The first I know of certainty of the McCluers is that they took up land in
Rockbridge County, Virginia sometime before the Revolutionary War.
Great great grandfather Dr. Samuel McCluer was a surgeon in the American
Army. Except that he was present at the Battle of Cowpens, we have no record
of his war activities. Their home in Rockbridge County was called "The
Old Rock Castle." So far as I know they were the only McCluers ever to
live in a castle.
Sometime during the 1830s a large party migrated from Virginia and Kentucky
to Missouri. Among them were the ?atsons1 , the
Waddells, the Fawcetts, and the Campbells. Also among them was our own grandfather
- then a young man - Samuel McCluer. He must have been the second or third
of that name. Also in the crowd was Lucretia Fawcett - sixteen, red haired,
pretty. She was small too, not quite five feet. Grandpa Samuel was a bear
of a man - over 6 feet and heavy - but he was quite taken with the sprightly
red-haired Lucretia. I never could fine out was all happened, but Aunt Susan2
said to me once, "There was quite a lot of romance connected with Mother's
marriage." The marriage took place soon after they reached Missouri.
Grandmother (Lucretia Fawcett) was related to the Waddells and to the Campbells.
It seems that for some reason the Campbells sidetracked and settled in Indiana,
though they always kept in touch with Grandma. I have met one of them, a Charley
Campbell, who was a salesman working out of Neosho, MO in 1895. He heard Papa
was living in Cane Hill [AR], and came to see us. He was so much like Papa's
brother Curt; and also like Norman Kirby.
Grandpa "Sammy," as he was known, and Lucretia settled in a little
cabin called the Nut Shell, after the English and Scotch custom of naming
each holding. There Papa (Uncas) was born, March 13, 1852; also Curt, Susan,
and Louie. Later they built a large house six miles from O'Fallen, called
Harvest Home.
There were now nine children, Uncas, Curtis, Susan, Louis, Arthur, Tom, Billy,
Bob, and Henrietta (always called "Set"). The land they had taken
up lay between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, forty miles from St. Louis.
I do not know just when, but sometime during the year Papa was thirteen Grandpa
fell from a roof and was helpless a long time (a year or two).
He used to send Papa to oversee the four big farms along the river. Papa
told me he had to get up at four in the morning and ride all day to these
farms, where were very far apart. He was just a child. So he said he used
to get so lonesome he would recite pages and pages of Lady of the Lake, just
to hear a sound; the miles and miles of prairie were so utterly empty.
He developed a great love for the outdoors during those years. He hunted
in winter and was an excellent shot. He knew the wild animals and their habits,
and used to tell us many interesting things about them.
He was about 17 when the Civil War broke out. He and a cousin wanted to enlist,
but grandmother wouldn't hear of it. The cousin ran away and enlisted. Papa
was packed off to St. Louis to school. He told me long afterward that was
one time he wished he had defied his mother. All his life he felt left out
and a misfit in the South where every man and boy had been to war except him.
He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis the year the War was
over. That summer he an Grandpa spent in Salt Lake City. I never understood
why the West made so little impression on him. That year he gave up his plan
to be a civil engineer, and decided to study for the ministry. Grandpa was
bitterly disappointed; he was never reconciled to the idea.
I think the years at Washinton University must have been the happiest of
his early life. He had a number of close friends there, among them Henry Mudd,
who later founded the Woman's Hospital in St. Louis. With them he swam in
the Mississippi in summer and skated during the winter. He was good at sports
as well as hunting.
After he graduated from Washington, about the time the War closed, he went
directly to Hampden Sidney Theological Seminary in Virginia, to begin his
study for the ministry. He would not let his father pay his expenses there,
as Grandma had already put him through Washington. Instead he took a job as
a "colporteur" (a bookseller) for a Richmond Presbyterian publishing
house. He had no means of conveyance so he walked over most of Virginia, carrying
a satchel full of books. He sometimes spent the night at farm houses, and
sometimes he slept in a convenient haystack. I do not know when he graduated
from Hampden-Sidney, but I think Farmville was his first pastorate.
