Early Times

Early Times From the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF OLD CLABE JONES as told to J. W. HALL I was bom in Floyd County, Kentucky, on the Arnold Fork of Beaver creek, February 14, 1826. My father, John Jones, was born and reared in Hawkins county, Tennessee , coming to Floyd County when he was about twenty years old, marrying my mother, Miss Rebecca Arnold, who was born in Tazewell county, Virginia. Shortly after I was bom my parents moved down Beaver about fifteen miles and settled on a small creek, named Jones' Fork, in honor of my father, who was one of the pioneer settlers in that section, which was at that time a wilderness full of wild beasts and all kinds of wild game. My father had to build wild pounds to put his cows in over night to keep the bears, panthers and wolves from killing them. There were only five families then living in that part of the Beaver Valley. John Morris, John Hays, John Martin, Joel Gayheart and Christopher Walker. My father was a sportsman and killed his meat from the woods. He cleared a small bottom to raise com enough for bread, and ground his corn into meal between two flat rocks cut from the native cliffs, we called handmill . My mother's sifter was a dressed deer skin with holes made it in with a hot awl. My father had a hard time to raise his com, he would build fires all around his little field to keep the bears and deer from eating it up during the night. I can recollect when a boy of seeing the deer and turkeys in long droves all over the woods. My father had to go fifty miles for salt, coffee and other goods. The reader may well know there were plenty of snakes and fish in that day and time, but there was lard to fry the fish in only when my fatfier would kill a fat bear or a wild hog. My father was a dear lover of women and my mother was high strung and would not put up with his way of doing , so she left him. My father took me to one of his concubines by the name of Katherine Smith. She was mean to me, and I ran away from them and went to my mother. I was about eight years old when my parents separated. One day a man by the name of John Hays had a house-raising ; my mother determined to have revenge for the way Miss Smith had treated me. She armed herself with clubs and went to see Miss Smith. She walked into the house and said "good morning Miss Smith." Miss Smith answered and said, "Why, howdy Bacca," and then it was howdy in earnest. My mother gave her a rap over the head with a club, then seized her, pulling her over the yard fence to the road and beat her with a club until she could not stand up, and then put her foot on her neck and pulled all her hair out and left her lying in the road and then fled to the woods for shelter. When old John Smith came home he went and swore out a warrant and put it in the hands of the sheriff, a Mr. Hatcher, who scoured the country trying to find my mother. One night he came to Aunt Sarah Hale's while my mother was at supper. When Hatcher stepped into the house my mother slid under the table; the sheriff sat 14 down before the fire to take off his leggins, the family got between the sheriff and mother and she slipped out the door and hid in the chimney corner and eve-dropping the sheriff she heard him say he never intended to go back without her, heard him say he was going through a certain gap, and then my mother went to Sam Conley's and got his gun, waylaid the gap and when the sheriff came along next morning she fired on him, shot him through the thigh, killing his horse. Of course he didn't go back without her, he was...