Contributed by Maradee Liggin Cryer



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Sherry Gritzbaugh said: "The interesting thing about the Middlefork Swamp 
Road which Maradee mentioned in her memories was the bridge that separated 
Union and Lincoln Parish."

Maradee replies:
I well remember this wooden bridge but never knew it was the Parish line. As 
a child I feared crossing it because it was so ricketty.

My cousin, Dr. Sammy Liggin, likes to tell a story of how his father, John 
Lewis Liggin and several of his brothers (one was my grandfather William 
Thomas LIggin) would hide in the woods near this bridge and wait for a young 
man who was going down the road to "court" his young lady. They would start 
making strange sounds and spook the young man who would start to run, 
sometimes all the way home. 

Below is an exerpt from a family history that my mother wrote from the 
writings of John Lewis Liggin. 
..................................................................

This beginning of school was the summer of 1887. "I had passed my sixth 
birthday. My parents thought it time I had some schooling. My mother had 
taught me the alphabet at home. So with my Blue Back Speller I made my way a 
mile or more to school. all the other children were older than I, and had 
attended school before. I was the only real beginner."

What school was this? Several families had cleaned up the old Liggin log 
house, long vacant, made a few crude benches, and hired Ollie Culpepper, a 
sixteen year old girl, and cousin to the Liggins, for a teacher. She was 
understanding and sympathetic when the older pupils laughed at the little boy.

Before long little John Lewis was the favorite of all, delighting them with 
his oral spelling, and reading from the Blue Back Speller, the only book he 
had.

TEACHERS IN THE EARLY SCHOOL YEARS
The following winter a young 18 year old man named Clarence Ives came to 
teach, boarding with the sheepman, Levi Liggin. Young Ives was later to have 
a distinguished career as an educator, to become Dean of the College of 
Education at LSU.

Years later when Clarence Ives and John Lewis Liggin met as retired teachers, 
Professor Ives would say, "Here is my old frined Lig," I taught this fellow 
his ABC's."

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