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Autobiography of Rev. S.C. Ray

Some Thoughts on the Bible as the Word of God by Reverend S. C. Ray, Temple Press

Born on July 15th, 1888. My parents were William Ephraim Ray and Sara Melissa (Carr) Ray. My father was born on December 18th, 1858 and my mother was born on December 9th, 1854. They were married in 1881. My mother’s brother, Wesley Carr and his wife, Josie, had seven children: Buna, Houston, R.Z., J.C., Rex, Dewey, and Irvin. They all moved to Texas in 1906 and raised their family around the Girard, Texas area. My mother’s youngest sister, Minnie and her husband, Monroe Brown, had six girls; Gladys, Mittice, Earl, Clara, Inola, and Evie. They moved to Oklahoma in 1906 around Rocky, Oklahoma. The Walter P. Truitt family of eight children grew up nearby us and were close friends. Their children were; Bud, Della, Grover, Otis, Shellie, Dewey, Gay and a younger sister. Della married Ross Hood and remained in Clay County. The rest of the family moved to Oklahoma in 1906 along with the Brown family, in and around Rocky, Oklahoma. My wife’s mother’s brother, John England and his wife married in Clay County but moved to Van Alstine, Texas in the early 1900’s and raised six boys and seven girls.

My oldest brother, Levie, was born March 12th, 1882 and my only sister, Roxie was born on December 13th, 1883, and my baby brother, William Ephraim Jr. was born on November 27th, 1891. My father died on the same day of a fever (the doctor gave him arsenic powder instead of aspirin powder). His death was unexpected. He was a strong man. My mother was a widow until August 1940, for 49 years. My sister also died about 1887. I was born on my father’s one hundred twenty acre farm, one mile south of Lystra Baptist Church, four miles southeast of Ashland, Alabama. My mother was unable to carry on here without a father and she took us three boys to live on her father’s section of land about five miles south, where I lived until December 3rd, 1908. Mother tells me that when I was eight months old I was pushing a chair, strong and very active. I took Roseola, she thought it was, and I was two years old when I was able to push that chair again. It could have been Scarlet Fever, for I was left with constant ear aches, and a large growth in my right ear that would sometimes discharge. I also had a case of Catarrh in the head and throat, with constant drainage that has followed me. I had an adenoid removed in 1907 that stopped the earache and the growth and discharge in the right ear, but gave me no hearing in my right ear.

In 1874, when my mother was twenty years old, drove one of nine ox wagons from Millerville, Alabama in Clay County, to the state of Arkansas. She was nine weeks on the road. Mother was a lovely, strong woman of good courage and she put that hoe handle in those lovely hands and she did more than her part, and we had a good living. Levie soon learned to plow and keep the middles plowed while my uncles plowed the row and mother did the hoeing, worked outside in the fields, gathered wood for the fireplace and cook stove, looked after the chickens, cows, ducks, and geese ad at night she carded the wool into rolls and then she spun them into thread. She took this thread into the big cellar and in a large loom she would weave it into cloth and make our clothes. After a while, Levie could lay off the rows to plant corn and would cry because he would get them crooked. My mother would tell him that more corn will grow in a crooked row than in a straight one. Tragedy struck again in the summer of 1899, when Levie died of a fever caused from a fall. He was sixteen and the man of the house and all of our joy and crown. I was eleven and William was eight.

