Table Of ContentFather’s birth Lives with his sister Harriet Gray
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JAMES MASON, my father, was born in Scott Co., Va. May 4 , 1811 and grew up
there working on farms for his parents and for an older sister, HARRIET [MASON GRAY], who
had married ALECK [ALEXANDER] GRAY, who lost a leg at the Battle of New Orleans, Jan.
8, 1815. ALECK and HARRIET [MASON GRAY] were well to do - owning land and slaves -
but were hard workers and drove themselves and their children about as hard as they did their
slaves.
Father told me he had seen ALECK [GRAY] plow in the fields until blood would run
down his wooden leg. Father would laugh and tell how HARRIET [MASON GRAY] would call
her girls before daylight on Monday mornings and say, “Get up gals, it’s already late. Today is
Monday, tomorrow is Tuesday and the next day Wednesday - the week half gone and nothing
done.”
She was a widow for many years and many stories were current of her eccentricities
and doings. She scorned the side saddle made for women and rode astride a man’s saddle
in the present style. Once she was thrown by a horse on a country road and landed astride the
fork of a tree in such a way that she could not dislodge herself and so had to wait until a
traveler came along and released her.
Once during the Civil War some soldiers came by her farm when she was absent and
took several of her horses. As soon as she learned of it, she followed after and overtook them
and made it so hot for their commander he gave back the horses.
She had a son, Colonel LOGAN GRAY, killed in battle while serving in the Confederate
Army. She had other sons and daughters.
Goes to Baltimore Meets an Indian Delegation
When father was about 18 he went with a drover, W. M. NASH, with a drove of cattle
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from South Western Virginia to Baltimore via the Shenandoah Valley and Harper’s Ferry. He
told me that up in the face of the cliff opposite Harper’s Ferry there was a hole in which bees
had settled and that a stream, almost as long as a man’s body, of working bees going in and
out were to be seen from below during daylight.
He was told that some men tried to get honey from the rock and let a man down the
face of it on a rope but the scent from the bees was so strong he couldn’t endure it and on
signal he was pulled back to the top again.
Father came back from Baltimore alone on foot, stopping along the way at farm houses
for lodging - two ladies urged him to stay and work for them but he declined.
One day in the Shenandoah Valley he met a party of Indians on their way to see the
President in Washington. They were in their tribal dress - the biggest chief in front with the next
in size close behind followed by the others in order of size with youths bringing up the rear and
carrying their bows and arrows and other equipment.
Beginning with the second in size each one stepped in the tracks of the man ahead of
him. And so silently did they travel that they were almost like ghosts passing before his eyes -
their moccasined feet making little sound.
In the town of Winchester he saw marks high on the sides of the brick buildings made
by the horns of stampeding cattle being driven to market. At that time most all cattle had long
horns and as there were no railroads they had to be driven across country on foot.
Votes for Andrew Jackson Marries and settles in Ky.
Father reached the age of 21 in 1832 and voted his first vote for Andrew Jackson for
President that year and until he was about 80 it was his boast that he had always voted the
Democratic ticket. About this time (1890-92) one of his nephews named FANNIN, who was a
Republican, ran for the Kentucky State Legislature and he voted for him. After that I do not
recall that I ever heard him mention that he always voted the Democratic ticket. With him blood
relation was not to be ignored.
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In the early 1830's JAMES MASON married SALLY [SARAH] ELAM (whether in Va. or
Ky. is not known by me) and soon thereafter they settled on a piece of land near the head of
the West Fork of Newcomb Creek [KY]. He told me that he carried apple seedlings and graft
stock on horseback from Scott County, Virginia - about 150 to 175 miles to plant an orchard.
On this land in what is now Elliott Co., Ky. and about 1910 I was there and saw the trees still
bearing fruit although they were then at least 75 years old.
There was a tenanted house also but I do not know whether it was the one Father had
built and lived in. Considering that this land was in woods and mostly rough and hilly I have
often wondered why he came to settle there when at that time there was so much good smooth
land to be had. I don’t believe I heard him say or that I ever asked him.
His brother JEFF [THOMAS JEFFERSON] MASON owned the most of the upper part
of the East Fork of Newcomb Creek. I don’t know which settled there first. I suppose they
wanted to be near each other. At that time there was good hunting and fishing in that section.
This may have had some influence in their settling there.
