have the sw 1/4 of the se quarter, which is the 16th part that sion bought.  his 40 acres.  so, roughly, it is situated right above the bottom red line about where the 400 foot is marked on the isoline.  the dashed and dotted blue line is an intermittent stream that drains into bowles creek.

the bigger view

the 40 acres would be just to the right of the bottom of the last "e" in coffee.  sion would have traveled the 15 miles west to elba where the land office was to apply and make payment. 

the land is now in the middle of fort rucker where training on apache attack copters takes place. in 2001, cousin rex everage (descendant of dan hutcheson who was a son of sion) and i wheedled our way onto the the fort with escort, drove down a dirt road to the approximate location of the 40 acres. 

looking into sion and kitsie's land

the focus is a little soft.  but you get the idea.  being locked into the fire range of fort rucker has protected the land from other development.  no sign of any farmstead, but we could not walk into the land because of unexploded munitions.  but somewhere in the thicket fields were planted, hogs and cattle roamed and the sons and daughters of sion and kitsie labored and frolicked and all was well for 10 years.

crackers

you may have hoped for well-landed aristocrats straight out of gone with the wind for your southern ancestors.  but sion and kitsie were not of the class of the lucky few.  i don't take it as a source of pride or shame, it just is. 

cracker:  a braggart, liar (1681). one full of conversation (scottish). a lie (1625). a name for the "poor whites" in the southern united states (1767).---the oxford universal dictionary of historical principles

other appellations mentioned in the preface to historian grady mcwhiney's cracker culture: piney-woods people, dirt-eaters, clay-eaters, tallow-faced gentry, sand-hillers, herdsmen, hog-drovers, mudsills, ragtag and bobtail, plain folk

a cracker home

from harper's new monthly magazine vol 8

wiregrass

"…the Wiregrass region of southeastern Alabama.  The long nutritious grass that furnished the region its name grew on the floor of extensive pine forests, providing abundant fodder for foraging livestock.  Its sandy soil, though ideal for pine trees and wire grass, was not well-suited to agriculture.  Settlers grew corn and other food crops for local consumption but little cotton.   Called variously the piney woods (for its trees), the pine barrens (for its sparse population), or cow country (fort its heavy economic dependence on livestock grazing), the region encompassed four southeastern Alabama counties in 1860 (Henry, Dale, Coffee, and Covington).  … Though not as renowned for family feuds and violence as mountain people, physical conflict seems to have been just as pervasive.  The same frontier conditions, the slow development of stabilizing institutions such as schools, churches, and towns, and extensive consumption of whiskey all contributed to this atmosphere. ... Slaves constituted only 19.63 of the population of the four counties, which totaled only 43,207.  Less than 15 percent of the white families owned any slaves.  ... One sample of 1,218 heads of families found 77 percent female heads, a phenomenally high statistic.  The rate of illiteracy was high, slightly more than 20 percent, but many illiterates owned land.  Among illiterates, 15 persons owned property worth $2,100 to $3,000;  28, $1,000 to $2,000; 36, $600 to $100; 126, $1 to $500; and only 6 owned no property at all."

from Poor But Proud, Alabama's Poor Whites by Wayne Flynt

Sion and Kitsie and the local economic ladder

in the 1860 census, the value of sion and kitsie’s property (land, tools, stock)  was $620.  by contrast, a wealthy neighbor, thomas cole, the man who lent $98.81 to sion, was worth $52,000.  the average for the 111 haw ridge households, neighbors to sion and kitsie, that owned land, was $3,193.  sion and kitsie were far, far below average, in fact, of the households that owned land, only 33 were valued below sion & kitsie, and  77 were valued higher.   to get a fairer comparison, we can drop the nine highest estates, those valued at $10,000 or more, in which case the average is $1,663 and sion and kitsie are still far below that.

this comparison gives us a hint of sion and kitsie’s rank in the local economic and social structure, but looking only at  the wealth as counted in the census is to miss the larger picture. it’s all relative. keep in mind, some of his neighbors owned other human beings, who were counted and valuated as property by the census-taker.  sion and kitsie did not own slaves.  while clearly in the bottom half of their neighbors in terms of property, the family was not destitute, they owned land, they produced cotton, which is not a subsistence crop, they could hunt and fish to supplement the food they raised and they were part of a larger family unit made up of kitsies’s people that probably pooled and shared labor and resources.  