Life has its sorrows as well as its joys, and that wonderful mother of mine did well to mourn the loss of my father, my sister, and now that dear brother that was our stay and joy both day and night. I and my brother also cried with broken hearts. Weeping was for a night but joy came in the morning when my mother took a renewed hold on things and kept on going. I was left with a besetting handicap and was not strong like Levie, but I was ‘gritty’ and did what I could. Mother was good and kind to us and she was not afraid to live with us alone in a house to ourselves. She was not afraid at nights, nor when the storms would come. She had a great faith in God and kept me and William not afraid, and we all got along well. Praise God! In the fall of 1901, when I was thirteen, Uncle Jim Carr and I took two bales of cotton to Alex City to sell, about thirty miles away. We took plenty of food in our lunch boxes and quilts and cushions for our pallets at night. The cotton was weighed and sampled at the warehouse, one bale was five-hundred and thirty-two pounds and the other was four-hundred and eighty-five pounds. We put up at the wagon yard overnight and got water from a well in the yard. We went to three or four cotton buyers and sold to the highest bidder, Mr. W.H. Carlisle, at seven and one-half cents per pound. He gave us a sales bill with the total weight of nine-hundred and seventeen pounds, and paid us off. At the wagon yard I told Uncle Jim that I thought it was One thousand and seventeen pounds. He said Mr. Carlisle knew more than we did, but as we got started the next morning I got him to take the bill back and see. The man added the one hundred pounds to the bill and gave me seven dollars and fifty cents cash. When I climbed back upon the wagon, I felt as good as Lindbergh did in France in 1927. 1 had something for that mother of mine when I got home and she loved me to death. I made a hit with Uncle Jim too.

I was saved and joined the church at Sardis in 1902, when I was fourteen. J.W. Dean baptized me there. I told the church that the Lord had saved me and I wanted to see others saved. That desire has been with me all of these eighty-seven years, and I have seen many saved. Now, prepare to shed a tear. Another tragedy occurred to this widow. In the summer of 1905, when I was seventeen, my left side became infected with Pleurisy that put me down to near death, in bed for five weeks. One man, Joe H. Mattox, told my mother “I will be there at one o ’clock in the night when you need me the most, for that is the dead hour of the night when all men sleep. ” Joe Mattox came a mile across the bottom land and was there. Our local M.D. nearby came and gave dope (opium) that gave relief. Then he brought his son who had just graduated from college, and drew out of my side, a fluid, with a hollow needle. This helped but the pus got too thick for the needle, so they gave me anesthesia and cut between the ribs to let it out. They came every day and the pus got too thick for the space and it was necessary to cut out a piece of a rib. This was serious now. The whole community came to our rescue. No nurse. No hospital. Dr. Owens and his son said they would try to cut the rib. One had to give the ether and the young doctor did the surgery. It was his first. Lots of folks were there but no one would agree to help the doctor. Renfro Runyan, age nineteen, came up and said he would help the doctor. The doctor told Renfro, “now when I cut this rib, that stuff will fly in our faces, but don’t you turn loose. ” He cut the one and one half inches out and that stuff did fly. They said the buzzards came to look things over and the doctor told my mother, “He can’t live. ” Mother said, “He will live, God will not do me that way three times hard running,” as she put it. My father, my sister, and my brother, and now me. I lived, for she got in touch by faith with Him who is life. In Him, we all live and move and have our being.

This took about five weeks. The two doctors drove two horses and we fed both of those big horses and the two doctors each day and the bill was one hundred dollars. I don’t remember that anybody gave my mother a dollar; but we paid it all and by the grace of God and good help (except money) of our neighbors. We all three took courage and just kept on trying to do the best we could with what we had, and it is a joy to say that we three, Mother, Me at seventeen, and William, fourteen, kept on working on that farm and I never was hungry in my life. I always had plenty to eat, to keep from being hungry. We bought one hundred acres, one and a half miles north of Lystra Church and moved on it December 3rd, 1908. Grandfather and Grandmother Carr moved there with us. I moved my membership from Sardis to Lystra in July of 1909. 1 entered the first session of the Clay County

High School at Ashland when it opened in the fall of 1909. 1 obtained a license to teach school in the public schools of Alabama in May 1910. 1 taught summer school for six weeks, one teacher, at Lystra in 1911. We kept on farming all of the time. I taught at a two-teacher school in Union Grove. Miss Zella Carpenter was the Assistant, just north and near us, the winter of 1910 and the summer of 1911. 1 made a lot of friends at teaching and I was very happy. I taught at a one- teacher school at Nappier School just south of Ashland in the Fall and Winter of 1911, and the Summer of 1912. 1 walked four miles to this school twice a day and we kept on farming. I made a lot of friends here. Brother William and I got busy and cut logs on the farm and hauled them to a small sawmill nearby to make lumber to build a nice house and bam. We had one tenant and we had a lot of lumber on hand in 1912 and men came by and we all put up a large log barn in one day, with dinner on the ground.

