Chambers County AlArchives History .....The Williams Homeplace November 2020 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/alfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Ronald Williams Hopewellroad@yahoo.com September 26, 2021, 11:51 pm I have always considered it a privilege to have grown up in the Old Williams Homeplace in the Hopewell Community. It is hard to put a definition on the word “home.” It is so much more than just the four walls of a house. You may live in a mansion, but it might never be a home. Our homeplace was not a mansion. When my parents, brothers and I moved there in the summer of 1975, the house was frozen in time. It might just as well have been 1930. If it were not for the single rope lights which hung from the ceiling in each of the big rooms and indoor plumbing, it might just as well have been 1880. Most people would not have made the decision to buy the old place, but I am so glad that my parents did. It gave me a sense of family and belonging and history that I do not believe I would have developed otherwise. My family has been coming home to this place for more than a hundred seventy- five years. My father spent eleven years of his childhood in South Carolina, but each summer and at Christmas it was to this place that he came. When my great grandmother died, they brought her body home. She lay in state in the living room and neighbors came to sit up with the dead. When my grandfather’s father died young it was here that they fled. Letters from the Civil War came here and were wept over by lamp light. From France in World War I and Okinawa in World II and Vietnam and Iraq the sons came home. It is not so much that the place belongs to us but that we belong to the place. The old Williams Homeplace was built in 1839, the year after my 3rd great grandparents, David Sherrill Williams and Nancy Woodall were married. Her father, John Woodall, had made a brief stop in Chambers County, Alabama, before heading west to Texas. David had come to East Alabama, from Harris County, Georgia, just across the Chattahoochee, in 1833, in the days just after Chambers County was created. He came with his father Aaron, his brother Samuel, and other relatives including a man named Avington Williams. The family built a log cabin not too far from present-day Dixon Creek on present-day Chambers County Road 500. The oak trees which once shaded the cabin are still there. When I was a child, we would occasionally stop at this site. You could still see the old well and the ruts of a forgotten farm road which once led to the houses closer to Hopewell Road. In true pioneer style the log cabin was a two-room dogtrot with the kitchen set away from the house in case of fire. The cabin rested between two ancient cedars and was located, as the family used to say, “just up from where the Indians used to camp.” Old Timers remember that Indian graves were once visible in the area. David’s brother, Samuel, was an Indian Trader, who took an Indian wife. As the story goes, Samuel married her to get the property that the Williams family settled on. She was not allowed to sleep in the log cabin. “That half-breed can sleep in the barn,” the family said. This is not a proud family story, but it is the truth just as well. Samuel must have been a man full of stories. He is said to have assisted on the Indian Removal from Chambers County, known as the Trail of Tears, in 1836. Samuel built the first bridge across the Osanippa and he charged a toll for the luxury of crossing the creek in style. The Indian wife, whose name has been lost to time, is buried along with Samuel at the Old Williams Burying Ground on a slight hill not too far from the site of old log cabin. I have always wondered why the Williams Family stopped in Chambers County. We descend, as the story goes, from three brothers who came from Ireland to America before the American Revolution. Aaron was born in South Carolina in 1770. The family had been moving steadily west from the Carolina’s into Greene County, and on a slow, steady march across Georgia before settling in East Alabama. I have wondered what the driving force behind the constant movement was. Perhaps it was the mysterious Avington. We are not sure of the families’ relationship to Avington. Some believe he was Aaron’s twin brother. The name “Avington” sounds ancient. It seems to drift back across the sea to the Old World. Was he our last physical tie to Ireland? We may never know. We do know that he died shortly after the family crossed Osanippa Creek. His was the first will filed in the newly formed Chambers County. The record is clear in Will Book 1, Page 1, and Will Number 1. Aaron and Samuel were signers on the document. All we know is that the family was on the move until Avington’s death. Was it too hard to leave this fresh mound of earth behind? Were they happy to finally settle down and put down roots? Regardless of the reason, the family has remained in Chambers County on the same plot of ground for over 180 years. Newlyweds David and Nancy left the crowded log cabin in 1839. They built what is today known as the Old Williams Homeplace. No doubt they chose this spot because it was up on a slight rise. My father pointed out one day that in every direction from the house you are heading downhill. The house would also be much closer to the Houston’s Ferry-Oak Bowery Road, which would later be called Hopewell Road. They would have easier access coming and going. I like to think that the main reason they chose the spot for the home place was the great stand of white oak, red oak and post oak trees that covered the area. The Williams family has always loved giant oaks. The house would be nestled in “the grove” as we call it. A sandy driveway known as “the Circle” passes beneath these trees. In recent memory more than 60 of the oak and hickory, pecan and sweet gum surrounded the home. When lightning strikes with all of its fury picking the tallest tree, or a strong wind takes one out, or the roots simply give way it is as though a distant relative has passed. A piece of our history is gone forever. In the early days, the old Indian Trail and later county road, passed through the grove. On one side of the Indian Trail there were two unusual oaks. One was in the shape of the letter “Y”. The other had a huge limb which jutted out sharply about 10 feet up the trunk and then back straight up. Some feel that these trees were Indian marker trees outlining the way of the ancient footpath. On a still, summer night in 2014, without a breath of wind or rain, the roots of the Y Tree gave up unexpectedly and the tree fell into the other oak. Both hit the ground with a great boom. We counted more than 300 rings, which means that they began to grow along the Indian trail prior to 1714. My grandfather