Sion Hutcheson (1817 - 1864)

let's return to sion, wjh's great-grandfather.  sion's grandchildren knew only 3 facts about him:  his name, that he was born in georgia and that he died in the civil war.  nothing else. none of the grandchildren i talked with knew the names of sion's parents

there is no photograph of him, but i wonder how closely john hutcheson resembled his father? maybe sion had deep set eyes and prominent cheekbones, too. 

possible likeness of sion

going beyond the 3 facts requires digging into archives of records such as birth and death records, population censuses, land records, court records. as long as they survive flood, fire and negligence, such records provide a way to flesh out a life.  as they do for sion, because through them we know...

• that he was born around 1817 in twiggs county, georgia
• that he bought 40 acres in coffee county, alabama on november 3, 1854
• that he borrowed $98.81 from a thomas cole in may of 1857 and paid it back
• that he was on his haw ridge farm in 1860 with a pregnant kitsie ann and 5 children
• that he could not read or write
• that he did not own slaves
• that in 1860 he owned 60 acres of land valued at $300, $5 worth of farming implements, 1 horse, 3 milk cows, 3 cattle and 10 swine, all of which he valued at $220
• that in the year ending June 1860 he had grown 17 bushels of corn, four 400-pound bales of ginned cotton & 100 bushels of sweet potatoes & had slaughtered $75 worth of hogs over the past year
• that he mustered in the 3rd battalion reserves in august of 1864
• that he died a month later, on september 17, 1864 from disease, possibly in greenville, alabama

and thus concludes the facts in the case of sion hutcheson.

geography 2

                                                    the regional situation

just to the right of the red base of the flag you'll see "camp rucker", which marks where the since-disappeared community of haw ridge was when kitsie ann and sion moved there in the 1850's.  (clicking on the image will bring up a larger view.) to the left of the red base is "red level", which is just above the unmarked farm community of loango where kitsie and sons and daughters moved to in the 1870's.  montgomery to the north. pensacola and gulf beaches to the south. 

this saga takes place in the deep deep south.

geography 1

some geography to help put in your mind’s eye the theater where the saga of this branch of the hutcheson clan was acted out.

                                               the general situation

the flag pinpoints the land where four generations marked out all, or significant numbers, of their days on this planet. sion and kitsie migrated from georgia and south carolina respectively into the land. john and robert were born to and died in the land. wjh was born and raised there and left as a young man. 

we are in the southeastern pocket of alabama, roughly 90 miles straight south of  montgomery. the gulf waters are close. the hutchesons lived near streams and rivers that drain into the gulf.  pensacola, an old spanish colonial city, is in left bottom corner.  from there hutcheson cotton was probably shipped to northeastern or english mills. the hutcheson’s floated rafts of pines log’s from hutcheson landing on pigeon creek down to the pensacola mills and walked the 100 miles back home.  salt was harvested from the gulf’s saltwater. 

in far distance is the western horn of south carolina located toward the top of the map just right of the center line.  the general vicinity of kitsie ann’s birthplace.   you get a sense of the line of the trek her family made. 

Wilson John Hutcheson (1919 -1986)

         sunday best ca 1925

the center point of this blog, wjh, on the left. white shirt, shorts, hair slicked down, looking at something to the side of the photograper.  older brother, win, with his buck teeth, ina mae self-conscious with cute bangs and baby eloise inspecting a toy in her hands.  and the spindly southern pine trees in the background.  even amidst these challenging times for farmers and probably not too long before rob's barn is burnt down, someone in the extended family has a brownie camera.

Robert Hutcheson (1884 - 1955)

john begat robert...with a little help from martha findley.  robert, or "rob", was 3rd born of 8 and, like his father, did not stray far from his birthplace, which was loango, alabama.  rob married stella sellers and they had 4 children, wjh was the 3rd born in 1919. 

circa 1930. rob and brothers

rob is seated in the center front, eyes in shadow, hands in lap. standing behind are babe, bluford, early and albert. to rob's right is liston and to his left brother-in-law david mitchell.  all farmers.

rob was a farmer that lost everything in the southern farm depression of the 1920's that was a preface to the great depression of the 1930's.  the sourthern small farmer was the victim of two large back-to-back economic cataclysms.  however, in rob's case, there were also more local and personal forces. 


the story
rob's grew testy over growing traffic that used a road through his loango farm to reach a cousin's moonshining operation and rob let his cousin know about it.  it's been said that rob was a teetotaler...did not sip at the jug. he also happened to have a father-in-law who was a deputy officer of the law.  the cousin thought that rob had snitched on him and in retaliation torched rob's barn. barn-burning is an old southern tradition of revenge, faulkner wrote a short story called barn burning.  rob lost the corn harvest, his mule, cow and tools.  he could not make payment on the mortgage after that and he lost his farm.  this was during prohibition and the local bootleggers protected their territory with violence and terror; they were nightriders, thugs that used the cloak of night to attack anyone who complained and shoot up their houses. wjh could recall the barn burning, so i  date it around 1926, give or take a year. 