There he met Charlotte Watkins, the daughter of a tobacco merchant, who before
the War had been very wealthy. At this time they were desperately poor, having
lost all their property in the four years of bitter fighting that went on
in Eastern Virginia. Charlotte was a lovely blonde, gay and exciting. In fact,
Papa was enthralled by all these beautiful girls, who laughed and danced and
played cards and rode to hounds, and such worldly things which were strictly
forbidden in his home and the dreary Bardon community. He also greatly admired
the spirit of these young women who could carry on and act and - most of all
- LOOK like nothing had gone amiss in their lives, when he knew that at times
many of them had hardly a meal ahead. The guest must always feel welcome,
even if some of the family went supperless.
He and Charlotte Watkins were married sometime in the 1860s or early 1870s.
He was still pastor at Farmville, I believe. Soon afterward he was sent by
the Abingdon Presbytery to Washington, Smythe, and Tazewell Counties in Western
Virginia to serve as a home missioneary to churches which had been established
but had failed to grow and support themselves. All the rest of his life was
spent in this type of work. He would take over a church, or several churches
within a given radius, and in time would set them on their feet - a going
concern. He seemed to know to the dollar how much each church could do, and
by some means unknown to others he could persuade them to do it. Mama told
me that Charlotte always claimed that when any church in those three counties
go flat on its back, the Abingdon Presbytery said, :"Send McCluer; he'll
get it up."
So they moved many times - to Saltville, to Seven Mile Gap, to Chatham Hill.
I think it was at Chatham Hill that Papa ran into a type of people he had
not known before. They were nearly all well-to-do cattle men - hard-riding,
drinking, gambling. Friendly, hospitable people, they were pleased to have
a "parson" in their midst to look after the sick, bury the dead,
and perform the baptisms and marriage rites. As one man told Papa, "It
makes things look more legal" - not that he cared whether they were legal
or not. Papa liked these men; they were generous and kind, but they had no
notion of giving up any of their pleasant sins, though they were scrupulously
careful to pay his salary.
I have wondered how he would have fared with them, but his work was cut short
by the death of his wife, leaving him with two small daughters. He returned
to Farmville and left the children with his mother-in-law, whom he admired
very much.
I am not sure where he was or what he was doing for the next several years.
But he was called back by the Abingdon Presbytery to take over again Smythe,
Washington, and Tazewell Counties, but not including the Satlville area. This
was a somewhat different set-up. Tazwell was a mountainous region, given over
to coal mining and lumbering. Washington County is a desperately poor region,
with no lumber, no coal, no cattle. when I knew it, it was just miles and
miles of gully-washed bare hillsides. A few sassafras bushes and sedge grass
grew sparsely on the flats. The families had only the barest living and scarcely
any money at all. They paid the preacher with a "pounding" once
a year. Everyone brought a pound of whatever they could spare.
Not long after Papa took over this project, he met and married Elizabeth
Morgan, a native of Louisiana. Her father was Dr. Haynes Morgan, and her great
great grandfather was also Dr. Haynes Morgan, who was at the Battle of Cowpens
in North Carolina. He was a Virginia landholder. Mama's father, Haynes II,
later moved to Alabama, where Mama was born, at Taladega.
The Texas fever was spreading over the Southeastern states about this time.
Our grandfather, Haynes II, decided to go West. He and a large party of immigrants
started to Texas. They were delayed at Jackson, MS, where Aunt Emma was born.
By the time they reached Monroe, LA, all their money was gone, so they rented
a place near Monroe and put in a cotton crop. They were getting along fine,
and had every prospect of moving on to Texas as soon as the cotton was picked,
but the Civil War broke out and the Yankee soldiers drove off all the stock;
the slaves were scattered; and the big general store grandpa owned was burned.
His wife died in childbirth for want of a doctor. Everything except the house
they lived in and one old mule (too old for the Yankees to use) was carried
off or destroyed.
Grandmother Morgan was Lucinda Johnson before her marriage. She had two brothers,
one named Patrick. Her family were directly from Ireland, settling in Virginia
not far from the Morgan estate. There is nothing told of why Haynes and Lucinda
went to Alabama to live.
After Lucinda's death, grandpa was indeed in a sad state. He well past middle
age, being much older than his wife, and left with four young daughters and
an infant son, with no one to care for them. Mama, the eldest, was ten. A
negro ex-slave, called Aunt Julie, came to him and said, "Dr. Morgan,
(he was a dentist), I'se gwin stay with these chillun." So, from that
day, Aunt Julie was the only Mother they ever knew.
