HISTORY OF THE CLOAR FAMILY
(The following is taken from the old Union City, Tennessee Commercial, February 18, 1921)

My grandfather's name was Johnnie Cloar, who married Mary Turner, and the names 
of his brothers were Billie, Elijah and James. His sister, Mary, married Bynum
Ferrill and they lived in Sumner county at Blitzer's Lick, on the Cumberland
river. They built flatboats and carried their farm produce and livestock and
walked back from New Orleans 19 times before the steamboats came to Sumner
county.

In 1824 they came in a flat-boat to Hickman (Kentucky), then called Mills Point,
and settled on Reelfoot Crek (sic), on Troy-Hickman road, 7 miles from Hickman.
My father was the oldest son. He had one brother, William, and two sisters, 
Patsy and Betsy. The lat(t)er married J. T. Dougherty, who was in the civil war.
Patsy married a Majors and lived and died in Graves county. My father, Abb
Cloar, married Susan Hubbard and raised a large family. His four oldest boys
went to the war and three were killed and I was wounded. Elijah's son, Johnnie
married a Hubbard. His three oldest sons went to the war and two of them died.

Calvin Cloar, son of William Cloar raised a large family and his eldest son went
to the war. Bynum Ferrill settled at Comba Springs. There were four daughters,
Harriet, Elizabeth, Mary and Matilda, and a son, James, and another, I don't
remember. Harriet married a James and lived near Hickman. Jesse Cloar, a brother
of John Cloar, also moved to this county about the same time. His oldest
daughter married Dick Mosier and raised a large family. Uncle Elijah Cloar 
came to this country later on and settled in the same neighborhood. He had two
sons, Green and John, who were in the civil war four years and were fortunate
enough to get back home. Green Cloar is still living in this county, is ninety
years of age and in good health.

When my ancestor came to this country there were no mills, no roads nor
churches, so they and the other people that were here went to work and built
churches and school houses. They sawed the lumber with a whip saw and make
houses out of what is called "hewed" logs, with stick and dirt chimneys.

There were no threashers at that time so what little wheat they raised they
tramped it out with horses and fanned out with sheets and carried to a little
horse mill which my father built on the Troy and Hickman road, and had it and
their corn ground. They never had biscuit but once a week, and that was on
Sunday morning. They had no place to trade with the exception of Hickman. They
made most of their shoes from leather they tanned themselves. The women spun 
on spinning wheels and wove their cloth on an old fashioned loom and made their
clothes. No one idled away any time. They all worked.

They cut a road from Troy to Hickman, one from Dresden to Hickman and one from
Dyersburg to Hickman, all running in a northwesterly direction. These roads were
called the Public Highway, and they were three notched roads, that is, they put
three notches on a tree so when a man got on the highway, he knew he was on the
road to Hickman, or to one of these towns. They also cut a road from Reelfoot
Lake, running across these roads, crossing the Troy road by the White place, and
running down by Old Republican, and out here by Brevard's Crossing, the road 
forked and the right hand went to Jacksonville (no longer in existence, but just
east of present Union City, Tn city limits) and the left hand went to Moscow,
KY. These were two-notched roads, and second-class roads. All the little roads
running into these roads were one-notched roads, so a man could travel in these
days without any trouble.

Old Republican church, near this city, was the first church organized in Obion
county. It was organized in 1812, and the deed was given for a union church and
a school house. These grand old pioneer preachers, Finley Bynum, Gid Bransford,
Wade Frost Weaver, John Ward, William White, preached here. So this church went
on as a union church until they split up, one wing going to Beulah near Union
City, and the Glovers, Grays and Howards built Mt. Olive church, while the
Methodist and Cumberland Presbyterians built a church called Shiloh, on Troy and 
Hickman road, afterwards building what is now known as Antioch church.

Jerry A. Cloar
(At the time this was written, Mr. Cloar was 78 years old)

THIS WAS TAKEN FROM THE FULTON-HICKMAN GENEALOGICAL JOURNAL, 1995, 
Vol 11, No. 2, pp 45-46