Moves to Missouri His wife dies and he remarries
Some time in the late 1850's (date lost) - probably ‘56 or ‘57 JAMES [MASON] and
SALLY ELAM MASON emigrated from their home in Kentucky by ox drawn wagons to
Missouri and finally settled on the waters of Chariton River not far from what is now called
Macon, but formerly known as Macon City. I have a hazy remembrance of his telling of living in
several places before he went to Chariton River. He told of being as far up the Missouri River
as Nemaha and Omaha, Nebraska. These were small villages then and Nemaha the larger.
He told me that he bought coffee in Louisville of a Mr. PORTER (born 1810; died 1859), who
was known as the “Kentucky Giant.” He ran a coffee store.
Previous to 1856 (as their first child, REBECCA [WILLIAMS] was born Sept. 29, 1856)
sister SUSANNAH [MASON] had married ISAAC WILLIAMS of Magoffin County, Kentucky, so
she did not go with the family on its ‘trek’ to Mo. Sister MARY [MASON] decided not to go and
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later married JAMES M. GREEN and continued to live in Kentucky and raised a family there.
However, there were HARRIET, JANE, JEMIMA, JESSE, ELIZA and perhaps
THOMAS in the [MASON] family. How the family prospered I do not know but father was not a
man that desired to accumulate property but I have heard they had a good farm. About 1860
(as nearly as can be learned) SALLY [SARAH ELAM] MASON died and was buried on or
near their farm.
HARRIET [MASON] had married in 1858 to ROBERT MOSS and JANE [MASON]
married WILLIAM PERRY and ELIZA [MASON] married JAMES BUCKINGHAM, dates
unknown. These were three Englishmen recently come to America.
Father married again, this time to a widow named [SAMANTHA J.] RICE, nee
WRIGHT, about 1862 (date unknown) and one son, STONEWALL JACKSON MASON,
His second wife dies Returns to Va & marries my Mother
was born to them May 22, 1863. When he was two or three years old his mother, who was
subject to fits, in stooping to dip water (so it was supposed) fell into a deep spring and was
drowned. Again Father was a widower. Some of the children had died - THOMAS [MASON]
when he was about 8. No records of the deaths of JEMIMA, MARGARET and FRANCES
[MASON]. Father said NANCY [MASON] went somewhere west with a neighbor family and
trace of her was lost. The country was in a turmoil during and after the Civil War and
communication uncertain and difficult.
Leaving the surviving members of his and SALLY’s [MASON] children, Father left
Missouri with JACK [MASON] and went to sister MARY [MASON] GREEN’s in Kentucky and
later continued his journey to Scott Co., Va. where he was born. There he met my Mother,
[CAROLINE BRICKEY] who was the widow of her cousin, DANIEL MORGAN BRICKEY, who,
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as a Confederate soldier had died a prisoner of war at Camp Douglas, Chicago, Ill. the 11 of
March, 1865.
She had a family of seven - JAMES NELSON, SAMUEL [PARISH], BETTY [MARY
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ELIZABETH], ROBERT [EMMETT], [DANIEL] MORGAN, MELISSA [CAROLINE] and one -
SENA [VICTORIA BRICKEY] - dead. So when she and father got married, her six living
children and his one, JACK [MASON], made a houseful. I do not have the date of the
marriage. They lived on a farm left by her husband on Stony Creek [VA]. Here sister JANE
[MASON] was born Nov. 26, 1868. About 1870 or 1871 this farm was sold and the family
moved to Kentucky.
SAMUEL [PARISH BRICKEY] was at that time living with his uncle JAMES [DANIEL]
BRICKEY, a brother to his father [DANIEL MORGAN BRICKEY] and did not go with the family.
I have no record of whether JAMES NELSON [BRICKEY] went with the family but he may have
preceded the others.
The Family moves to Ky. and I am born
The family traveled on horseback, the children 2 or 3 on one horse - a hard way to travel
- specially on the roads of that time. They crossed the Cumberland Mountains and
passed through Whitesburg, Ky., outside of which there were many skeletal remains of horses
killed in a cavalry fight during the late War. They traveled down Jenny’s Creek, named for a
JENNY WILEY, who escaped when a prisoner of some Indians and had traveled up this creek
on her way to her home in Virginia in an early day. It was said that the road crossed this creek
22 times from head to its mouth which prompted one traveler to say that he crossed it once by
going into the creek at its head on one side and coming out at its mouth on the other side.
Much of the country roads were in the small creeks and were dangerous on account of
quicksand. In addition to the riders, the horses were burdened with the family “plunder”, as
they called it - clothing, bedding & keepsakes of various kinds. I remember several things that
had been brought along on that journey - one - a red cedar piggin - which she kept, I believe, till
her death. It was originally a vessel about 15 inches high, 12 inches across the top and
smaller at the bottom, round, and never lost that lovely cedar scent. She used it to work up
butter in with a wooden paddle and many times I have seen her use it. How well I remember it!
