Five Old Persons Live in Memory-Filled House

Eastern Kentucky, there to find itself living under the almost intolerable conditions of the Civil War, when there was not even the semblence of law; of bitter feuds and life in isolation while the rest of the state was building roads and schools. That they were ever seeking to break their bonds is preserved in the tradition of how Lewis Hays', son-in-law of old Solomon Everidge, instigated the old man's journey to Hazard to request Katherine Petit and May Stone to found a school at Hindman. Lucy Furman quotes him as saying to introduce himself, "Woman, my name is Solomon Everidge." Some calls me the granddaddy of Troublesome." He went on with his appeal for aid to his people "When I heard of your women, Five old persons living in a house that is approximately a century and a half old. Living with the memories of their pioneer family that came over the mountains from Yadkin River in North Carolina when Floyd County was a wilderness empire, full of game and savage Indians. The old house stands near the mouth of Breeding's Creek in Knott County, and living there are three brothers and two sisters —Patrick, John D., Sidney, Elizabeth and Allie Johnson. Four are married. Patrick, the eldest, is 83. Around them are memories . Looking down upon them from decades long past are portraits of their forbears , some dressed in the formal clothes of the time. Pictures of Simeon Johnson, scholar, teacher and lawyer, Fielding and I walked 22 miles across the ridges, to search out the truth of it." (Sources relied upon for this article are: Myer's History of West Virginia, quoting De Haas' "Border Wars;" Autobiography of Old Claib Jones," by J. W. Hall; the Lewis Hays Bible; a manuscript on the Hays family prepared by descendants of Captain Anderson Hays for the writer; information supplied by Ova Wicker Haney of Hogenville; Floyd County Court records; remembrances of Senator Doug Hays and an article in the Hindman News, May 1, 1952, by Lucy Furman.) Sarah Dotson Johnson. Fielding, lawyer and landowner was the first county attorney of Knott County when it was separated from Floyd County and organized in 1884. They sleep in corded fourposter beds that Sarah Dotson Johnson, wife of Fielding , brought to the old house as a part of the personality from the Mansion House of Wise, Virginia. She was a daughter of Jackie and Lucinda Matney Dotson, of Wise. Jackie was the first sheriff of Wise and when he died Mrs. Johnson's part of the Mansion House's furnishings were brought to her home on Breeding's Creek. One of the old corded, hand-turned beds is called The Apple Bed; another, the Acorn—because an apple is carved on the end of each post of one and an acom is Five Old Persons Live in Memory-Filled House by HENRY P. SCALF 42 carved on the posts of the other. One is finished with varnish by some Virginia craftsman, the other is unfinished. On them are coverlets, made by hands long since dead. They show you, these old people, pitchers, laquered in gold from the Virginia Matney family, and tableware from the Mansion House, which was actually the Dotson Hotel, one of the famous hostelries in Southwest Virginia. There is the Wedding Plate, a large platter from which each Johnson bride and groom ate his or her dinner. When President Francis Hutchins, of Berea College, came a few years ago to see the antiques he went away and returned with an artist who sketched them. The old people prepared a giant turkey, served him on the Wedding Plate. Sitting under the picture is an old Kentucky rifle that belonged to George Washington Johnson and with which he killed deer. These old people show you from an old trunk, clothes worn by their ancestors. There is the wedding dress of Sarah Dotson Johnson, preserved for almost three-quarters of a century. There are the baby clothes of Simeon Johnson who lived to be old and has been dead for decades. Patrick Johnson stirs his fire in the ancient fireplace. You are sitting where oldsters prominent in early...