ca 1935. rob and stella and children

in the back from the left: wjh, ina mae and winston

in the front from the left: stella, rob and eloise

the family moved from the farm community of loango to the town of andalusia about 10 miles away. stella worked in a garment factory, rob took a job in a sawmill and did some sharecropping on the side.  the family moved and lived in many houses during their years in town. after the children grew and left home. rob and stella separated. she moved to the city...finding better jobs in birmingham and montgomery, while rob stayed behind and ran a truck farm for awhile with a cousin.  his health was not good for the last 10 years of his life and stella nursed him towards the end of his days.  

rob never owned a car or truck.  he never used a tractor.  he did not drink or smoke, but he chewed and spit tobacco and he could knock a grasshopper off a fencepost at 20 paces. he was quiet, gentle, and, as his brother babe told me, "he did not have much health."

i never met rob.  i was born in 1953 in california and he died  in 1955 in alabama.  no chance to bridge time and distance.    i'll come back around to stella  later. let's just say for now that she had moxy. 



John Hutcheson (1854 - 1915)

speaking of john hutcheson, grandfather of wjh...

here he is with his wife martha findley hutcheson, in their sunday best, in a photograph possibly taken around 1900.  wjh was born 4 years after john's death, so did not know his grandfather.  john was a cotton and corn farmer.  he died about 60 miles west from where he was born and for all we know that might have been the extent of his travels.  he and his brothers floated log rafts down the escambia river to the pensacola mills, so john would, at least, have seen the ocean.  he was a moonshiner, knew the art and science of distilling corn whiskey and that got him into trouble with martha and with the the pleasant grove baptist church which frowned on liquor and fiddle music. his brothers called him "son." in a letter from 1979, cousin mae hutcheson wrote that she remembered his death and his funeral on the afternoon of dec 27 1915 when the weather was "cloudy cold, almost sleet weather."

Kitsie Ann Chancey Hutcheson (1818 - 1904)

let's begin with the oldest image we have of an ancestor of wjh...his great grandmother...kitsie ann.

this image is a rarity, it was nearly lost. a single copy existed, one faded photograph was in the possession of a granddaughter of kitsie ann's.  it sat in a box in a closet in wisconsin after her death and was almost tossed out.





kitsie ann died in 1904, when she was about 86 years old, several days after breaking a hip in a fall from a family wagon. she looks to be 80 years or so in this image which was probably taken sometime around 1900 give or take a few years.

look at her right hand.  even with the low resolution of the scanned image you can see the thickness and wear from years of work.  working fields, picking cotton, spinning and weaving and fashioning clothes, plucking chickens, sirring a pot over flames, boiling down hog fat and making soap, setting broken bones. 

and the face with her many wrinkles and deep deep lines.  there is a book of stories written in that face.

kitsie ann, a south carolina girl, born around 1818 to alexander and rhoda.  she migrated with her family and wagons and stock to southeast Alabama in the 1830's, a journey of 400 to 500 miles south and west, probably along the old federal road and crossings of  many rivers, streams and creeks, including the savannah, the oconee, the ocmulgee and finally the chattahoochee rivers.  the family settled in dale county, alabama near the west branch of the choctawhatchee river, in a community known today as bells crossroad. this is where she probably met and married sion hutcheson sometime in the 1840's.

she survived child birth, wilderness travel, a civil war that took her husband and lean seasons of hunger.  her children were dan, elizabeth, green, john, amanda and isabelle. wjh descended from her through her son john.

first things ...

this will be an experiment in sharing photos and old family stories with the nexus being my father, wilson john hutcheson, henceforth "wjh" for short. 


the postings will not necessarily be chronological and not all about wjh.   they will be mostly random shapshots ranging through time and family.


when i was growing up i heard next to nothing about my father's family or his childhood or where he was from.  eventually he wanted to fill that gap and in 1975 he flew his two adult children to alabama...an exotic place for two west coasters...to meet his mother and other family and show us where he was born.  i since have pondered this knowledge vacuum about family and history...so typical of an age that does not look back...and what it does to how we see ourselves in the world...living unrooted without full context...the conetxt of the past.  to sketch in some context, over the years i collected pieces of information and photographs from far-away family...people i never met...and i poked around archives to piece out facts.  it is not a substitute for sitting on a front porch in the southern summer dusk at the feet of some ancient while tales are spun or over the kitchen table on some family get together where grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins chime in with a missing detail over some old mishap.  but, my little archive of family history at least removes complete ignorance.  i am looking for a way to share...we'll see how this works.