As time goes by and I grow further into my 7th decade, and become the age my father was when I came into my teen years, my respect and love for him grows deeper. Dad left me a priceless legacy of integrity and wisdom which I have tried to impart to my children, and I believe they have benefited by it.  I am moved to draw as clear a picture of my father as I can.  I would like my descendants to know, as well as possible, this man they never met or can't recall clearly.

My dad, Jesse Alonzo Boyd, was born in central Arkansas, about 25 miles northeast of Little Rock, on July 10, 1884.  He was born into a world with no automobiles, no paved roads, no running water, no airplanes, no telephones, no radios.  His world was an 18th-century world of horse-culture, of Thomas Jefferson's idealistic U. S., when the small, self-sufficient farmer was the principal unit of social government.  During his 85 years on earth, he saw far more change than any previous generation.
 
His mother, Josephine (she spelled it Josafin) Louisa Brockinton Boyd 
had married at the ripe old age of 22, to his father, Jesse William Boyd.  Jesse was a former cavalry soldier in the Army of the Confederacy, under the command of  "The Wizard",  General Nathan Bedford 
Forrest.  He had a daughter by a previous marriage in Mississippi (her mother, Emily Drummond, had died.) Her name was Laura. 
 
Jesse and Josafin's first child, Cornelia Victoria, only lived 3 weeks. 
Their second, Martha Ann Eliza, (named after his mother and her mother,) lived to be 6 years and 9 months old.  When Jesse Alonzo
was born, he had a sister,  Rose Ella Magnolia (Aunt Nola) age 8,  a 
brother,  Preston Wigfall, age 5, and a sister, Arra Henryetta (Aunt Arry) age 3.  His half sister Laura had died in 1883 at age 15.  Later he had 2 more sisters; Edith Alberta (Bertie) lived to be 12 and died in 1899, when dad was 15 years old.  Eugenia Olenza (Aunt Jeannie) lived at Vilonia, Arkansas until 1926 and had chilidren. 
 
They lived on a small subsistence farm, as did just about everyone they 
knew in those days.  His dad, Jesse William, died in 1891 of pneumonia, contracted when he cut wood in the freezing rain for a family that had no wood.  He died on Bertie's 4th birthday, March 9.  Four days later, Josafin's mother, Eliza Brockinton, died. Nola was 15, Preston was 12, Arra was almost 10.  Dad was 6 going on 7.  Jeannie was just a year old.
 
Josafin was forty three years old when Jesse died.  She never remarried.  She once told my mother, "There wasn't another man good enough for my children".  She raised her six children by herself.   She was of the South Carolina pioneer Brockintons,  and numbered among her ancestors several Revolutionary War heroes, the founder of the Southern Baptist Church.  She had a cousin, General William Whipple, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and led the New Hampshire Militia in the Battles of Saratoga.  She could, and did, work like a man.
 
They lived in the Faulkner Gap community east of Cabot, Arkansas. They went to church at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, where Jesse was a messenger to the Baptist Convention, and Josafin and Nola were shown as members on their 1881 roster.  Later they attended Harmony Baptist Church. Both these churches are still in operation in 2001.  Mr. Cecil Hinkson of their community, when he was upwards of 100 years old, was interviewed by two of my cousins.  He remembered Josafin and the Boyd children arriving at church from Faulkner Gap in their horse-  drawn wagon.
 
One summer day, when he was a small boy, he was swimming in an ole 
swimming hole near their home, when he was bitten on the finger by a deadly cottonmouth water moccasin snake.  He ran home to his mother, who, in the absence of doctors and antivenin, immediately killed and cut open a chicken and thrust his hand inside.  He said he cried himself to sleep on Josafin's lap.  He said when he awoke and pulled his hand from the chickens entrails, they were green inside.

The first year after the death of his father, they hired a man to help 
them make a crop.  He was halfwitted and the crop failed.  By the next year, another poor year, they had to sell their farm to pay the taxes.  Sometimes Dad lived with his uncle Albert, a short, fat man who had a 
taste for alcohol, which he made for himself, and a tendency toward picking fights with bigger men.  Dad loved Uncle Al, who helped raise him like his own son.  Dad was a little chubby then, and Uncle Al called him "tugmutton".
 
Dad was a product of his era.  Hard work was the order of the day, every day except Sundays.  A day's work was from sunup until sundown (Can til can't)  Grown men were being paid fifty cents a day; since he was just a lad, dad's usual pay was thirty five cents a day.  Dad loved to tell about how he and his sister Arra worked for an old gentleman who paid them fifty cents a day for 5 days work hoeing cotton.  He told them "You all hoed a row every time I did".  He paid them with a five-dollar goldpiece. They were so happy and excited, they took turns carrying it home to their mother.
 
He came from an era when there was very little cash money.  There was not the dependency on government we see now.  Everyone survived in that economy by bartering and sharing.  He continued to practice his way of life;  being as materially self sufficient as possible by growing as much of our food as possible. 
 
In the wake of Lincoln's assassination, southern states were not allowed their own law enforcement agencies but were under military rule, which was corrupt or nonexistent, so everyone was "on their own".  Integrity and honor was a given.  If you didn't have it,  you were out of the community, for everyone depended on each other for survival, in those dark days after the War for Southern Independence. 
 
