Bambudder’s Weblog

     Between 1952 and 1956 my aunt, Johnnie Haggard Hindman, received three letters from an elderly lady from Bell, California.  She was doing the family history of our branch of the Haggard Family in America. ( I am descended from John Quitman Haggard and she is descended from David Carrol Haggard, two of five brothers whose mother was Sarah Pace Haggard, daughter of Edmund Pace and wife of John William Haggard.)   She and her sister, Sarah Haggard Bullard had been working on the Haggard family since about 1924.  She also wrote a short personal history in 1951 when she was about 75 years old.  It was written in her own hand, but was typed from the original copy by Carmen Butler, who put certain of her own comments in parenthesis, except about Indians.  Later it was retyped by Kay Dawn Dortch.  The only change she made was Latter Day to Latter-day and placed in brackets.  No other changes were made, not even those of grammatical editing.

Following is Vida’s own history in her own words.

Before starting this sketch of my life I will say that I am not much on history writing, but as we are record keeping people I will try to live up to my religion.  In making this sketch I will have to write some about my father’s family.

I was born 29 December 1876 in Fearn Springs, Winston County, Mississippi.  My parents were William Adley Haggard, who ws born 8 October 1848 and married Permelia Louisiana Fain 9 October 1873.  She was born 9 May  1856 at Kellis Stoe, Kemper County, Mississippi.  They were married at her mother’s house in Noxubee County, Mississippi.

My father taught school near my Grandmother Fain’s home and my mother went to his school before they were married.  They settled in Winston County, Mississippi, where my father owned a farm of one-hundred-sixty acres.

When my father was three years old he had what we now believe is Polio, and was a cripple for the rest of his life.  However, he was a good provider for his family.  He hired a man to run the farm.  After we children go old enough we helped on the farm.

My father taught school or held county offices.  He was never idle.  He owned and operated a grocery store.  I remember the Darkies used to bring cotton and trade for groceries.

He decided to go out of business and teach again.  He got a school a few miles from our house.  Grandfather took charge of the farm and we moved to what was known as the Bateman neighborhood.

It was while we were there that the humble Mormon Missionaries came to our place.  They first stopped at Mr. Bateman’s and stayed all night.  When his children came to school the next morning they said that two strange preachers stayed at their house the night before.  My father told them when they went home that evening if the men were stiill there to tell them to come over because he wanted to talk to them.  The next day the Elders came over and I think it was my father who asked them to hold a meeting in the schoolhouse.  They were glad to do this, but the men in the neighborhood tried to get a mob to run them out.

A short time after this school was out and we moved back to our farm.  We invited the missionaries to visit us which they did.  As soon as it was known they were visiting us Satan began his work and the mobs got furious.

I remember one Sunday afternoon the missionaries were at our house.  We were sitting out on the front porch and the Elders were singing when a bunch of men rode up, I think there were more than seventeen in all.  It being a new experience for my father he hardly knew what to do.  He asked Elder Bramwell, who was the older of the two, if he did not think they had better hide out in the cornfield which came almost up to the house.  He replied that he did not think so as he thought if they did the mob would surely get them.

My father was a very brave and fearless man and everbody knew it.  He stepped in the house and put his six shooter in his pocket and went down to the gate to where the men were stopped.  They were still sitting on their horses and each man had a gun.  My father asked what they wanted and they said they wanted the Mormon Elders.  Then my father explained who they were and what they were doing, thinking the mob might go away and let them alone, but they would not.  They were going to take them dead or alive.  My father told them that they had better go home and get a wagon for they would haul someone home – That they might get him, but he would get some of them and they did not know which it would be.

We had many trials which I won’t try to tell, but will say that my father and mother, along with three of their children, and my father’s father and my mother’s brother and two of his sisters and mother were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of {Latter-day) Saints.

The Elders had orders not to come to Winston County again.  My father wrote them while they were in Alabama.  They had to come to the County after dark.  My uncle was to meet them at a certain place and show them the way.  Somehow he got off the road that he was supposed to take to their meeting place.  They also got off the road but they all met.  We always felt if they had not gotten off the road some of those wicked men might have met up with them.

On 10 October 1887 there were thirteen of us baptized at midnight.  After the baptisms were over we spread a lovely lunch the women prepared and enjoyed it.  After talking and visiting until just before time for the missionaries to get out of the County before daylight we all bid farewell to our dearly beloved Elders and they went on their way.  We went home rejoicing in knowing that we were members of the true Church of Jesus Christ.

Shortly after this my father sold his house and everything he owned and we went to Western Colorado where we could live free to live our religion among the {Latter-day} Saints.  This was a newly town where we lived from 1887 to 1889.