Life took a turn with me now, for I married Ethyl Runyan on December 29th, 1912. F.J. Ingram was pastor and officiated. He was also the Probate Judge. I skipped teaching. My brother William married Maggie Stewart in September of 1913 and we all farmed together in 1914 when I bought his part of the farm and he moved away. They had Eva Lanette on November 6th, 1914, L.M. on April 29th, 1916, Louise in October 1919, and twins: Flora and Dora on December 29 th, 1921. Grandpa and Grandma (she was blind for fifteen years) moved to Uncle John’s at Millerville, Alabama. I had an egg-sized knot removed from my left leg just above the knee on the outside, by Dr. Hudson at Lineville, in the summer of 1914. He and Dr. Hill did the job at our home. The total cost was fifty dollars. We went for Dr. Hudson in a buggy and he looked after me, no charge. The job was perfect and meant a whole lot to me in later life. I also had a light spell of fever that summer with no bad aftereffects. My Grandpa Prosser Wesley Carr was born in 1826 and died in 1915 at eighty-nine years and Grandma Carr in 1920. She was eighty-eight and had been totally blind for fifteen years. I was the clerk and the treasurer of Lystra Church in 1914. That year we all built a new church building forty by sixty feet with a sixteen-foot wall all out of Heart Pine and Oak lumber of the best kind. That building is still standing to this day. About six hundred dollars in cash passed through my hands and good carpenters were members, and all the labor was free. This was a glorious time. The sweetest fellowship known to mankind. All day working on many days. Fruits of all kinds, watermelons, dinner on the ground and a fine church going up and good blessings all around. Don’t you wish you could have been there? I was.

I taught at a one teacher school at Bellview, two and a half miles north of Lineville, in the winter of 1914 and the summer of 1915. We lived in a small house nearby for school work and went to the farm in April 1915 for a crop, and back in the summer for school. We made a fine lot of good friends there. Ethyl obtained a license to teach and she and I taught at Mellow Valley School in the winter of 1915 and the summer of 1916. Our son and only child, Claxton, was born on February 14th, 1916. He weighed fourteen pounds. A special gift from God sent down. We rejoiced greatly and the whole community with us. All was heavenly and everybody was happy. And it is a pity to have to add that a sadness came our way in the form of a hurtful case of arthritis in my joints during this winter of school. The weather was the coldest I ever saw, and the doctor charged us a big price, ten dollars, but since we were both teaching, we got up the ten dollars. Now, after sixty years, I might sometimes wish we had just given him the boy for the ten dollar bill! As much trouble as he is having to look after me, it could be that Claxton and family might be justified in thinking things might have been better, if we had. After all, it is now a sweet memory of those days at Mellow Valley. The many precious and lasting friends we had there. I hereby send my warm personal greetings to everybody down there. My last school: My wife and I taught our last school at Union Grove, near by in the winter of 1916, and the summer of 1917. We were both happy in the work but I felt I was not well enough to do the job as well as it should have been done. And we got busy trying to cure the arthritis. The local M.D.’s all around had no help. They suggested that I take hot baths at Hot Springs, Arkansas. I did that for six weeks in October and November 1916. One hundred and seventy-five dollars and no help for the arthritis, but I was advised to pull my teeth, even the sound ones, and tonsils. I did. No help. We were all lonesome now. We yoked up with Jesus and took new courage and asked Him to guide us each day. We all pulled together and worked the best we could at such as we were led to do, and were able to rest at night. We read the bible and prayed daily and attended church regularly.

The Ashland Farm Loan Association elected me as Secretary-Treasurer and farmers came to me to borrow from the Federal Land Bank of New Orleans, Louisiana. Each one must carry insurance on his buildings, and I was appointed Agent and wrote policies. We had one tenant and we all fanned and made our living. I bought R.R. crossties for three months, January, February, and March of 1920. I had a man at Pyriton, one at Cragford, and one at Malone; and I bought myself at Lineville and kept track of the others. We all covered the places up with ties, but we quit it and I kept on with the farming. We pumped water with a hydraulic ram from a spring nine hundred yards away, into an overhead tank of some three thousand gallons, in twenty-four hours. We had running water, bathroom, hot and cold water. We caught the overflow into a large tank for the barn and garden. This was just fine. I had a natural reservoir dug on a hill that I estimated held one-quarter million gallons. Pumped water from a large branch with a hydraulic ram. Used that water for irrigation that counted up well.

