The Peavine Perspective: Family Matter

By C. Livingston Hampton

This book attempts to recall and preserve the linkage and relationships of a person to his or her parents by recalling their influence and example in specific events where positive and meaningful outcomes were realized after the fact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665574877

C. Livingston Hampton

The Author reveals that he believes family should be appreciated, cherished and valued above all other relationships except one’s relationship to God, but he believes even that is the sources and origin of family. The Author earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia and a Master’s degree from Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina all of which placed highest value on the meaning, purpose and the pursuit of life in the family.

Book preview

THE

Peavine

Perspective

FAMILY MATTER

C. LIVINGSTON HAMPTON

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AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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© 2022 C. Livingston Hampton. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/16/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7488-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7487-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022920805

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Hindsight

Preface

The Peavine Perspective

Who Is This Boy?

Frank Madison Hampton

The Country

Taming the Wild

Christianizing the Heathen

Falling Without Grace

Homespun Fun

The Legal Limit

Ole Belle’s First Flying Lesson...Mine, Too

Look at the Birdie!

Hard Work

The Flailing

Merry Christmas

Fruit of the Vine

Dad’s Nonimaginary Friend

Our Roots

The Big Cat

Taking Time

Living Dangerously

Lay That Pistol Down

She’s Down and Out

Trap Line Adventures

The Big Chill

Family Records

College and Career Days

The Big Change

Barrett Hill

The Real Truth

Bethany Baptist Church, Hartwell, Georgia

First Baptist Church, Union Point, Georgia

Woodlawn Baptist Church, Rome, Georgia

Pleasant Valley North Baptist Church, Rome, Georgia

My Grandfather

My Great-Grandfather

Children of Morgan and Margaret G. Hampton

Children of William D. Hampton and Nancy Hampton

Sons of the American Revolution

A Brief Word Portrait of my Family

Dr, Frank Livingston Hampton

Frank Bentley Hampton

Lauren Elizabeth Hampton

Johnna Marie Hampton

Cleo Sealle Walker

Jace Harrison Walker

Conclusions

William Dennis Hampton 1759-1826

Pension Application

Anecdotes of the American Revolution

A Tribute to William Dennis and Nancy Hampton

The Fightingtown Hoedown

The Longbeards Of Long Creek

Ca-NINE Rolly Coaster Ride

My Chicken House Den

Down Under Water World

Fish Angel

The Big Stink

A Tragic Ending

Hindsight

Fortunately, I was able to enjoy the first eighteen years of my life with my Dad before his death in 1954.

Unfortunately, it was during a time when I did not have the judgement to pay attention to how blessed I was to have my parents and to inquire about family matters – things of importance, like family history and genealogy.

Maybe in writing what little I know and experience and what I am able to put together about my Dad will benefit or motivate you in learning what you can while you can about the important people close and dear to you and their significant journey as it relates to you.

You may think it strange that I would write about a man who was neither famous nor wealthy nor powerful nor who accomplished some great feat nor invented some world changing gadget. However, he discovered how to love and care for his large family and provide the nurturing example of how to love and respect your neighbor, your creator, hard work, your Country, and yourself. He shaped my world!

In the passing of time one comes to realize that hardly anything is more important than family.

A few are wise enough to attend to the matter of family genealogy on their own and early on, but some neglect to gather family history until it is almost too late and some, like me, are so occupied with the present that only a narrow window remains open for research.

Unfortunately, some people awake to the realization that almost all personal human resources are gone, resulting in the loss of vital, precious and genuine evidence of generational connections.

Preface

The Peavine Perspective

Legend has it that the Peavine Community – a large one at that – the church, the ridge, the road, and the valley, all owe their name to a zig-zagging, little creek named Peavine. The legend originated with the Cherokee Indians, who occupied this territory before it was settled by immigrants from Europe. The name Peavine was ascribed to this stream because in the spring the creek banks abounded with flowering wild peas.