We could not stay long because my father contracted rheumatism and had to go to a warmer climate.  He sold our house and bought a team and wagon.  We put all our belongings in the wagon and started out not knowing where we were going.  After a journey of one-thousand-ninety-three miles through a barren and desolate county, (We passed through country where the Indians were not civilized-both man and women dressed alike.) we finally stopped in what was known then as the Creek Nation in a small town of Eufaula.  There my father put up a shoe shop where he did a good business.

We were there for about two years when  my father decided to go back to Mississippi.  We sold our wagon and went by train to our native state.  My parents were not content to be away from the Church so we bought a wagon and a yoke of oxen and started on another journey of five-hundred-forty-seven miles.  We stopped this time at Krebs, Indian Territory for a short time.  We finally settled at Coalgate, Indian Territory.

Soon after we stopped there were two missionaries came to visit and soon we had the missionaries often.  finally there was a Sunday School organized with only four families of Saints.  After that we were more contented and had missionaries often and they held conference there, too.

It was there tht I saw my first miracle performed.  My sister, Sally, was very low and our family doctor said there wwas no chance for her to live.  He had done all he could-it was up to the Lord.  Death was on her, she was cold.  It seemed she would only be with us for a few minutes longer, but our doctor still stayed with us.

I think it was about elevern o’clock at night.  We had just knelt down around her bed when in stepped two missionaries.  We did no know they were anywhere around.  then in just a few seconds it seemed to me, two more Elders came in, and before they could administer to my sister, two more elders arrived.  They administered to her and the next morning we propped her up in bed and she took a little nourishment.  She recovered and is still living.

Sally has done a wonderful lot of good in the world and is still doing all the good she can.  We give all credit to our Heavenly Father.  We know he sent those Elders to us that night in answer to a prayer.  Each pair of Elders said they were inpressed to come to the Haggard home and had come from different directions and each were many miles away.

It was here I met my husband, Samuel Benjamin Dye.  He accepted the gospel in Texas when he was eighteen years of age.  He came to Coalgate with Brother W. C. Harless who, too, was trying to locate the Saints.  This was in 1901 and we were married in 1903 on the 8th of May.

We heard of a Mormon seettlement in Marlow, Oklahoma, as the Indian Territory had become a State. The Sharon Branch was  soon organized after we moved there.  My parents, brothers, and sisters moved there, also.  We stayed for a few years and enjoyed our little branch of the Church.

In 1917 we decided to move to Thatcher, Arizona. {President Spencer W. Kimble’s hometown} We lived there for five years and then moved to Los Angeles, California.  We settled in Home Gardens.  Shortly after we moved there a Branch was organized and my husband was put in as Branch President with Benjamin N. Lincoln as First Counselor and Abinidi Porter, Second Counselor.  In 1925 the Home Gardens became a Ward and he became the first Bishop there.

I think I enjoyed myself more there than anywhere else I have ever lived.  It was where I did the most church work.  I was First Counselor in the Relief Society, also Assistant Secretary and Relief Society Visiting Teacher.  I have been a Visiting Teacher in all the Branches and Wards that I have ever lived in.

I have not mentioned our adopted children.  In 1904 we took a little baby boy eighteen months old.  He was a very sick child.  We nursed him back to health.  His parents deserted him.  He had not had any care and was in a very bad condition. He had been mistreated and had scars on his head where he had been knocked around.  He would not look at anyone and especially when he was eating he kept his eyes closed.  We named him Joeph Clyde Dye and called him Clyde.  We were very careful with him and as kind as we could be so it was not long until he seemed normal and as happy as other children.  He grew up to be  a stong man and was a carpenter by trade.

When Clyde was about five years old a very dear friend passed a way and left a baby girl two weeks old.  It was her dying request that I should have the baby, when she was five weeks old they gave her to us. (She was never adopted by them) Her mother was Mary Cope,  my brother’s mother-in-law.  Her father and brothers and sisters could see her whenever they wanted to.  We called her Mary after her mother.

We felt that our home was complete as we had a little boy and a little girl.  They have brought us lots of joy as well as some sorrow.  I suppose everyone has had joy and sorrow that ever raised a family.  I don’t think any girl ever loved her parents more than Mary loved us, and she has done all she could to make us happy.

We raised them up in the Church.  Our boy has not been as faithful as our girl.  She has worked in the Church ever since she was old enough to teach Primary.  She married a {Latter-day} Saint man her own age, Cyrus Marshall Tolman.  They have been married in the Temple.  He is and always has been very thoughtful of us.  They have had five children and only two of them are living.  (One was born after this history was written and is living).