The most outstanding attraction in Clay County today, is the chicken business. Millions of chickens and eggs, and long chicken houses that dim eyes are not able to see the other end. This has not been long true, ft had a beginning and that is where I come in. In or about 1921, I took one hundred, day-old chicks to the Clay County Fair and put them under an oil burning brooder and called attention to the advantage of using chickens on the farm to supplement the ‘all cotton’ cash crop. This was positively something new, but it did gradually get attention. We were now led to go into the poultry business, and named it Goodwill Poultry Farm and Hatchery. We bought houses now idle at the graphite mines in Clay County and used our neighbors in their spare time and built the hatchery and chicken houses and an extra tenant house on the farm, three and one-half miles southeast of Ashland, Alabama. We would have two or three hands full-time and would use the neighbors spare time all along at one dollar per day, plus the noonday meal. Henry Ford made world news when he announced five dollars per day and no dinner, somewhere along later.

The Alabama Power Company would keep promising to bring electricity to us, three and a half miles out, but never did. We bought is a private plant of our own, a Delco Electric System, and had electricity in our home, hatchery, and in the chicken house. We had as many as forty thousand eggs hatching at a time. This became the most attractive place in Clay County. This was really fun and a lot of people came to visit us. People brought me eggs for custom hatching from as far away as Talladega. This is how the present day chicken business got its start. I was ordained a Baptist Minister at Lystra in March 1924. 1 was called to pastor at Pleasant Hill, in Chambers County, about thirty miles away in April 1924. 1 had swapped a pair of mules for a Model T Ford. There were no roads yet, for they were not needed until we got cars. I could make it in the car most of the time, but sometimes would go on the train to Roanoke and they had two or three Fords and would transport me. We had a wonderful time there. All Baptist churches in those days called pastors from October to October. One year at a time. They called me again in October of 1924, for one year. Also, did Bowden Grove and Ophilia. I did my first baptizing at Pleasant Hill, four fine young men, a time never to forget.

In October 1925, more churches called me than I could fill, one fourth time, or one Sunday per month. I hated to leave Pleasant Hill, my first love, but it was so far off and others were calling me closer so they let me off. Blessings on them. I was highly honored beyond my dues and it all humbled me. In 1927 at a Revival at Lystra, Sam Ingram and I baptized sixteen on the Friday morning and sixteen more the next morning. I was clerk of the Carey Association of Churches from 1936 to 1951. In 1928, 1 went to Dr. Boss at Gadsden, Alabama for treatment for three days. No help. Also I went to Dr. Drake, a head specialist in Birmingham, for an operation on the sinus for some ten days all in his office. No hospital, no boarding house and I was alone. Kind of lonesome. In 1928 we built a nice fish pond, and the only one around for miles and it was a lot of fun for the boys and men. No mixed bathing, nor use on Sunday. Claxton was twelve years old and I had a young man (17) who lived on the farm, Mr. Johnson, to walk with him and keep him company to school and back, each day. [Mr. johnson said he had never met such a smart young man and said he would name his son after him. There are now three generatins of Claxton Ray Johnson's in Spokane Washington.][1] No charge for bathing. I am glad I built it. [editors note: in 2005 the author was contacted by the granddaughter and related the story that her grandfather told Claxton Ray that when he had a son, he was going to name him after Claxton Ray. There are now three generations of Claxton Ray Johnson living in Washington State. Lt. Colonel Claxton Ray Johnson 1, passed away in 2012.]

