Towns & Cities: Beech Creek Community, 1969, Winn Parish, LA. Submitted by Greggory E. Davies, 120 Ted Price Lane, Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** From: March 6, 1969 Winn Parish Enterprise-News American Beech Creek Bustled Before 1900 Lucy McCarty Keeps Memory Of A Vanishing Community Alive by Wanda Cornelius The old west can claim its abandoned ghost towns and deserted mining camps, but none of these has more history, more drama, than Winn Parish's Beech Creek, and the other places don't have Lucy McCarty either to keep the stories of the past as alive as they were in 1890. Hundreds of people have come settled, gone, or died at Beech Creek, but Lucy remains, and probably will for the rest of her days. Gone are the days when "every little hill around here had a cabin". Now few houses remain at Beech Creek, with the exception of Lucy's. The old church is still there, the one which was erected in 1899 after the first one burned down mysteriously in the fall of '98. And the cemetery by the church is still there, the real evidence that Beech Creek was once a beehive of activity. Gone are the cotton fields, and the academy where Miss Fannie Beason was music teacher to the students who came from miles around as boarder-pupils. These things from the past may be gone, but they are definitely not out of the mind of Lucy McCarty or those who love to hear her tell the stories from yesteryear. Lucy was the third youngest out of ten children of Dr. and Mrs. J. W. Shumaker. She was born November 15, 1879 about a mile and a half from the Beech Creek Church. Dr. Shumaker settled in the community as a young man, coming here from Mississippi. Lucy's mother's folks were raised in the southern part of Alabama. Anyway, as a young man, Dr. Shumaker worked at Little River logging. Two of the ten children died when small. "A man with that many children had a hard time just making a living, but Dr. Shumaker did, even sent his to school." When Lucy Shumaker was growing up Beech Creek was a booming community. Every little hill had a home and she recalls some of the family names-Fletcher, Peters, Taylor, Holmes, Boyett, Parker, Riser, Curry, McKeithen, Whitehead, Roberts, Smith (Uncle Ivy, Dan, and Tim), Vickers, Dr. Sam Godfrey, Mayes, Williams, Couch, and Cooper. The people started moving in during and after the Civil War and in the late 90s began moving out. Lucy remembers the first preacher she ever say, old Wash Lilly, who moved away when she was seven or eight. The first church in the community was organized on October 1, 1872. Lucy McCarty wrote the following in her record of the church history: ORGANIZED CHURCH The people of the community met at the school house and organized a church with brethren from Pine Hill, Shiloh, Shady Grove churches and at the call of the Presbytery, the following brethren and sisters came forward bearing letters: Isaac Holmes, G. C. Couch, A. H. Couch, J. E. Couch, H. W. Holmes, and E. J. Curry; Aletha Couch, Nancy Roberts, M. A. Williams, C. C. Weems, Josephine Weems, Olive J. Cooper, E. J. Holmes and Rachel Holmes. "They held the first conference on Saturday before the second Sunday in December 1872 to elect the past officers which resulted as follows: Rev. T. J. Humble, supply pastor; H. W. Holmes, clerk from 1872 to 1876. They named the church Beech Creek and set the second Saturday and Sunday of each month for their days of service. April, 1873, a committee was appointed to draft rules of decorum. Changing the church days from the second to first Sunday and Saturday was made in June, 1875. Other changes recorded at the church as the years went by: Rev. M. W. Lilly named pastor on November 4, 1876. Men began constructing the church building on October 29, 1877, and if a male member failed to show up to work on the church he had to pay 75 cents a day. Rev. T. J. Humble was called to the pastorate at the May 1874 conference. Several other preachers spoke at the church, Brother Joseph Williams, Rev. S. L. Morris, and Rev. F. Snow and in June, 1874, Rev. Humble began serving the church as pastor, followed in December 1874 by Rev. M. W. Lilly. Beech Creek Church had many pastors between September 1884 through 1930. Those name which appeared on Lucy's records were: Reverends J. M. Caves, G. A. Kelly, D. B. Williams, W. E. Chapman, L. N. Holmes, W. T. Rowe, C. C. Young, H. W. Ford, W. E. Chapman, J. M. Peters, W. L. Stagg, J. B. Durham, from October 1906 to 1909, C. B. Gates, J. M. Gates, I. L. Manning, J. M. Brooks, J. D. Carroll, to September 1919, and from 1920 on W. Wilson, P. O. Moffett, L. N. Holmes, W. J. Boyett, G. W. Miles, J. B. Adams, P. O. Moffett, M. W. Curry, M. T. Daughtry and W. C. Hand. WENT TO SCHOOL WHEN FIVE Returning to the story, Lucy went to school for the first time at the age of five. There were no graded schools when she was a child, and school was often just two months out of the year, in the summertime. Anyway, the settlers had built a little rural school on Richland Creek, the center of a little community. There was another school at Beech Creek, but it was difficult for all the children to go that far to school. The log schoolhouse at Beech Creek had a clay chimney at the end of it and was the pride of Old Man Holmes, called the Daddy of the Beech Creek Community. Oliver head taught eight months out of the year at this school, for two years and a pupil of his, John Aldridge, taught two months out of the year. When Lucy was five years old, she already knew her ABCs from the blue back speller and she also