explained that the trees are called white and red oaks not because of anything visible about the individual tree but the wood itself is white or red. The leaves of the red oak are dark green and pointed while the leaves of the white oak are a soft green and rounded on the tips like fingers. The white oak put on a show in Fall when the leaves turned a vibrant red. This display was only rivaled by the old hickory which grew near the road. The leaves all turned yellow on the same day—a color so bright that you would swear the tree was on fire. But it does not last. On the first wet and windy day the tree was stripped of all its beauty without a single leaf left to indicate life. In my life, there have been only two or three red oaks in the yard. I am told that there were more in the past. One produced acorns as big as large pecans. Mischievous boys used to hollow out these acorns and with a reed make a rabbit tobacco pipe. There was a twin white oak in the side yard when I was growing up. A single trunk came up about 5 feet and split into two great and beautiful trees. I believe it was 1975 when Hurricane Eloise came through in the fall. The storm wrenched one half of the tree to the ground. We thought the other half would die as well but it lived, hollowed out from bottom to top, for more than 30 years. A close examination of the tree revealed that at some point in time someone had placed metal implements in the crotch of the tree and it had grown around them and they were revealed by the storm. Like the strange, bee-like creatures which drank the sap of this oak in summer, my brothers, cousins and I were drawn to this tree. One hot day we turned our attention to the metal implements which were lodged in the oak. We worked hard to get them loose and we were so proud to show Daddy what we had done. He was not happy with five little boys. My earliest memories are of the old Williams Homeplace. My parents in the early years of their marriage had put a single-wide trailer beneath a mature hickory in the big yard to the west of the old Homeplace. When a hickory nut fell from the tree and hit the metal roof it mimicked the sound of a shot gun blast and I assure you could keep nerves on end. I remember that someone later told my aunt Frances that they were amazed by the lack of nut production of hickory trees which grew in a yard. They held to the opinion that you had to always go out in the woods to find a good nut tree. Frances assured him that this was not the case with that specific tree, as the constant bangs during fall and winter assured her of good nut production. Hickory nuts, pronounced “hicko’nuts”, have a thick husk protecting an all but impenetrable shell. It hardly seemed worth the work of cracking the nut to get to the small reward of meat in the center. A hammer was a useful tool in this work and a heavy blow was required to reap a reward. Once when playing in the yard beneath the hickory, I saw two older women sitting on the front porch of the old house. In retrospect, I suppose the women were my great aunt Frances and my great grandmother, Rosa Land Shipman Williams. I remember walking down the path from the trailer to the old homeplace with an armful of my toys on the day we moved in. The strong walls of the dog trot are gray and black with age. It is a color which cannot be bought. Only time can paint with this brush. One hundred fifty years of bitter cold winters and catching the breeze of as many summers have left their mark. The touch of the farmer’s hand steadying himself in the darkness after a day of spring plowing and oak leaves riding the first breath of fall make this hue. The floors are heart-pine cut from virgin Chambers County forests. The trees knew time before the white man came to this place along the Osanippa. Perhaps Benjamin Hawkins camped beneath them when he made his historic visit in 1798. Maybe the Muskogee or Uchee Indians hung empty gourds from them to attract the martins who kept mosquitoes away from the village. The boards are wide and smooth from the steps of pioneers and slaves and Civil War soldiers. Babies who would go off to both world wars, Vietnam and Iraq took their first steps here. My father painted the boards a bright barn red. I thought it was beautiful. The bright red against the ancient walls was dramatic. If I remember correctly, as the old floors have been covered now, the boards, which ran North-South, were tight and sealed. You could not see the ground beneath. That was not always true in the adjoining east-west rooms. My grandfather once joked that the cracks were so wide in the floors of those old houses that if the baby fell out of the bed you had to crawl under the house to get him. Originally, there were no glass windows. The house only had wooden shutters which were pulled to keep the rain and cold out. When Morris and Lurleen Chambley married, they rented a room of the old homeplace. One winter morning they woke up and there was actually snow on the bed they slept in. Two brothers shared the home in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Avington B. Williams, “Uncle Ab”, and Elisha Burton Williams, “Uncle Doc”, were old bachelors. For some reason, while most people considered it a matter of pride that the doors to their homes were never locked, these brothers drilled holes in the ancient walls of the old dog trot and through each respective door. They ran a chain through the holes and secured their belongings. Even today the holes are visible. Uncle Doc married late in life to a young woman named Dona. They had one daughter, Katie Bell. No doubt in honor of this marriage he purchased the first modern convenience for the old home—a kerosene stove for the kitchen. Uncle Doc’s death was a tragedy. He had a cancer on his neck. He was sitting on the steps leading from the back side of the dog trot when the cancer ate though his neck and with every beat of his heart blood shot from the wound. His wife ran to the dinner bell and rang it for help. Folks came from as far as the sound of the bell carried but there was nothing they could do. Uncle Doc bled to death. Death is also part of a homeplace. It is said that someone has died in every corner of the old place. After, Uncle Ab died, the house went to his nephew, Nim Williams, and later to his widow, Frances, and then to my parents, Ronnie and Jo Ann Nichols Williams. It was our turn to step into our past and carve out a future. Lives were lived here. Generations of my family were born and died here. Our lives have played out against the backdrop of this special place full of memories. I am so proud to call it home. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/chambers/history/other/homeplac440gms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/alfiles/ File size: 13.9 Kb