Nancy
Nancy Elizabeth Hurst, my great-great grandmother, was born in Wythe County Virginia in 1797. In 1806 Her parents, Thomas Hurst and his wife Sylvia Breeding, brought their family to a section of Claiborne County, Tennessee, called Big Springs, later known as Springdale. They bought land on Tye’s Branch. Big Springs was the site of the Big Springs Primitive Baptist Church – the oldest house of worship in Tennessee – where Nancy’s father, her brother, and her nephew were all moderators for periods of time. Her parents are buried there, though the markers have eroded and become indecipherable.
Nancy was twenty in 1817 when she married John Day, a Springdale farmer. They had eight children over the next twenty years, ending with my great-grandmother, Elizabeth.
John Day was killed in in 1842, leaving Nancy to a long widowhood – she never remarried.
Nancy’s youngest son, John D. Day, married in 1855, and, as was customary for youngest sons in those days, he brought his wife, Martha Bartlett, to live in the family home with Nancy. Ten months later they presented Nancy with a new grandson, Ransom L. Day.
Nancy’s joy was probably short-lived. When Ransom was just a few months old, John and Martha, joined his two oldest sisters, Ollie Ward, and Eliza Hurst, and several others from their extended family of Hursts and Breedings, to look for good, cheap land and better opportunities in Webster County Missouri.
But this was not the worst of it for Nancy. In 1859, she received word that John and Martha had both died, perhaps on the same day, but, certainly within a short time of each other. Whatever the case, they left three year-old Ransom, an orphan.
Death came far too early to many people in those days. It was commonplace for siblings to rear nieces and nephews along with their own children. Since John’s two sisters were living near him, it seems one of them would have raised young Ransom. Perhaps it was because Nancy had bonded with Ransom in his early months, or perhaps it was because Ransom was all Nancy would ever have left of her son, John, that she, a 62-year-old, grief-stricken grandmother, did such an unbelievable thing …
Nancy walked to Missouri for Ransom.
And then she walked back.
With a four year-old.
Nancy and Ransom
Nancy’s journey to Missouri and back would have taken at least a year. With John and Martha dying in mid-June, Nancy would have left in July with plenty time to have reached Webster County before snowfall. She would have over-wintered with her daughters in Webster, and then started back to Tennessee in late spring after the thaw. The trip back with little Ransom would have taken longer, but the seasons were in their favor.
I reckon that Nancy and Ransom would have arrived back to Springdale by early fall of 1860, probably in time to welcome Nancy’s new granddaughter, Martha Jane Burdine, who was born in October. Elizabeth, had married Samuel Burdine from Russell County, Virginia. They set up housekeeping in Springdale on land Samuel’s mother had inherited from her father and then given to her sons.
During the years prior to and during Nancy’s walk, of course, tensions had been simmering throughout the country, erupting into a full boil with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Tennesseans were so evenly divided in their loyalties that theirs was the last state to declare for the Confederacy. But declare, it did. In 1863 when Nancy’s son-in-law, Samuel, received a conscription notice from the Confederate Army, he slipped away to Nashville to enlist in the Union Army instead.
Samuel never returned. He died of dysentery in a Union Hospital in Nashville in early 1864.
Later, with the Confederate Army headquartered near Tazewell, and Union sympathizers being treated with suspicion, Elizabeth Burdine began to feel uneasy. She took Martha Jane and fled to the relatively safer home of Samuel’s parents in Russell County, Virginia.
It was there in Russell County that Elizabeth met a neighbor of the Burdines, young Anderson Greene Payne. He was only seventeen, and was recovering from shotgun wounds to both knees that he had sustained in 1865 in the same incident in which his
father, Hiram Payne, had been killed. Despite being ten years her junior and crippled for life, Anderson married Elizabeth Day Burdine in 1866; thus, connecting our family, by blood, to the valiant Nancy Day.
Anderson and Elizabeth had two daughters together, Mollie and Maggie, before they packed them up along with half-sister, Martha Jane, and headed back to Springdale in 1869.
Nancy and Ransom were waiting for them there.
The 1870 Census reveals the Anderson Payne Household to be quite an assembly. Anderson and Elizabeth, their three girls, two of Anderson’s siblings, the mother-in-law (Nancy) and the nephew, Ransom L., who was fourteen by then. Ransom grew up helping with farm work and also with the small dry goods and livery business Anderson ran from a lean-to attached to the family home. It was young Ransom’s introduction into the business world.
At some point between 1870 and 1880, Ransom moved in with his aunt, Lucinda Hurst. This would have made a lot of sense, since the Payne family was growing by leaps and bounds and their house was probably bursting at the seams. Lucinda, a Civil War widow herself, had only two boys, and both were near Ransom in age. One of them was still living at home when the census was taken in 1880. Ransom was living there and listed with the job of cutting and hewing rafter logs.
Nancy Day remained with Anderson and Elizabeth, surrounded by grandchildren – a total of nine – the last six all arriving between 1870 and 1879. Nancy helped raise them all – Martha Jane, Mollie, Maggie, Henry, Eliza, Laura, Bob, Fate, and Byrd.