had learned the words from the back of the book. She begged her mother to let her go to the school. So off she went with her blue back speller under her arm. Bob Fletcher was older and had been going to school for a couple of months, but he couldn't tell a B form a D, and wasn't sure of the rest of the alphabet either. When Lucy was asked to recite, she rattled off the ABCs and the words next to them. Then the teacher told Bob if he didn't get on the ball that he would have to go back to the beginners class with Lucy. That was just too much for the little miss, of all the humiliation, to put her in a class with a boy. So she went out of the building and cried her heart out. That was the first and last day of school for Lucy that year, too. She didn't beg her mother to let her go anymore that year. But the next year, when she was six, Lucy did go, even if she was in the class with two boys. CHURCH BURNS The first church at Beech Creek was built from virgin pine, of rough lumber in foot wide planks. It had wooden shutters and homemade doors. Then around 1898, some of the members had some disagreement about building a new church. Some thought the old one nice enough, but others wanted a more modern church. The advocates for the old church wanted to put some of the lumber from the old church like the doors and window facings in the new one, which met with disapproval with the modernists. One Saturday the members came out of church and one of the brethren said, "We'll never get a new church until this one burns down." Lewis Holmes was the minister then. He preached three years in the 20s and Lucy McCarty joined the church at the age of 15, when he was there. In the fall of 1898, Lucy remembers picking cotton with her sisters when they saw the smoke rising in the distance. Molly said "I'll bet old Beech Creek Church is going down in ashes" and sure enough it was. To this day, no one confessed or knows who burned down the old church, but whoever did burn it took the only table and chair in it out and set them away under a tree first. Lucy Shumaker remembers her first beau as John Fletcher, one of Wade Fletcher's boys. She was 13 and the boys and girls "sloshed around" as she called it, walking several miles to church together and having real fun. After that Lucy had another serious beau and then on November 5, 1901, she married Howard McCarty, who was born at Hickory Valley and who had moved to Beech Creek, close to the academy. She was 23. "I wasn't in no rush to get married. I wanted to have a free and pleasurable life before settling down" she said. THE ACADEMY Lucy Shumaker's husband wasn't the only one that came to Beech Creek to the academy. It was built in 1890 and was in its heyday in 1892-94. People would come from near and far as boarder-pupils and besides learning reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic', the students received instruction in the arts. They learned music from teachers like Miss Fannie Beason. there was always a "singing" at Beech Creek and Lucy McCarty has some pictures of those groups which got together for singing. But the academy was too far away from the big settlements, and it began to grow smaller and smaller after 1894 and finally it was disbanded altogether. The McCartys had five children: Mrs. J. C. "Oma" Pendarvis, Tullos; Winston A. McCarty, Tullos; Sherman Howard McCarty, Roanoke Postmaster; James Theodore "Ted" who was killed in World War II, and Mrs. Curtis "Lucy" Mayes, Tullos. As a young mother, Lucy was always busy. Her husband was postmaster at Beech Creek for 31 years, but alas, Lucy ended up doing the work, as he always had stock, timber, etc., to look after. There were may log camps in the area in 1909 and 10 and a little store which was added by the post office, which Lucy also looked after. The mail came in by horseback and buggy from Tullos to the Tullos Star Route. Before that it came from Winnfield and Columbia. The profit wasn't too much to brag about. For many years, Lucy made nine or ten dollars per quarter for her post office work. Children were young then and besides that she always had four or five boarders and a hired had to cook for, not to mention the seven or eight hounds which required special grub. (There wasn't such a thing as commercial dog food in those days.) Lucy remembers with sadness the loss of her youngest son, who died in action in World War II. "His name was Theodore, but we always called him Ted", she said and that brought back a funny memory about the child as a boy. he was about five years old and one day he came into the house and his mother asked him what he was doing. He said he was out "chunking red birds." "What for?" "Cause they're saying 'Thee-dore; Thee-dore" and I wanted them to be quiet. He did not like his full name and was thoughtfully called Ted thereafter. Mr. and Mrs. Howard McCarty spent 61 years together before he died in November 1962. They had celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary with family and friends the year before. Today Lucy McCarty has 9 grandchildren and 22 great grandchildren, and she loves to have the children around here. The building where the post office once stood is still there, only it is used as one of the farm buildings. There are flowering plants on the porch, and there is a welcoming smile to the visitor at Lucy McCarty's. There's not much left of Beech Creek anymore, but as long as Lucy is there, the memory of this little vanishing community in the woods, will stay gentle on the minds of all who want to hear.