I have written this sketch from memory.  If there are mistakes they are unintentional.  I am now in my severnty-fifth year.  I go to Chruch on Sunday and to Relief Society on Tuesday.  I do all my own work and help others some.  the greatest thing I possess is a testimony of the Gospel, which I hope and pray I will always have.

Written  in  1951 by Vida Haggard Dye

  When I was a little girl, my mother took me to see my great aunt in Winston County, Mississippi.  Her name was Johnnie Mae Haggard Hindman.  She was a farmer’s wife, who still lived on the same place where she was born.  She was considered to be an old maid, when a farmer from over on the  connecting Yellow Creek Road  and Bond Road  to both his family farm and hers, starting courting her.  His name was Tom Hindman, son of Frank Hindman.  I suppose their home was another place that I began to love family history. 

She taught me about many of my Haggard ancestors,  my Ashmore ancestors, introduced me to my Eaves ancestors.  Once when I was in her home, she was visited by two sisters, Maisie and Daisy Flake.  In later years I found out they were related through a connection with the Eaves family. 

Her brother, William Jesse Haggard, lived across the fields from her.  His wife was Bessie Lloyd and they had two daughters, Waldean and Elsie Merle.  Elsie Merle created quite a scandal by marrying her second cousin, Alfred Mack Eaves. 

Another sister, Nora, lived at the end of the road in the first two story house that I ever remember seeing.  At the time she was married to a Mr. Thompson.  By then she had also created a scandal by divorcing her first husband J.  L. Schoolar, then marrying a Mr. Thompson.  However this Mr. Thompson was the father of the Mr. Thompson that I knew.  Another scandal for that small community.

The other two sisters, Stella and Lizzie also lived on the Haggard farm.  Aunt Stella lived next to Aunt Johnnie and Uncle Bill in the house where her parents lived.  There was a pump built into the sink in her kitchen.  I was amazed.  Uncle Willie took my little brother  and me out to the barn and showed us the animals in his barn and took us out and let us pick cotton.  I was only six years old and my little brother, Tommie, was only four years old.  Aunt Stella fixed us a pillow case with a strap and we skipped all over that cotton patch and thought we were very much grown.  Later on, we found out that Uncle Willie either killed himself or his gun slipped while climbing through a fence next to the gate to his barn lot.

Aunt Lizzie married J. L. Schoolar’s son Milton and their place was at the top of the hill about a mile from the rest of the family.  I played on her porch which was latticed and screened in.  So  much for a little child to take in and remember, but I did and still do.

I loved these aunts and uncles, but the ones I loved the most was Aunt Johnnie and Uncle Tom.  She showed me how  to dry apricots and how she raised dahlia’s.  He showed me billy goats and cotton fields.  She showed me letters from other ancestors and they actually had a parlor where she kept the letters and all her pictures and treasures. 

Later on in my life, we moved to a small town on the Mississippi, Helena, Arkansas.  In the center of the main street, called Cherry Street, across from the courthouse was a mounment of the Doughboy.  It had built in honor  of and from the largesse of a man named Thomas Hindman, a Civil War General.

As I learned about the history of the town, I learned  about the part the city played in the Civil War.  Being on the Mississipp River, it was far up river from Vicksburg.  The Union had captured the city and built a fort, called Fort Curtis, on what is now the home of the First Baptist Church.  Across the river was a swamp called Yazoo Pass.  On the river, sat the gunboat Tyler.

Meanwhile, the war raged around Vicksburg.  It was decided that there would be a diversionary battle on the river at Helena, to pull the Union Troops away from Vicksburg.  Seven Civil War Generals lived in  Helena, Arkansas and they were going to march on Helena from Little Rock and pull the Union Troops away from the river and Fort Curtis.  Two of these Generals were Thomas C. Hindman and Patrick R. Cleburne.  Although the battle didn’t turn out as it was supposed to, it did pull some of the troops away from Vicksburg and a battle was fought in the swamps of Yazoo Pass.  The Confederate Generals lost because a minion who was supposed to wake one of the Generals at 2:00 A.M. at the Lucius Polk home so that his troops could be at a strategic point, failed to wake them until 5:00 A.M., so the Battle of Helena was lost to the Union.

Later on when I was grown and began to research the family, my Aunt Johnnie and her grandaghter gave me the following because it was about my Uncle Tom Hindman’s ancestor, General Thomas C. Hindman.  I was already aware of the descendants of General Cleberne because one of them went to school with my brothers.  As I read this document by Wison Mckinstry, I asked for a copy to add to my own family history.   It was written for the  Southern Sentinel 76 year ago.  So herein follows the story of the :

              “Captains Courageous” by Wilson McKinstry

  Traditions of the Old South hover over the “Hindman House” antebellum mansion one mile east of Ripley, Mississippi.  At one time, several years before the Civil War, this big house, painted white, with it’s front to the south, sheltered two friends, who later became Generals in the Confederate Army.