A few of us neighbors built a private telephone line and could talk to each other and ‘ring central’ for a fee. It was wonderful. We got one of the first radios and had to use earphones. I paid eighty-four dollars for the first loud speaker in 1928. We had paid four hundred and fifty dollars for the plant and one hundred and sixty dollars for a set of new batteries. A lot of people could listen to the radio now! We were now deep in the Depression with all the whole world. This poor boy cried and the Lord heard me and gave me that grace that is sufficient and we kept all things going right on. I am fortunate in that I can now say that we had no unpaid bills, and we paid every day of work as we kept on the farm, poultry and a hatchery, and I was also a pastor at four churches. To top it all off, we had a fire in 1932 in the hatchery and the broiler house, a loss of four thousand dollars. No insurance. We had some loss in sales, but we kept on rebuilding and putting in more incubators, a total of forty thousand egg capacity. I operated the business until 1951, when Uncle Sam called my son, Claxton, back into service. We had to sell all of our five-hundred acres of farmland, farm machinery, implements, etc. to the highest bidder and it was a great loss. Others have taken up from here and pushed the chicken business to the top. I was there when it was born and in its infancy.

The farmers had a hard time of it and the Federal Land Bank of New Orleans appointed me as their Field Representative to help the borrowers of Clay County and Talladega County. This was an honor that carried a lot of responsibility with it, and added to my already busy life, I took it. The bank furnished a new Chevrolet and the Land Bank paid the expenses to operate it. I remained at home and went to and fro to Talladega, and all over both counties. I was the only preacher among one hundred men on the job for the Bank of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. I made preaching the Gospel my main business, but worked at other things to pay expenses. Our son graduated from Clay County High School in 1933 and we went to the World’s Fair at Chicago in September. We entered him in Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. He later worked with construction concerns in Macon, Columbus, Georgia and Tarrant City, and Birmingham, Alabama. He then went into service as an officer in the Corps of Engineers in 1942. He served in Europe and Philippines. Back home in 1945 and married in 1946 to Ola Gay Cotney of Lineville, Alabama. The Reserves got him again in Korea in 1952 and then on to Newfoundland, Canada. He made us proud of his record and promotion to Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The U.S. Congress passed the REA Act that built power and telephone lines in the rural parts of America. In 1937, Mai Jenkins and I collected names and users in Clay County with a five-dollar deposit and a line was built from LaFayette, Alabama in 1939. This was better than our private plant and cheaper. The REA was a real good help as had been the R.F.D. for the mail. I saw the first trip on Route 4, from Ashland in 1902 by (mailman) Punk Blackstock, in a buggy. My mother died in August of 1940. She had meant everything to me and had been a fond nurse and dear companion to our son for twenty-four years. All of his life up to that time. Ethyl, I and her mother went on a train to the Southern Baptist Convention at Oklahoma City in May of 1949. My father-in-law, Lonza Winford Runyan died on December 12th, 1948. 1 was his pastor from 1927 to 1935. In 1945 at Mt. Moriah I baptized eighteen in a farm pond with two sets of twin girls. My arthritis became active again in August 1950. Joints swelled, turned red and gave me a fever. This slowed me down and I had a hard time keeping things going. I turned to the doctors all around and no help. I had a vision: Jesus Christ was not crucified in a rocking chair, eating ice cream and cake. Oh no, but on the cross, wearing a crown - not of glory - but a crown of thorns.

If it was necessary for Jesus to thus suffer in order to become the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, it was necessary for me, a sinner, to also suffer. Therefore, by the grace of God, I would suffer like a man. The Lord led me and my wife to Dr. W.S. Fay, 500 North Mills St., Orlando, Florida, on February 24th, 1951, on crutches, almost dead. We stayed with him for thirty days and on March 24th, 1951, he let us go back home the five hundred and twenty- five miles, and off my crutches and happy. “How much, doctor, do we owe you?” “Nothing.” Now what about that. In addition to saving my life, he now had no price tag. This staggered me and my wife. I had committed myself fully into the hands of the other half-dozen doctors and this was like Jesus who never made a charge. Dr. Way said he had respect for my ministry. We thanked him and prayed God’s blessings upon him.

