Crenshaw County AlArchives Biographies.....Davis, Wright Lancaster 1840 - 1923 ************************************************ 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: Joyce English jenglis000@centurytel.net July 13, 2009, 12:55 pm Author: himself Inasmuch as the Old Vets of 60ties are writing up their experinences as well as some of the old mothers, your scribe decided that he would furnish you with a sketch. I was born in Old Telfair County, Georgia near Okmulgee river the 10th day of April 1840, making me over 75 years old. Before I was old enough to remember, father sold out in Georgia and moved with a horse and wagon team to Barbour County, Ala. There he bought a 600 acre farm the bigger part of which was virgin piney woods. There I was reared up, with 7 other brothers and one sister. About 1/2 of the tract of land had been lately visited by a cyclone which laid waste the timber. My parents reared us up learing up & cultivating the old hurricane land. We boys would ask father why he did not let us clear and cultivate the level piney woods land? "O!" he would reply, "I don't want to destroy the fine timber, I won't to save it to make lumber out of". He saved it but after his death and mother sold out, the other man got the pine trees, put in a saw mill and made a big pile of money. While growing up, we boys had a slim opportunities to get an education. Several miles apart about in the country were little old log cabins schoolhouses, where the blue back speller, Smiley's arithmetic & Smiths geography was taught about 2 months of each year. Father was a diversified farmer. We raised corn, wheat, oats, rice, peas, peanuts, sugar,cane and potatoes. He raised hogs and cattle, sold beef, pork & bacon. Tanned his own leather and made our shoes. Mother and sister carded spun and wove our clothes. Father would plant as much as 7 acres of sweet potatoes. When mother wanted to cook corn bread she done so and if she desired to cook flour, why it was always on hand. Flour in those days was made from wheat meal by hand bolting. The cane mills in those days were made of wood entirely. Iron kettles were used for boiling, for making syrup and sugar. Green cane was planted mostly. There was but two cane mills to my knowing 73 years ago. Four miles from us old man Reddick Streater had one and father the other. These mills would have to run 5 or 6 weeks in the fall. Young people, girls and boys would go to these syrup makings, and have a good time pulling candy. Those were days three score and ten years ago. Your scribe wanted an education, schools had improved much, I started in the winter of 1861 to a good teacher and had begun to learn the rudiments of edcucation but the war started, a few months and volunteering was the order of the day I took a spell of fever and was not able to go until the nest winter. Lieutenant Edward Head of the 15th Ala. Regt. came back from Va .recruiting, I enlisted and went back with him. Our regiment was in camps on the Rapiden river. I was a big strong able bodied boy weighting about 175 pounds. Our orderly sergent one day, made a detail from our co, to bear bbls. of flour from the cars to the commissary wagon. There had been a severe spell of weather snow, sleet and rain, and the rain froze and formed a sheet of ice all over the ground. It required particular walking. I carried 2 of the bbls. of flour, but the third one I slipped on the ice, and I set my left foot out heel foremost, then I felt something tear loose about my left kidney. I sustained a bad spinal injury which has hurt me every day since. I was hurried off to Lynchburg to what they called the Christian Hospital--an old tobacco warehouse. There I suffered for weeks. Our diet there was old stale bakers bread boiled and soaked, the nurses called it soup. Nurses and doctors in that hospitals were stupendous humbugs. There were many cases of measles and pneumonia there. Every patient who took a relapse of either disease died. I have known as many as two soldiers to die while we were drinking our "waspnest soup'. I took the pneumonia. What did I do? I appealed to President Davis as a kinsman to get the Surgeon General at Richmond to grant me a discharge, otherwise I would go to the cemetery. The President listened to my appeal and I was back home to Barbour County, Alabama. The day I landed home I took a relapse. I remembered but little for several days but mother and sister and old doctor Temple restored me nearly to my wonted health. In a few months I was solicited to teach school. I felt my incompetency but I tried. While teaching in Alabama I had to make trips to Camp Watts at Notasulga every few months to see if I had got able physically to return to the war. While teaching in Georgia, I had to report at Camp Cooper, Macon, Georgia. My spinal trouble kept me from being able to serve any more as a soldier. In my boyhood days what little schooling I got associated with a nice bright girl Miss Malinda Jones, daughter of Josiah Jones, a big farmer who owned a big plantation and several Negroes. Malinda and I agreed to marry when we got grown. I visited her before I went into service. She was full grown, Mr.Jones moved down here before the was several years. On the 10th day of Oct. 10,1865 we were married. For four years then we lived on fathers plantation in Barbour County, Ala. Father Jones desired his children to be near so he told me to select a small farm near him & he would pay for it a give me a deed to it. I did so but insisted that my name should not be on the deed. Just Malinda Davis and her heirs. When Malinda departed this life in April 1906, that left me poor as a church rat, left 7 children, two girls and 5 boys. Oldest daughter never married, 3rd son still single. I have 26 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren born to me. I am still on the old place where my wife died living with her oldest daughter Inez and the third oldest son Samuel, but at 75 I am poor old broke down worn out old fellow scarcely able to earn my bread. We are a Baptist family, wife was, and all the children. Respectfully, Wright Lancaster Davis, Glenwood, Ala. May 27, 1915 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/crenshaw/bios/davis81nbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/alfiles/ File size: 6.3 Kb