And now Elizabeth, grown and married, in Marion, VA, is married to Rev. Uncas
McCluer. I think (remember I was but a child when my mother died, so I may
not recall what I heard the grown-ups say exactly as it happened) they lived
at Saltville a little while. then the Virginia Synod moved Papa to Washington
and Tazewell Counties. So they moved to Green spring. Lucille was born there
Feb. 14, 1882. two years later, Nov. 20, 1884, Netta and I were born at Rock
Spring. While we were still infants, Papa and Mama moved to the Bethel community,
near the Oceola P.O. and seven miles from Abingdon. Here they had about three
acres, with a parsonage, which was a two-storied log building, whitewashed
and chinked with mortar and hog hair. Outside of the yearly "poinding,"
I don't think we were much of a drain on the pocketbooks of the Bethel Congregation.
We kept two cows, a horse, and a large bunch of pigs. We made our own lard,
soap, sausage, bacon, and ham. we had a large garden and a small orchard,
and many gallons of blackberries and strawberries grew wild. We also kept
chickens.
Of his church work, I was too young to understand much, but I do remember
they had a near scandal in the church when Mr. Keys, one of the Deacons, ran
for "Public Taster" (and won) on the local option ticket. The Public
Taster was the man who went from precinct to precinct to taste the wine being
sold at certain places specified by the law, to see if it contained too much
alcohol. aAny Taster could - and Mr. Keys often did - get gloriously drunk
on his tasting trip. It was all to much for me to understand, but many times
I've seen Mama make a big pot of coffee for Mr. Keys and hustle him off to
bed before Papa came home. Papa's preaching Sundays were the third and fifth
Sunday of each month. Mr. Keys always came to spend Saturday with us so he
could get to church on time. He lived across the Holston River from Bethel.
I think my parents really liked Mr. Keys and were sorry for him. Mama always
call him "that old scoundrel," but she said it with a smile. His
wife was dead, and when he got too lonesome, he comforted himself with certain
handsome young ladies in the red light district at Bristol. Finally he married
one of them. His grown children disowned him. Nature now had to take a hand
to make matters worse. Mr. Keys' wife died in childbirth, leaving again a
widower with a young child. His daughter refused to take the little girl,
whose name was Bessie. She was sent from one orphans' home to another, finally
arriving at our house, where she lived off and on for the years. Bessie became
a great beauty, with no sense of right and wrong at all - no matter how much
the Bible was read to her. I never could find out what she did that outraged
Papa so. I heard him tell Mama that Bessie was the "handiwork of the
Devil." Certainly she had no desire to be protected from the young blades
who flocked around our house, now that she and Kate and Agnes were all at
the age to have beaux.Suddenly she was sent away to another orphanage. I never
knew why. Much of the history of Bessie Keys I learned from listening to Mama
and the older girls talk. Little pitchers have big ears.
by 1893 my father's health was badly broken. He had served as a home missionary
in a bare and difficult field since his first marriage, sometime in the 1870s.
all those years he had never refused to go to see a sick or injured person,
in cold or heat, on horseback, through rain or snow, often swimming the Holston
River, which was a wild and beautiful stream in summer; in Spring, fed by
the melting snows, it was wild and treacherous. His work in Tazewell County
was particularly hard, and somewhat dangerous when he first went there. It
was a coal mining district with a few scattered corn patches high up in the
mountains. The high country was taken over by bootleggers, whose tiny fields
would not grow enough corn to have any to sell. It would have been impossible
to get the crop to town if they had one, as the roads were well nigh impassable,
even on a horse. Papa said he didn't see anything the people could do except
bootleg corn whiskey. When he first began to go into the mountains, not a
man could he see all day long, though he knew he was being watched. He learned
quickly never to dismount at a cabin, but to stay well back from the yard
and call "hello" until a woman would put her head out the crack
of the door. But gradually, as they came to know him, and made sure he wasn't
a "revenoo-er" or an informer, they became more friendly and let
him spend the night if it was cold or raining.
Over the years nearly all of these people became his friends. He never turned
one of them in to the revenue officers. He always said, "I attend to
my work, which is preaching. Let the revenue men attend to theirs." He
came to like many of these families. He admired their fierce pride and quick
wit and their hospitality - once you were established as a friend. He visited
the sick, married the young, buried the dead. They frequently sent for him
when there had been an accident in the ??? on the lower slopes, or a "liquor
shootin" where someone was killed.