  Thomas Carmichael Hindman and Patrick R. Cleburne were two who were to leave the stately plantation home of Thomas C. Hindman, Sr. flanked by cotton fields, to return to it only in pleasant memory.  The incident that brought these two friends together under the roof of Hindman’s Mississippi home recalls a story of gratitude and the friendship of two of Dixie’s distinquished sons. 

  Hindman moved to Helena, Arkansas, as a young lawyer, a city to which he was to bring honor and fame later as a soldier and a statesman.  Soon after he opened his office for practice, another young lawyer looked out of his window one day and saw that the newcomer, his rival at the bar, was in trouble.  The uneven struggle aroused the sense of fair play tp Pat Cleburne, and disregarding personal danger, he rushed to Hindman’s aid.  Hindman came out with minor hurts, but his friend was wounded seriously.  Remembering the peaceful seclusion of his father’s plantation home in northern Mississippi, Hindman carried his wounded friend there and nursed him for weeks.

  Not far from the house enclosed by a brickand concrete wall, is the family burying ground.  On the tomb of the father of the Confederate general is this epitaph; “A faithful soldier, a law abiding citizen, and honest man.”  Born in Knoxville, in 1792, the first male child born in the now populous Tennessee city, the elder Hindman died at Ripley five years before his son joined the Confederate army.  When the Mexican War broke out, Thomas Hindman, Sr., a veteran of the Battle of New Orleans, went to the front as colonel of a Mississippi regiment.  With him to Mexico went his two sons, Robert Holt Hindman and Thomas C. Hindman.  The latter, fresh from college, raised a company in Tippah County, Mississippi and entered the service as First Lieutenant in the Second Mississippi Regiment.  For gallantry in action he was promoted on the field to a captaincy.

  After the war Colonel Hindman and his two soldier sons returned to Ripley.  On July 18, 1856, the colonel was killed accidentally while inspecting a cotton gin on his plantation.  In the same Cemetery where the elder Hindman is buried lie the bodies of brothers and sisters of the Confederate leader.  On one tomb in the little enclosure is engraved the words, “ Killed at Ripley, Mississippi, by W. C. Faulkner, May 8, 1849″.  It is the tomb of Robert Holt Hindman, whose career was cut short at 27. That fatal quarrel between former friends filled a grave and divided two distinquished Southern families.  William C. Faulkner, after a brilliant career as soldier, statesman, author, and financier, met death on the public square in Ripley at the hands of a business rival, Richard Thurmond.  And a few years after the war, on the night of Septermber 27, 1868, General Hindman met a violent death.  He was shot through a open window as he sat by his fireside reading a newpaper.  It was believed he was slain by agents of the Carpetbag Government.

  Born at Knoxville, Tennessee, January 28, 1828, Thomas Hindman obtained his early education at Jacksonville, Alabama.  From Ripley he went to Lawrenceville Classical Institute, near Princeton, New Jersey, where he graduated with honors at 18.  At the close of the War with Mexico, he returned to Ripley and studied law for three years under Orlando Davis, one of the south’s noted lawyers, a leader in public affairs.  After being admitted to the bar, Hindman engaged in law practice, and in 1851 was elected to the Mississippi legislature, where  he bcame a leader in the Democratic party.  He was a friend of Jefferson Davis and as early as 1851 advocated the right of states to secede.

  When he was only 23 years old he met the learned United States Senator Foote in joint debate; and three years later, in response to a challenge from Govenor James L. Alcorn of the Whigs, said, “I will meet you anywhere and debate with you from Monday morning until Saturday night.”

  The late Dr. Charles E. Nash in his book of reminiscences of Generals Hindman and Cleburne, wrote that in 1856, the town of Helena, at that time with a population of 1500. was stricken by an outbreak of yellow fever.  As the news spread, citizens made haste to leave the stricken city.  One of the three physicians in town took the fever, and when the other two, Dr. Jacks and Dr. Grant called for volunteer nurses, only three responded:  Thomas C. Hindman, Patrick R. Cleburne and a young Methodist minister, the Reverend Mr. Rice.   These three spent their money, risked their lives and went about doing good, with no thought except relief of suffering and the care of their stricken neighbors.  “There were no battles in the war”, Dr Nash wrote, “in which the two prominent generals of Arkansas showed courage and self exposure than in  this.”