Claxton had to make a forced sale (at a loss) of about five-hundred and ninety acres of land and a lot of machinery, equipment, cattle, etc. This was on Lots #1, 9-14 of the Carter Subdivision. The surveyor of the land was Vernon B. Crocker of Tuscumba in Colbert County. He bought a forty-eight-acre farm lot facing on Monquette Ave. and the S.E. side of Sanford, Florida. The wife and I moved in it on April 15, 1951, to be near Dr. Way and to gain strength. We lived there until September, 1959. We had a good upstairs and downstairs. We lived downstairs and rented out the upper to good tenants, good company, and rent for food. Good friends all around and I did get stronger up to two hundred pounds. I had come down to one- forty-five and was soon able to work and travel. We had a seven-acre orange grove, bearing as many as six thousand bushels a season. Ethyl and I tended this grove and had a garden; many of our friends came to see us and for Dr. Way to treat them with good results and we were happy.

We bought a choice lot on the corner of Talladega Street and Knowles Ave. in Lineville, Alabama and moved there in November 1959. The sale documents read 31 st December 1960 from the previous owners; Dr. V.W. Hogan and his wife, Epsie. It was right next door from Otis and Ola Cotney, Claxton’s in-laws. It was surrounded by Pecan trees. I pastored churches until 1969 when I was eighty years. In 1955, 1957 and 1962 we flew to Stephenville, Newfoundland to visit our son, Claxton and his family on Ernest Harmon Air Force Base. We celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary on December 29th, 1962 and stayed for thirty days in the dead of winter and had a perfect time of joy. Claxton and family (wife Ola Gay, sons’ Wayne, Cris and daughter Biki) moved from Ernest Harmon Air Force Base to Woodstock, Ontario, Canada where he opened up a flower shop and garden center and Ola Gay taught high school. Ethyl had a detached retina in one eye in 1964. 1 was able to take her to Dr. Smith in Gadsden, Alabama for a successful operation. I looked after her for eight days in the hospital. In 1968, Dr. Smith took cataracts off both eyes successfully.

Her niece, Garnet and Lowell Ogletree, took us into their home and it was a godsend to us both. We buried Ethyl’s mother the next day after Mother’s Day in 1970, at the age of ninety-five. In 1970, my arthritis began to act up and I took Ethyl and we drove the five hundred and twenty- five miles to see Dr. Way again and he treated me generally and gave me injection in both knees, hips and shoulders, for two weeks. This took the swelling out with no fever. I feel that he had caused me to live again as he did in 1951. Due to my infirmities at the age of eighty-two, we gave up housekeeping and sold our lot and house and went into a housing project in Ashland in June 1971. Ethyl had another operation and I was not able to take care of her. On May 3rd, 1972 I flew to Woodstock, Ontario, to live with Claxton and his family at 158 Ingersoll Road and Ethyl flew from Birmingham on May 16th, 1972. We lived in an adjoining house trailer, brought from Stephenville, Newfoundland by train, until August 6th, 1973, when Ethyl had a heart attack and died in the Woodstock General Hospital. Ethyl’s body was flown to Lineville, Alabama for burial. Claxton and his daughter, Biki, took me in a car the thousand miles home. The funeral was at Lystra. She was eighty-three. After a short rest back in Woodstock, Ontario I was able to come back for a last farewell visit here among these people. Claxton took me to Detroit on September 14th, 1973 and rolled me in a wheel chair to the plane. Pete Gaither met me in Birmingham, Alabama and took me to Ashland to his home on the Friday night. He and his wife Gertrude, were very nice to me.

Elmon Mattox came up there on Sunday morning early and took me to Mt. Olive to preach where I had been twice pastor, from 1927, for fifteen years. A fine fall day, a large crowd, and we all sat together in a lovely place. Doc Burdette was the pastor, his second call. He had entered the ministry when I was at Bowden Grove. I sat in a chair to preach, my first time, and it was ‘me’, oh Lord, standing in need of prayer, and these dear saints of God did pray for me. They put my chair in the altar and gave me a warm and affectionate farewell that was food for the soul. And we did not expect to see the faces again in this world but shared the mutual hope of seeing each other on the streets of gold and wear the golden slippers up there with my Ethyl and all the redeemed.