He told us that once during a heavy rain, he rode up to a cabin and shared
their meal of fatback and black molasses. At bedtime the old man said, "Parson,
you kin jist go up that ladder and sleep in the loft with Bill, and ifn he
crowds ye, jist give him a kick on the slats." About that time Bill came
in. He was a veritable giant. Papa was big too, but he knew when he was well
off. He let Bill have the bed and slept on the floor.
On one of those trips, as Papa was passing by the farm of old Mrs. Spears,
a widow woman, he heard loud cries, dogs barking, and pigs squealing. He rode
up to see what was wrong. Here came Mrs. Spears, her dress torn and her hair
flying in every direction. Her face was red as a beet, and she was mad as
a wet hen. At the sight of papa, whe fairly shrieked, "Mr. McCluer, there's
nothing on earth as aggravatin' as a hog or a man, and a woman can't do without
neither of 'em."
During these years our two brothers were born. Morgan in 1889 and Robert
in 1892. This was a great source of happiness to our parents, that at last,
after years of hoping and five daughters, they had two sons.
In 1893 Papa's health became so bad, he had to resign, and we moved to Papa's
old home in Missouri for a year. In 1894 we moved to Boonsboro, AR. Boonsboro
was a village of about 200 people who had emigrated to Van Buren, AR, in 1830s.
Most of them took up large tracts of land among the Arkansas River, but were
forced by the low malarial climate to give up that rich land and move to the
Ozark Mountains, forty-five miles North of Van Buren, where the climate was
much better. It was about 1600 to 1900 ft. in elevation, full of fine springs
and clear running creeks. There was much fine timber and the soil was remarkably
rich. A little town was build on the top of Cane Hill Mountain, at that time
called Boonesboro. There is an old story that Danel Boone once camped there
for several months, but whether the new settlement was called Boonsboro for
that reason, I do not know. The little toiwn seems to have propered. there
were several stores, a post office, a mill, two churches (Methodist and Cumberland
Presbyterian), and a Methodist Academy for Young Ladies. At one time, before
the War, it was the educational center for all points south and was as far
as New Mexico. For quite a long time this was a prosperous, growing community.
People from every direction sent their children there to the Cumberland Presbyterian
College because it was the nearest school and because of the climate. But
the Civil War changed all that. The railroads too by-passed the little burg,
and the State University was located at Fayetteville, 25 miles away. This
was the final blow to "the college" and the Young Ladies Academy;
they just got weaker and weaker, and finally faded away. By the time Papa
was sent to take over another "flat on its back" church, the public
school was being held in the lower story of the College, and the Cumberland
Presbyterians were holding services in the upper story.
About 1891 or 2 somebody got the idea the Boonsboro should have another church;
so the Ouachita Presbytery of the Southern Presbyterian (U.S.) Church sent
a man named Lunsford who attempted to build another church in a community
already church strangled. It split the community wide open, and when we arrived
in November, 1894, the village was almost an armed camp. I have never seen
such hatred and bitterness as was exhibited by the members of these two churches.
The Methodists seem to have assumed the role of peacemaker and went to both
Cumberland upstairs services and at the Rock Church (which Mr. Lunsford finally
did get built, but couldn't pay a nickel on it). Most of the work on the Rock
Church was volunteer. Mr. L. resigned. So here was Papa, with a church war,
a big church debt, seven children to feed and no money.
We arrived the day before Thanksgiving, 1894. The next day we were taken
in a wagon to the home of one of Papa's elders for Thanksgiving dinner. And
that was something to see, coming as we did from poverty stricken Western
Virginia. The food, laid out on long trestles, simply overwhelmed us. None
of us - not even Papa and Mama - had ever seen so much of such fine food at
one time. there was every variety of meat - hams, great haunches of beef,
chicken fried and baked, turkey, cakes and pies of every kind, cookies and
cider. we had never hear of cider. It was a feast for kings. It is still so
in the Ozarks. Anyone who will work can have all this and more.
I was too young to pay attention to what was said about Papa's salary. The
Presbytery was to pay part, as this was "missionary field." Maybe
that was paid, but the congregation paid only $100 that year, and the next
nine years they paid $75. Papa soon saw, I'm sure, that he could not feed
and clothe us on $75 a year, so he bought the old Haygood place, just in the
edge of town. It had a fine big barn, good rich soil and an orchard - about
10 acres.