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One day on this journey sister MELISSA [BRICKEY] (who was about 7) fell off the horse
and broke her arm. The arm was bound up and the travel continued and no permanent injury
resulted. At last the long journey came to and end. They found a place to stay in a district near
the mouth of Bruin Creek, called Horton Flats - bordering on the Little Sandy River in Elliott
Co., Ky. Here my Father found work for a while running a grist mill for WILLIAM GREEN,
whose wife, SALLY HUTCHINSON GREEN, was a daughter of father’s sister BETTY [MASON
HUTCHINSON]. Our family had little and lived in a hewed log house on Mr. GREEN’s farm.
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Here on a cold winter night I was born, January 31 , 1872. Here the family lived two or three
years.
I visit my birthplace in 1892 Father catches a fish in Mill wheel
When I was a young man (1892) brother JESSE MASON (who had come to Kentucky
to visit his relatives) and I were in the neighborhood and stopped to talk to ‘WAG’ GREEN, son
of WILLIAM GREEN, and we three went for a walk in the direction of the old mill and as we
went ‘WAG’ [GREEN] pointed out an old log house, the roof about gone, the doors and
windows open, and said that was the house in which I was born, but it had been moved from
the original site. That is all I have to remember of my birthplace.
Sister MELISSA [BRICKEY] has told me that the night I was born she and BOB
[BRICKEY], MORGAN [BRICKEY], JACK [MASON] and JANE [MASON] were sent to a
neighbor’s for the night. And that BOB [BRICKEY] was mad about it and didn’t want to go and
said he knew why they were having to go. “It is another damned baby, that’s what it is.” He
was about 11 years old. I don’t wonder that he viewed an addition to the already overcrowded
family with some animosity and disgust!
I remember some years after we left the vicinity of the Mill that father was said to have
been running the Mill one day when it slowed down and stopped. Supposing that a chunk of
wood had lodged in the water wheel he went down and raised the cover and to his surprise,
instead of a piece of wood, he found a big pike fish caught in the wheel. The family dined on
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fish that day. *
We move to White’s Creek I see a fox
About 1874 (I have little except memory to go by) we moved to a hill farm on the upper
reaches of Hilton Branch, often called White’s Creek because NELSON WHITE owned the
better part of it. This farm was owned by sister MARY [MASON] and her husband, JAMES M.
GREEN. The house was built of hewn logs with a lean to kitchen of hand sawed lumber, I
believe. There was a rough stone chimney and fireplace in the main room. There was a
vegetable garden with split paling fence. Also an apple orchard and a log barn with pens for
stock and for a corncrib.
The roof of split oak boards extended 8 or 10 feet on two sides and was supported by
hewed logs laid on top of the pens. Space above the pens was filled with hay or fodder in
winter. While on this farm I became aware of things in such a way that I still remember more or
less distinctly many happenings which occurred there.
Father cleared a piece of land on a bench, above the house and apple orchard and one
day on invitation by Father the neighbors had come, as was the custom, to help roll and pile
the logs to be burned. Some time during the day hearing a loud cackling and squawking
among the hens I ran out of the house in time to see a fox chasing a hen and just then, as she
rose to fly, the fox sprang into the air and caught a mouthful of feathers only, while the hen flew
safely away. The fox stood with his mouth full of feathers watching the hens as they ran and
flew for a brief moment, then seeing the dogs coming, he ran away, his bushy tail waving in the
air. This scene was indelibly impressed on my memory and is clear today after almost 80
years. That was my first view of a fox - also my first “working.”
Log Rollings, House Raisings & other doings
It was the custom of that country of hew homes and farms for a man to call on his
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neighbors to come in a group or body and help him a day in rolling logs, raising a house,
splitting rails, shucking corn or, in emergencies, plowing ground and planting corn, and he in
turn would help them in similar circumstances in return.
These gatherings were called “Workings” as by the name of the kind of work done, as a
“Log Rolling,” “House Raising” and so on. I was familiar with them and attended and helped in
many after I was old enough to help pile brush or run errands. The wives of the farmers often
came with their husbands and helped in the preparation of the food for dinner and supper for
the men. The main dish usually was chicken and dumplings cooked in a big iron kettle over an
open fire, sometimes out in the open air, or in a large tin wash boiler on an old-fashion wood
burning Pine Grove step stove.