Charles Perry took me to see Grandma Julie Forbus, ninety-seven, at her son Garret’s nearby and a lot of folks came there to see me. Elmon took me for my last ride over those familiar roads to his home at Gibsonville and Sardis Church, where I was baptized in 1902. Brenton Mann and his wife came to see me there. They were so nice to me. On Monday morning Elmon took me to see my first cousin, General Lee Duncan, at Alex City. General Lee took me to see Winford Walker, Rayford Harrington, Perino Jordon, and Mary Lou Duncan, widow of Ewell Duncan.

Tuesday morning General Lee took me to see Horse Shoe Bend, a National. We crossed the Tallapoosa River, on by Camp Hill to Mt. Zion in Chambers County where I was a pastor in the late 1940’s. General Lee left me at the lovely home of Joe and Christine Moss and their daughter Dinah Moss (Estes), who would later become the first deaf juror in the State of Alabama. They called several others and met me at the new church at night for a short service together. We had a short but sweet farewell. Wednesday morning Joe and Christine Moss took me to see Brother Tom Medders, then on across the Tallapoosa River on a ferry. I remembered baptizing four just above this ferry from Mt. Springs Church in 1950. We stopped in with the Jim Sim’s for a few minutes near Mt. Springs, where I had been a pastor. We stopped at Davidson to see O.L. Dunn Jr. and found him in a wheelchair. He had a stroke a few months ago. He and his wife had visited us in Canada. Joe and Christine left me at the B.B. Caldwell’s at Corinth and how nice they had been to me. The B.B. Caldwells proved to be a now much needed help to me. Dinner with them and Reverend Zenus Windsor showed up and said he would come for me to go with him next Wednesday night and preach at his church at Rocky Creek, the Lord willing. I was glad to agree. B.B. Caldwell took me to Levis Walker’s and blessings on him. Levis took me to Bill McKinney’s for Wednesday night and then Bill took me to R.C. Miller’s at Bellview.

Appendix B:


Clay County (Alabama) High School Graduates 1933 List compiled in 1977 CCHS Reunion Committee

Max Alexander, Riley Bonner, Robert Haynes, Warren Horne, Fred Hunt, Grover Johnson, Esrom Kelly, Johnnie Langley, Russell Moon (m. Tenza Belle Doggett), Lowell Ogletree (m. Garnet Gaither), Mallory Ramsey, Claxton Ray (m. Gay Cotney), Hugh Rozelle, Bunna Thomaston, Ed Weaver (Deceased), J.D. Williams (De), Evelyn Alford (m. Ralph Maril), Louise Allen (De) (m. Arthur Horn De), Inez Blankenship, Elaine Crompton, Ruth Dison (m. W. Clifton Rowe), Tenza Belle Doggett (m. Russell Moon), Maurine Griffin (m. James Peak), Elva Hornsby, Martha Hooter, Winelle Ingram (m. W. Rilet), Annnie Lou King, Virginia Kirk, Lorene Mayo (De), Ruth Morrison, Lillie McKinney (m. Howard Hickman), Beatrice Smith (m. James Alen Fain), Mattie Lou Tomlin (m. Joe Leigat), Edna Thompson (m. Leon Barker), Mattie Ree Upchurch, Addie Jo young (m. M.Willis).

References:

Lineville:

1. Wikipedia.org Lineville, Alabama & Ashland, Alabama

2. Thar's Gold in Them Thar Clay County Hills by Don C. East PDF file

3. Some Thoughts on the Bible as the Word of God by Reverend S. C. Ray, Temple Press, MO, (no ISBN) 1976

4. & 5. Thar's Gold in Them Thar Clay County Hills by Don C. East PDF file

6. Lineville College brochure 1896

7. Small Town Historic Markers. Alabama Tourism, 2010.

Ashland & Clay County:

1 . A Sketch of Clay County - the Land and its People by Don C. East

2. A Brief History of Clay County, Alabama by Don C. East PDF file

3. Wikipedia.org Ashland, Alabama

4. Some Thoughts on the Bible as the Word of God by Reverend S. C. Ray,

Temple Press, MO, (no ISBN) 1976. Interviews with the Ray family

5. A Brief History of Clay County, Alabama by Don C. East PDF file


               

  1. Oral history by Anita Johnson, his granddaughter. 2005
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