Hogs, Mules, and Yellow Dogs: Growing Up on a Mississippi Subsistence Farm

Charles Hillman

87 Charles Hillman “Who was Pinckney George?” my granddaughter Louisa asked. “I can barely read his name on the headstone. It says, ‘Born 1829.’ Lots of Hillmans in this graveyard.” We had been wandering through Old Washington cemetery on the first leg of a trip to my boyhood stomping grounds in Neely. We had rendezvoused at New Orleans International Airport, she coming from Connecticut and I from Arizona, and after a three-hour drive we were now in another world. I told her, “He was among the pioneers in Greene County, Mississippi , father of Charles Hillman, a local Carolus Magnus, who rests underneath the slab where I’m standing; grandfather of Joseph Levi, my father, whose tomb is over there in the corner.” I pointed to a massive granite structure some distance away. “There must be at least a hundred of us in here. Some with other names, but Hillmans, nevertheless. Ninety percent of the bones in this place are probably DNA-related. You are Pinckney’s great-great-great-granddaughter, six generations counting your mother.” “Wow,” she said. “Almost two hundred years of history right here beneath us. Shades of Allen Tate’s ‘Ode to the Confederate Dead.’” “Yes,” I said. “Lots of sentiment. Pink was with Waltham’s Mississippi Brigade in the War, injured at Chickamauga, which was the last battle the Confederates won decisively. Grandpa Charlie was born in 1861 while his father was away. Another of your great-great-greatgranddaddies lies over there with the Greens. James Samuel ‘Tinner’ Green, born in England in 1819, came up here from Mobile in the 1830s and married one of the Moody girls, Priscilla. Our Moody family had a Choctaw chief in its lineage, which is a reason for all those high cheekbones you see in some Hillmans. Tinner fought Grant at Vicksburg and almost died in the siege.” Beginnings 88 Her eyes wandered over the several acres of tombstones marking the remains of settlers and villagers dating from the late 1700s. “What did you mean a while ago by ‘other names, Hillmans nevertheless’?” I mustered courage and replied, “Grass widows, grass colts, lots of em in here, right alongside their half-brothers and half-sisters. People think those rural folks were more monogamous and less human than they really were. There was lots of hanky-panky and monkey business in these quiet woods. The men folks didn’t have to be off at war for the odd amorous encounter to take place.” Pinckney George Hillman clan: Pinckney (with pipe), wife Sally (behind), Charles and Virginia, children Lora and Bo. Charles Hillman 89 “Oh, I get it . . .” Lulu said. We returned to the gate in a leisurely way, and I suggested we visit the little Baptist church beside the cemetery, the doors of which are open most daylight hours. Except for the surrounding foliage, a slightly expanded sanctuary, and a new roof, little had changed from what I knew eighty years ago. Inside, the smell of pine tar and mold transported me to my days of Sunday school in the corner behind the pulpit. “There has been some type of tabernacle for worship on this spot for at least a hundred and fifty years,” I said. “Hillmans were normally the backbone of the congregation. Pinckney led the way. He was a lay preacher in the latter part of his life, but it was Charles’s support that always saw the church through tough times. He gave the land for both the building and cemetery, and he always supported the preacher. There was no formal church budget. He also gave the land to build the first high school, which you see over there.” “Lay preacher? What’s that?” she asked. “There seems to have been lots of religion with the Hillmans.” “Yeah, but no priests and rabbis out here. Pink, who was before my time, would substitute when the regular preacher didn’t show up. He always had a limited repertory of sermons. My mother said his favorite text was a takeoff on Saint Matthew 24:42, in which Jesus warns His disciples to be constantly vigilant. About every two minutes he reminded the congregation to, ‘Watch. The devil might be lurking in the shadows. Watch!’ Repetition was a large part of the sermons of such preachers. Anyway, as the saying goes, if only these walls could speak.” The sun was setting through the oaks. I noticed that...