1880-1890 was the decade of the railroad. Trestles and tunnels were carved through the hills and hollows surrounding Lone Mountain, making way for the track that would connect Knoxville and Cumberland Gap. The building of the depot turned Lone Mountain into a bustling, growing place, and, for a time, the center of commerce for all of Claiborne County. Anderson moved his business and his family to Lone Mountain sometime between 1880 and 1893. And young Ransom Day opened a store of his own in Lone Mountain.
In 1883, at the age of 87, Nancy Day died. She had carried one grandchild across two states and then raised him. Then she helped raise nine more, including our grandfather, Byrd.
She is buried at the Big Springs church with her parents and her husband, John. Think of her when you pass by and be proud that you are as much a “Day” as you are a “Payne.”
Ransom
Ransom started his business during a time of tremendous growth in Lone Mountain, and ran it for a number of years.
Around 1890, Ransom married the beautiful Lydda Barnette. Ransom was 34, and Lydda was 20. In August 1891, Lydda gave birth to twin daughters, Lillie and Bessie.
But, Lillie died in July 1892, before reaching her first birthday. Ransom and Lydda buried her in the Payne Cemetery at Lone Mountain.
The next summer, Ransom wrote his last will and testament. It offers one of the only glimpses into the kind of man the little orphaned three-year-old turned out to be:
WILL OF R.L. DAY
I, R.L. Day of the state of Tennessee and Claiborne County being of Sound and disposing mind and memory though of feeble health and being desirous of Settling my worldly affairs while I have Strength and capacity So to do, declare and direct to following disposition of my property after my death.
First, I direct that all just debts that may exist against me at my decease be settled.
Second, I direct that the mercantile business in which I am now engaged at Lone Mountain be conducted by the executor herein after appointed till such time as he may in his discretion make a profitable disposition of same and to enable said executor to so direct the business, I direct that he have full power and authority to collect all debts of every description due me and to enable said executor to so conduct the business I direct that he have full power and authority to collect all notes and accounts and debts of every description due me and that he have authority to buy and add to the stock of goods as it may become necessary to conduct it as a mercantile business.
Third, I direct that my executor herein after appointed have full authority to invest all my property after paying all my just debts, and getting to-gether my personal estate in such away as in his judgement may be profitable to my wife and child but I desire that my said wife and child be not deprived of a home and I therefore direct that my reality be not sold unless it be to invest in other reality.
Fourth, I direct that after all my just debts are paid and such investments are made as in the discretion of the executor herein after named should be to the interest of my wife and child, take of my estate in such proportions as the law would give them.
Fifth, I hereby appoint Henry Evans sole executor to execute this instrument and direct that he qualify without giving bond.
In witness where of I here unto set my hand this 10th day of June 1893.
R.L. Day
Ransom died the day after writing his will, and was buried next to Lillie.
I know I have walked past them hundreds of times – just anonymous stones along the way to the ones I was seeking.
Now that I know them, I will stop and say hello.
Lydda and Bessie
Henry Evans, appointed by Ransom to be his executor, was directed to take over every aspect of the business in protection of Lydda’s and Bessie’s interests. He took his role very seriously – he married Lydda within the year.
The following year, 1894, Henry and Lydda’s daughter, Nelle, was born. Lydda died in 1896 when Nelle was two.
Henry’s second wife was Mattie Hodges, first cousin of my grandmother, A Payne.
Bessie
Henry Evans kept his daughter, Nelle, with him, but not his step-daughter, Bessie Day. He was, after all, a widower for several years before he remarried – perhaps he could not cope with two small girls on his own.
Whatever the reason, in 1897, Anderson Payne assumed guardianship of Bessie. She lived with Anderson and Elizabeth and their son, Henry (Midler), until she married Charley Hill in 1903.
Bessie had one son and lived to be 72. She is buried in Middlesboro.
Sources and Documentation
You might wonder, at this point, how I found this story, and how I could possibly know it is true. It is one thing to find a good story, but it is quite another to prove it. The task for the genealogist/historian, is to do just that – discover stories and try to prove them. Sometimes there is no documentation. Sometimes you are working along excitedly, and find a piece of information that contradicts everything. In this case, however, all the disparate pieces of solid information lined up perfectly.
How I discovered Nancy’s story
I already had most of the records I shared in this story for years, in my own files and in my “Lone Mountain Research Tree” on Ancestry.com. I research and file things away, and certain facts just float around in my brain. But I do not always connect pieces together until I find something completely new that causes an AHA! moment. That is how I felt when I read the article at right. It is not only the overarching proof of the story, but it was the AHA! that got me researching it in the first place.
I was going through my scans from the 1935 Claiborne Progress last week, when I came upon this article. It caught my eye because of the two familiar names: R.W. Payne, after all, is my “Uncle Bob,” the brother of my grandfather, Byrd Payne. Bee Jennings is “Uncle Bee” the brother of my grandmother, A Jennings Payne. They were both favorites of my father, Roger Payne.
Bob and Bee were close friends and partners-in-adventure throughout their lives. It was no surprise to see them hanging out together shooting the breeze with a Progress columnist.
I loved that.
But, while the woman in Uncle Bee’s story was anonymous, I knew any grandmother of Uncle Bob (R.W.) is a great-great grandmother to me; so, I was “off to the races” the minute I read it!
Documentation
Click on the first image to start a slideshow:
Courtesy of Joe Payne