  Hindman rapidly became the leader of the Democratic Party in Eastern Arkansas.  He was to the Democrats, says one writer,”A beacon upon the mountain top, a light set on a hill.”  In the year 1858 Hindman was nominated for Congress and elected by an overwhelming majority.  He was twice elected to Congress, but refused to take his seat in the thirty-seventh Congress and entered the Confederate army.

   Commissioned a colonel at the outset of the war by his friend, President Jefferson Davis, with whom he and his father and brother served in the War with Mexico, Hindman raised and commanded the  Second Arkansas Regiment, which after the addition of cavalry and artillery, became known as “Hindman’s Legion”, an organization that was to bring fame to its officers and men on many a bloody battlefield.  On the eve of the Battle of Shiloh, General Johnston rode up to Hindman, who had already been promoted to Brigadier General, and said, “Nobly won on the field of Shiloh, Braxton Bragg.”

  Hindman’s brilliant friend from Helena pursued a career closely paralleled that of Hindman.  It was Pat Cleburne who boldly planned the capture of the United States Arsenal.  His daring and rugged fighting qualities won for him the title, “Stonewall of the West”, and his defense of Ringgold Gap brought him the thanks of the Confederate Congress.  Evidence of the romance and mysticism of the emerald Isle is found in the fact that he originated the “Order of the Southern Cross.”

  Whenever there was action Cleburne was at home, whether in defense of the under dog in a street fight, or at the head of a division of yelling, scraping rebels.  In the thick of things to the last, he fell at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864.

  In a letter to his mother after the fall of the Confederacy, General Hindman said that he had fought too long and too hard for the Confederacy “to remain under the flag of her conquerers.”  Like many other Southern leaders, he moved to Mexico City, taking his wife and their three children.  Hindman married Miss Mary Watkins Biscoe, daughter of Colonel Henry Lawson Biscoe of Arkansas and a niece of Dr. Robert A. Watkins, the first Secretary of State for Arkansas, and Judge George A. Watkins, who became a Chief Justice of the state in 1852.  Biscoe Hindman, retired insurance executive of Chicago is their son.

  General Hindman’s military fame had preceded him to Mexico City and he was offered a high command in the army.  He refused the offer, but consented to write two military volumes.  The money derived from this work enabled him to live until he could build up a law practice.

  He became attorney for the “American Colony of Yucatan”, and had completed the legal work necessary to the organization of the colony when the sudden fall of the emperor Maximilian caused the Southerners to abandon thier organization and return to the States.  Hindman came back to Helena, a city that had given seven Generals to the Confederate Army; Hindman, Cleburne, Dan C. Govan, Lucius E. Polk, James C. Tappan. Charles W. Adams, and Arch C. Dobbins.  It is this fact that gives the Helena Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy the name “The Seven Generals Chapter”.

  The Hindman home has changed little, except for the addition of weather boarding and paint, since Thomas C. Hindman and Patrick R. Cleburne looked out on hundreds of acres of Cotton.  It is built of logs, two enormous rooms on the ground floor, separated by a spacious hall, each large room flanked by a smaller room and each with a huge fireplace.  From the hall a stairway, its steps worn by footsteps for almost a century, leads to the second floor, where the plan of the ground floor is duplicated.  Recently an “L” has been added on the north of the house.

  The yard is enclosed by an iron fence and just outside is a sugar maple, planted 82 years ago by Mildred Hindman Doxey, the general’s sister.  Mrs. Doxie, who died in Arkansas a few years ago, had lived more years than the old house has stood.  She was the grandmother of Congressman Wall Doxey of Mississippi and Hindman Doxey, former Prosecuting Attorney of Marshall County, Mississippi.

  Letters from Mrs. Doxey to Mrs. J. A. Booker, herself a native of Arkansas, now living in the home, recall many interesting incidents connected with this historic house, and are indicative of her fine sensibilities and her regard for the traditions of her family and of the South.

  When the place came into possession of Judge Sam W. Pegram of Ripley many years ago, the house was weatherboarded and painted white, and became one of the most attractive homes of the countryside.  A little less than 25 years ago the plantation was bought by J. A. Booker.  Mr. Booker has added to his holdings until his plantation of more than 1500 acres includes the home of his father, the late Joe Booker, and the Doxey Farm, whence a young Doxey came courting to the home of Thomas Hindman many years ago.

  From his front door, Mr. Booker looks out over more than 800 acres, an outlook not unlike that of the day of Thomas Hindman, the elder.

                          Southern Sentinel, Ripley,  Mississippi

                                      June 2, 1932