Within this region of Peavine, my early and teenage years unfolded, although I was born in Hamilton County, Tennessee, in Ridgedale area of Chattanooga. I was born in Erlanger Hospital and delivered by a Dr. Buttram on January 16, 1934. I was the only one of my family to be born in a hospital. You might say that I was born again and blossomed on the Peavine.

Two important incidences motivated me to write this information about my family and myself:

1. Most of the members of my family are dead, including my parents, making early records difficult to reassemble, but I accept the challenge to preserve all family history that I can.

2. If my grandchildren and generations to come are like me, they will want to know what life was like for the family in the last three quarters of the Twentieth Century. My early years were woven around Peavine Creek, Peavine Ridge, and Peavine Church and the people who lived there. These places continue to have a positive influence on my life and in my memory.

This book is not a genealogy of the Hamptons. Anyone interested in that aspect is referred to another book, The Frank Madison Hamptons. This book does have some chronology, genealogy, biography, and autobiography.

I thank you for your interest in reading about a country boy who has remained close to his roots and in love with life especially his Dad.

The Hampton name is English in origin. The name is derived from a combination of the words ham and tun. Ham means homestead and tun means settlement; hence, a settlement of homesteads. The Old English words heah and tun, meaning high and settlement, are also sources of the Hampton name. People from high settlements were called Hamptons.

Who Is This Boy?

One’s name is a matter of significance. Hardly anything is more unsettling than for one’s name to be in question; yet scores of people face this dilemma. It happened to me. In 1967, when I initiated an effort to learn about my ancestors, I first was required to discover who I was, and it wasn’t easy.

In the spring of 1967, Dr. Donald Crippin, my long-time friend and hunting and fishing partner, who lived in Toccoa, Georgia, at that time, invited me to accompany him on a Medical Missionary trip to the Caribbean country of British Honduras (now known as Belize). A passport or birth certificate was necessary for our passage. I possessed neither and had not even seen one for me. Since I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I wrote to The Tennessee Department of Vital Statistics in Nashville, the state’s capital, and requested a birth certificate. Time was short. We were leaving in a few days.

In only days I received a very large envelope from Nashville and knew something was wrong. I was right. The letter inside stated that there was no record of a Clyde L. Hampton being born to my parents on the date indicated. Instead, the letter stated, the child born to my parents on the specified date was named Frank Madison Hampton. I never used my middle name or initial officially, but my parents told me my middle name was Livingston. The Tennessee Department of Vital Statistics would not accept my mother’s word that I was her son. It was necessary to secure records from several sources proving that my name appeared as Clyde over a period of time on school, health, and medical records.

In those days a baby could be brought home from the hospital without a name. When named, the parents informed the proper people. My name was never sent in for recording; thus, the State just gave me my father’s name. A one-day trip to Nashville became necessary to clear up the matter. I made the trip to South America, but only after first finding out who I was. My wife Alicia, kiddingly threatened to divorce me for marrying her under false pretenses.

We were able to clear the records and make the trip, flying out of Atlanta to Miami and on to Guatemala. As we approached the airport I looked down and saw a very small landing strip. Immediately, I felt there was no way that Whisper jet could land on such a short strip with a large lagoon at the end, but, somehow, we did. Frightening! From there we took a truck, the front of which was loaded with produce and the rear with native farmers. We traveled to Chetumal on a road with only one side paved and everyone traveling on the paved side. For about one hundred miles we played roulette with every vehicle we met, with each truck moving over at the last second and then only inches apart.

George Verdi, a native Aztec Indian, was to meet us at Chetumal but was not at the prearranged place. We caught a ride on a large sailboat to Sartinai, a few miles across the bay. We found George, who showed us to our little rock house. Almost all the houses were built on poles with stick-and-thatch roofs, very primitive. The majority of the people worked in the huge banana, papaya, coconut, and citrus groves. Enormous vegetable fields were at the end of their season.

Dr. Crippen packed medical equipment and some medicines in his bags, and I brought my Bible and materials to tend to the spiritual needs of the natives. We held worship services at night when the natives came home from the fields. The Nazarene and Catholic churches worked in the village of about eight hundred people. We were the first Baptists to work there.

