The courier-index., 1920-06-25
La Grange as / Knew
 # Sixty Years Ago
By R. M. Hays

Monday morning we packed all our
 belongings and with mother, sister
 and myself we bade adieu to the
 classic little town of Unionville, South Carolina, and headed over Hand for somewhere in Arkansas, Handing Dec. 1, three miles south of La Grange right in the midst of
 the most forsaken wilderness the mind of man can imagine. The negroes soon cut enough round poles
 to put up cabin with split pun cheon floors. We moved in and occupied this cabin the next year, and many skinned shin have l had
 by my foot slipping through the cracks in this puncheon floor, and many day did we fight rattlesnakes through the cracks of our slab floor
 But going back to our trip from South Carolina. It brings bark to my memory many pleasant little in- cidents of that trip 64 years ago. Being only a small boy of four years, many scenes and incidents are as fresh in my mind today as things that happened only yester-' day. The camp fires made on the Georgia hills at night, the negroes singing their songs of melody, with bacon broiling on the coals and old l Aunt Dinah's ash cakes baking Tn the fire, sweet 'taters nearly done, and now and then fat 'posum cooking make me wander back to the happy days of my childhood. After we had reached the state. of my adoption my father set about making preparations to clear some land and go to farming, which occu- patton he followed to the day of his death in March, 1874.
 But I have gotten too far off of my purpose of telling you some thing of La Grange of many years ago At that time there was a post l office at the two cross roads where i La Grange now stands. It was kept in a cheese box setting on the counter in a little store run by K. 1P. Simpson who was the pioneer merchant of La Grange and was killed in May, 1866, by o. B. Hud- son.
 By 1857-58 the county had com menced to settle up and new corners had arrived. La Grange had taken on new life by this time.. New and more up-to-date stores had gone up, namely Robertson & Kelly, Nelson & Rainey and R. F. Simpson x Co.,, and by this time my father had sm0v- ed one-half mile north of La Grange on what is now the Moore place and my first school days started. Our school house was an old log building that had been used as a blacksmith shop and then stood in a dense wood and grapevine thicket on the old Wire road, and just across the road from where w. l.. | Nelson, afterwards a banker at Helena, built residence of four rooms, made of dressed plank and boxed up and painted white, which vas then the show pilce of the town of 25 or 30 people. This school was taught by Miss Lou Parker, a cousin of R. P. Simpson, the mer- chant prince of La Grange. and was attended ny my sister, myself and seven other pupils, and well do remember my first day at school. There was stump near the door from a tree that had been cut down recently, and out on this stump spent the first day crying and call | ing for mother, as l never expected to see her or home again. Our sec ond school was taught by Bridge Brazier, a brother of our lamented Dr. Brazier, both of whom died many years ago. This school was taught about three miles east of 1 La Grange on the Judge Mckiel | II. oI then in La Grange. A year later A. B. Mayhew opened school in an old log house that then stood direct ly across the road from where l.. G. Howard now lives, and about 1860 a box school building was erected about where Dr. Fosters store now stands. It was built in the midst of a muscadine thincket and at play time we divided our attention be. tween getting muscadines and killing snakes, as the latter would often come into the little school house and if our dinner was not covered
 Mir. Snake would get it. 1
 Our next teachers, as we'll as can remember, were H. O. Herndon
 Jas. A. Bush and our own late la.
 TneNteu JuuEe IT, N. AAutNuiis ehCi
 young lawyer just startin gout
 His residence stood. where the
 school building now stands, and il
 was Judge Hutton, the young teach
 CT, who gave this scribe his frs
 whipping at school, much to the de
 light of my father who said it wa!
 just what l needed. The families of La Gra~ge a
 that time were few. Uncle Joshu;
 Kelley, Mrs. Mariah Jones, Rev P. s. G. Watson, Deloss Everett
 Gen. c. w. Adams, Bob Simpson : and o. B. Hudson were the onl. { residents at this time The wa } coming on, La Grange, like mos all places, went down and soon wa a favorite place for the yanke, l raiders, and every old citizen shud 7 ders at teh thought of what hap , pened during the four years iron } 1861 to 1865, by what was known a . Walkers's Kansas Jay Hawkers ; These marauders took what few ol' 5 men there were left at home-to' : al fn ksa s,, tba fbnpo ii