There were dried apple and dried pumpkin pies, lots of gingerbread and big bowls of
boiled rice. To make up the main dish at least five or six hens would be cooked at one time.
The noonday dinner was the big meal, as often some of the men and their wives would leave
before supper. Supper required little more cooking, as there was usually enough left of dinner
to make the supper, with a few extras added.
The women usually had a quilt pieced and set up on the frames so they could use extra
time from cooking and waiting on table, at quilting and catching up on the neighborhood news
and gossip like the modern Ladies Aid Society.
Some times I was taken along before I was big enough to do anything except run
errands or get in the way. We “Young-uns” managed to get our share of the eating.
One of our favorite workings was the “Hog Killing.” That was something! They didn’t
last so long but we got more fun and good eating while they lasted. How we did enjoy the fresh
meat. Oh Childhood and Youth! We had little except a keen appetite (which needed no fancy
French sauce or dressing) and an ability to enjoy the food we got.
We invented our own ways of amusement. No electric trains or fancy gadgets for us. In
summer we went barefooted and played Tag, Base, Hide-and-seek, Marbles, Mumbly-peg
and other games made up on the spur of the moment. In winter much or our efforts were spent
in trying to keep warm & still have time to play. We skated (without skates), tracked rabbits,
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threw snow balls and managed to have colds and running noses much of the time.
Money scarce Father “bids-in” a pauper
In that back country in the 1870's money was very scarce. Just how scarce we people
of this day can hardly realize. Most trade in the store was exchange of goods for farm produce
- eggs, butter, poultry, hides, feathers, ginseng, yellow root, etc. In order to get some real
money Father went to the County seat, Sandy Hook (then called Martinsburg) and bid in a
pauper. The county had no poor farm those days and so the county officials let the paupers out
to live at the homes of whoever of responsibility made the lowest bid for the pauper’s keep. I
do not remember the amount Father was to receive for keeping this pauper but it was pitifully
small.
The pauper’s name was STEVE HACKER. He was of fine physique, about 6 feet tall
and muscular. He had a reputation of being a bully in the vicinity where he had lived but had
had an accident which left him paralyzed from his waist down. Having no one or property to
support him and not being able to work, he was adjudged a pauper.
Steve Hacker and our experiences with him
At the time he came to us he was maybe 30 years old and a handsome man - black
hair and eyes and dark complexion.
Though for a time we got along very well with STEVE [HACKER], his having lived an
active life up to his accident, the quiet of his confinement to his bed and chair palled on him, so
naturally he wanted out and was restless and cross toward us children when he didn’t get out.
When helped to his feet he could stand and with a crutch and a cane - sometimes two crutches
- he could walk a little by dragging his feet.
To get him outside took someone’s time, which was not always convenient, and when
out he seemed to try to get in some situation that would require help and then got angry if the
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help was slow in coming. This did not help matters any.
One day because help was slower than he wanted it in coming he threw his heavy cane
with an iron tip at brother JACK [MASON] but he was alert and dodged it. JANE [MASON]
and I soon learned to keep out of his reach for he would strike our heads with his knuckles or
cane when Father and Mother were not present.
One day the family left JANE [MASON[ and me with STEVE [HACKER] and went to the
cornfield to work - a very unsafe thing to do. We played around out of his reach until about the
middle of the forenoon when in some way STEVE [HACKER] managed to get on his feet and
reach his crutches and drag out to the yard gate and through it and on a few steps to the little
creek that ran by and out to the deepest place and then deliberately fell backward in the water
and called to us to call the folks to come and get him out. JANE [MASON] went and called
them and JACK [MASON] and MORGAN [BRICKEY] came and lifted him up and helped him
to the house and dressed him in dry clothes.
The next year one of our neighbors bid STEVE [HACKER] in and he remained in our
neighborhood until his death several years later. He became a changed man and left a
neighborhood of friends when he died. What a pity that men like that cannot, or could not then,
have work that they could use their physical and mental energy.
Brother Sam Brickey comes from Va. Rose Peters sings
While we lived in this house (MARY & J. M. GREEN’s) brother SAM [PARISH
BRICKEY] came from his uncle JAMES [DANIEL] BRICKEY’s in Scott Co., Virginia on foot
most of the way with his few belongings in a pack on his back. He got a few rides along the
way from kindhearted people he met but it was a tiresome journey. Several times he was
misdirected (and traveled miles out of his way) by practical jokers or others ignorant of what
they were doing.
He came to our house late at night and called outside and Father, who had not seen
him for three or four years recognized his voice and answered, “SAM [BRICKEY], what in the
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