We hunted and fished by day and led worship services at night. The people in this village lived meager lives and had little contact with the rest of the world, earning a per capita income of about one hundred twenty-five dollars. There were no vehicles and only one policeman who traveled on a bicycle. The law of the land was simple: If one committed a crime, such as stealing, that person was banished to the jungle. The policeman informed me that no crimes had occurred in the village for three years. The name of the person who had last committed a crime was written in the law book of the village, and he could not return. One’s name and reputation are inseparable. The Bible declares that A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches (Prov. 22:1). I discovered that if one’s name is in some way confused, it will cost great riches to correct it.

Frank Madison Hampton

Relatives and friends called him Daddy Hampton, but, of course, to me he was just Daddy. He was a tall-spirited man who knew many joys and much sorrow. Although measuring only five feet six inches, he loomed larger-than-life as a man who minded his own business and who shouldered his own responsibility. Yet any need of his family or neighbor was addressed quickly and quietly. Daddy possessed a passion for providing for his family and for dividing some of anything he produced with relatives, friends, and neighbors. Sharing could have been his middle name.

Daddy was born April 8, 1873, to Hugh Harrison and Rebecca Elzane Lackey Hampton. Grandpa Hugh was a Confederate veteran. He not only survived the Civil War, but he also survived being a prisoner of war. Hugh was captured along with the remaining 36th Infantry Company in the Battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, 1863, and was released in a POW exchange by the Union Army on July 9, 1863. Hugh’s brother William was fatally wounded in the Battle of Baker’s Ridge in Mississippi (more about the war later).

Daddy was born in Murray County, Georgia, and grew up in Walker County, east of LaFayette, Georgia, in the West Armuchee community. He held the distinction of being the tenth child of Hugh and Rebecca. Daddy was a strong, healthy baby and he took after his mother––who was shorter than his father––in height. One needed to be strong in order to survive the rigors of life in the 1800’s before all the wonder drugs of medical science in modern times.

Not much is known about Daddy’s childhood and youth except that he was a good student in school who had an exceptional aptitude for mathematics. That natural ability served him well in later years in the very technical occupation of machinist and tool-and-dye maker, where he was required to figure measurements in thousandths of degrees. Daddy also naturally picked up on his father Hugh’s trade as a buggy manufacturer and blacksmith, and from whom he developed skills as a craftsman.

In 1894, at the age of twenty-one, Daddy married Eva Gertrude Goble from Walker County. She was eighteen. Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about her except that she was an honorable and virtuous woman. Daddy and Eva established their home in Naomi, Georgia, a small village on the west side of Taylor’s Ridge in Walker County. Apparently, however, the family was included in the Whitfield County National Census in 1900. The boundary between Walker County divided the Naomi village. A census taker may have unknowingly gotten across the county line and included Daddy’s family in Whitfield County, but birth records show that his first three children were born in Walker County. The Whitfield County census record in 1900 stated that Huie was four years old, Jessie was three, and Georgia was one. At some point between 1900 and 1901, Daddy moved his family to LaFayette, Georgia, and took a job at Union Cotton Mill in Lynwood, working as a Fixer. Their next child, Annie May, was born in Walker County, according to U.S. Census Records.

Eva is reported to have become ill and died of Spanish Influenza in 1915. Her youngest child, James Franklin Hampton, was only two years old when Eva died, and Georgia, her eldest daughter, at age sixteen, took care of him until Georgia married Arthur Anton Faughender in 1917 and moved to Chattooga County. At that point in time, Eva’s second daughter, Annie May, helped look after James Franklin.

Matters become most interesting at this point. During the illness of Eva, a young woman from Woodstation, Georgia, came to Daddy’s and Eva’s home to help take care of Eva, according to Daddy’s daughter-in-law Maude Orr Hampton, Arch’s wife. This young woman’s name was Pearl Williams. She was living with relatives in LaFayette. Pearl became nurse, housekeeper, and child-care provider for the family. After Eva’s death at age forty, Daddy helped Pearl get a job at Union Cotton Mill in Lynwood. She worked for five cents an hour.