From his horse-drawn wagon, he peddled meat and produce from his 
community in West Little Rock   He moved to North Little Rock and worked as a carpenter.  He had to provide his own tools, and when others stole a tool from him, he was advised to "Steal one from someone else".  He refused to do that.  Instead, he found work at the Missouri Pacific Railroad Shops, building railroad cars.  That job paid 21 cents per hour, more than he had ever made before that time.  He and his mother Josafin lived in a rented brick home on Pike Avenue in North Little Rock.  It was not unusual for him to set out on foot and walk to Cabot on the weekend, a distance of over 20 miles, to attend a singing or church social.
 
He saved over $300.  His brother in law, Lacy Gentry, a master blacksmith with his own shop in Faulkner Gap, offered to make him a full partner and teach him the blacksmithing trade, if he would invest his savings.  Lacy also built a small home behind his shop for dad and grandma Josafin.  Dad black-smithed for 7 years, during which time he studied at night to further his education.  I think it was during this time that he took a fever and almost died.  His hair, which had been dark brown until now, all fell out.  When it grew back,  it was coal black. 
 
Dad was not unusual in his way of life and his stand for principles.  He was unique in that he chose to go back to school after age thirty, with perhaps only a fourth grade education, to educate himself so he would have better opportunities.  He knew that a better education was the way to a better life for himself and his family. He even passed the state teachers examination, and taught 4 terms of school in one and two-room schoolhouses in four different nearby communities.  Seeking the position of rural mail carrier of Cabot, he took, and passed,  the Civil Service examination.  He didn't get that job,  but was contacted when the Mayflower route became available.  He was secretary of our school board, and of the county school board.  During the powerful efforts in the 1950s to consolidate our little town's school with nearby Conway schools,  dad opposed it vigorously,  thus keeping our little town's identity.
 
In order to know my dad, you have to know his history.  I just knew him as a strict but benevolent white haired gentleman who wore khaki pants and shirt every day, who rarely dressed in his one grey suit and tie, unless he was going to a funeral.  He arose early every morning, 6 days a week, to do our farm chores before eating a good breakfast of biscuits, eggs and bacon or sausage and coffee,  and setting out to our little postoffice, to "put up the mail".  He would sort it and arrange it in order of the more than 200 mailboxes he served on his mail route every day. 
 
His route was 18 miles of dirt roads, when he began carrying it in 1919, then in a black one-horse buggy and later in a T-model Ford truck, which he learned to drive by trial and error.  The roads were alternately choking dust or impassable mud at times.  For a while he had 3 mules, alternately resting one of them from his team each day.   Although, as a carrier of U. S. property, he had the full authority of a U. S. Marshall, he never carried a firearm except for one two-week period.  One Christmas season, when he was carrying a lot of money from C.O.D. shipments, he came upon a roadblock and a crude sign, ordering him to "leave your money here".  He hitched his horse to the tree blocking the road,pulled it clear and went on his way.  During the next 2 weeks or so, he carried a gun on his route. 
 
He was almost 52 years old when I was born in 1936.  He had just lost his only brother,  then his mother Josafin,  about a year before I was born.  He was a kind man, but a man of firm principles.  He would play checkers and Monopoly with mom and me at night.  He read the Bible, the Arkansas Gazette newspaper.  He subscribed to the Readers Digest.  He would read the "funny papers" to me on sundays.  His sense of humor never failed him.  He found humor in everything, making up funny names for people and telling stories (always clean stories) about things that had happened to him and others.

Dad had a good bass singing voice and loved to sing in church.  He read 
shape notes, a kind of musical shorthand that assigned a different shape to each of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale.  He also played the harmonica very well, although country people all called it the "french harp".  He liked the Hohner Marine Band, model 1896 (the year it first appeared.)  He told me, "When I was a boy, I'd say I must have worn out a rainbarrel full of Marine Band french harps". 

He sustained a head injury in an auto accident when he was 70 years old, and made his first trip, ever, to a hospital.  He was so physically fit that the doctors didn't believe he was 70 years old. He and I loaded haybales when he was nearly 70, throwing 150-pound bales up into our hayloft. 
 
Dad loved beekeeping, and kept bees even after his retirement and his 
accident.  He kept a good garden, too, continuing to supplement their meager pension with fresh fruits and vegetables, enough to give away to his children. 
 
Some lessons I have learned from my dad are:
    *A man is only as good as his word.
    *Save some of your money for the future or for a business 
      opportunity.
    *Working with the public is interesting.
    *There is nothing on earth better between people, than a good 
      understanding.
    *Live so you don't have to defend your reputation.
    *Don't make plans for other people without first consulting them.
    *No matter what you need to learn, you can find it in a book in the 
      library.
    *Hard work never hurt anybody.
    *Give good measure in your dealings.  A bushel is all you can pile
      on top of the basket. 

Dad was a member of the Masonic Lodge,  as was his father Jesse and his grandfather, Joseph. When he died in 1969, exactly one month past his 85th birthday,  his hair was thick and snow white.  I placed his prized leather masonic apron in his casket beside him. 
 
Dad lived by Biblical principles better than any man I have ever known. 
He once said, "I don't see how any man could love his family any more than I love mine"  He was admired and respected by all who knew him. 
 

Bob G. Boyd - July 2001

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