All of us worked. Papa preached at Cane Hill (the name was changed from Boonsboro
about this time) on two Sundays a month, and at Apple Hill one and at Hog
Eye the next. Papa always had to go to these appointments on Saturday and
spend the night with some of his parishioners. He always dreaded these trips
because the women always put him on great feather beds, which he hated and
always tossed off on the floor, to the horror of the good ladies. He always
came home hungry, as the farm folk always fell silent when a "parson"
was present and the burden of the table conversation was laid on him (he was
a fine talker), so while every one else was eating, he was talking, and often
left the table about half fed. This was always very funny to us, that a man
would come home hungry from wedding suppers and big church dinners. Another
thing he did that always threw us into gales of laughter was to steal the
table napkins - not intentionally of course. He would just be so engrossed
in what he or someone else was saying that he would stuff the napkin in the
ample pockets of his Prince Albert coat. Mama sometimes found three or four.
If it was possible to locate the owners, she would return them, but oftener
we never knew who had been robbed.
The life of a minister's children is far from pleasant much of the time.
Papa, realizing the impossiblility of keeping a family on $75 a year, had
bought the best small farm in the community. Some of his parishioners were
furious. "How did he do it? Come in here and get off with the best farm
around. I've been wanting that place for years. He must have some money stashed
away somewhere." They said this to us many times. Sometimes the children
would add, "Why should my daddy pay the preacher when he has a better
farm than we do?" (The grown-ups evidently felt the same way.) Yet when
Papa offered to resign and let them get a preacher who had no farm, you never
heard such a scream of rage. One woman waid to me and Netta, "Why, we
never will find another man who will preach for next to nothing, like Mr.
McCluer does." It is to our credit that we didn't say something insulting
to her.
Another thing that displeased them was that after Mama died Papa refused
to be taken over by any of the various nieces, sisters or daughters of marriageable
age. One woman said to Netta and me, "Why don't your Pa marry ?at Ross?"
We told him at breakfast next morning, and I never heard a man give such a
tremendous snort. We laughed till we were limp. Mama was a nice figure, about
5 ft. 3, with small hands and feet, and a fair complexion. She had a quickness
and gaiety and a most pleasing friendly outgoing manner. To think of replacing
her with this horsey, rough featured woman would have been insulting if it
hadn't been so funny.
Papa rode a yellow mule when he went to his appointments at Apple Hill or
Hog Eye. This was a great source of amusement to the townspeople. He wore
a big wide Southern General looking hat, and never carried a whip or switch
for the mule. He always had his pocket knife open and from time to time he
would peck the mule on the shoulder with it. No one had ever seen a preacher
ride a mule, much less go along pecking him with a knife. So on Saturdays
all the men in town lined up on the sidewalk at Cane Hill to watch the preacher
peck his mule. I am sure Papa never knew he was being watched. He rode the
mule because he was an easier traveler than a horse and was more surefooted
in the gullies and ditches that served for roads.
Over the years he made many firends. Many of his people came to him for advice
when trouble or sickness overtook them. The principal object of his life was
to heal the breach in the little community made by adding an unneeded church
in a community too small to support those they already had. In this he was
successful. When he resigned the "Rock Church" was on a paying basis.
It was self-sustaining and the building was paid for. He lived to see the
Cumberland Presbyterian Church unite with the Northern Presbyterians, and
the few Methodists that were left were absorbed by the Southern Presbyterian
Church (the Rock Church). Later, tho, I believe it was after his death, the
Southern Church united with the Northern (at Cane Hill). So now they have
only one church in the little burg, but it is a happier, more peaceful, more
useful community for Papa's having lived and worked there so many years ago.
- P.M.K.
There is one more incident I would like to record. When Mama was buried,
there was a certain song Papa wanted to have sung. No one could play it on
the church organ, and apparently no one knew the words. Papa had a beautiful
singing voice; so he sang alone the beautiful words
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"There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal stand.
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.
There everlasting Spring abides,
And never-withering flowers.
Death like a narrow sea divides,
This heavenly land from ours."
|
It was one of the most moving things I ever heard. Almost the entire congregation
was in tears.
Notes:
1. Quite possibly Watson
2. Susan McCluer McCarty.
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