Just how Daddy and Pearl met is uncertain although they grew up on the same mountain, Taylor’s Ridge. Daddy lived on the east side of the mountain and Pearl on the west side, only a few miles apart. One might say that he was born on the morning side of the mountain and she lived on the evening side of the hill. It is very possible that they knew each other growing up. After Pearl began working at Lynwood, she and Daddy fell in love and he asked her to marry him. She accepted, although she was twenty-three years younger than he (he was forty-five; she was twenty-two).

Daddy asked his boss for enough time off for him and Pearl to get married. The boss, God rest his soul, said that he and Pearl could have the requested time off to be married plus the rest of the week for their honeymoon. They were married January 8, 1918. I found their wedding announcement in the Walker County Messenger dated January 11, 1918. It simply read, Mr. Frank Hampton and Miss Pearl Williams, both of Lynwood, were quietly married Tuesday in the ordinary’s office. Judge Stansell performing the ceremony in the usual happy manner.

Women were breaking into the workplace in those days, but with much difficulty. They were badly discriminated against, as was the case with Pearl and her pitiful wages––five cents an hour? Daddy and Pearl were filled with joy when Pearl became pregnant and they had their first child, a son, Gordan Lee, born November 19, 1918. They were deeply moved to sorrow, however, when their little boy developed complications and died sixteen months later, on April 16, 1920. Their hearts were already saddened because John Raymond, a child by Daddy’s first wife Eva, met an untimely and slow death as the result of lead poisoning. Maude Orr Hampton reported that Raymond and a young friend played in silver-leaded paint while the water tower in LaFayette was being painted. Family Bible records and his grave marker indicate that Raymond died on his birthday, November 6, 1918, at the age of eleven. However, after searching the Walker County Messenger I discovered John Raymond’s death announcement in the October 4 issue which reads as follows:

Raymond Hampton, the 13 year old son of Frank Hampton, died Saturday after a lingering illness of several months. Funeral services were held from the home Sunday afternoon by Rev. Milligan, after which the remains were laid to rest in the LaFayette Cemetery.

The brief article appeared in the Lynwood Locals section. Maybe the reported age of thirteen was a typographical error and should have been 11 year old son, but the paper which carried the article was dated October 4, 1918. Obviously, a conflict exists with the dates.

Daddy and Pearl had been married ten months when John Raymond died tragically. Gordan Lee, Daddy’s and Pearl’s first child, was born twelve days after the death of John Raymond. Young Gordan had complications from the start. What a heart-breaking beginning for their marriage.

Daddy’s and Pearl’s hearts were gladdened again when another child was on the way, but one month before the child was to be born, Daddy’s eldest daughter Georgia, who was married to Arthur Faughender in 1917, died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-two in 1921. How Daddy’s and Pearl’s marriage survived is a miracle.

Mitchell was born April 4, 1921, in Walker County, LaFayette, Georgia. Daddy and Pearl moved their little family to the Ridgedale section of Chattanooga in 1921. The address was 2510 Thatcher Place. Daddy was hired as Foreman over the fixers at Standard Coosa Thatcher, where he worked until his retirement in 1936.

Denton Wesley Hampton was born June 3, 1923. He was an infantile diabetic. Not much was known about the disease at that time, and there were no proven methods to treat the disease or knowledge about the proper diet to help survive it. Denton suffered numerous, serious complications that depleted his energy. He was often in a coma, and he experienced seven extremely grave attacks caused by only a small amount of sweet food. Denton lay in bed for days at a time in a comatose state; he died as a result of the seventh one at the age of twenty in November 1943.

Harry Curtis was born June 13, 1926. He followed Daddy’s trade as a machinist and tool-and-dye maker in Rossville and Fort Oglethorpe after he finished his tour in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Harry died of a heart attack in 1986.

Mitchell, Denton, and Harry attended school at Ridgedale Elementary and junior high at East Side. Mitchell was drafted into the U.S. Army at the outbreak of World War II.

Herbert Hoover Hampton was another sad episode in Daddy’s and Pearl’s family. He was born on December 27, 1928, but died January 1, 1929, living only five days. There were difficult times for