Sharing God's Blessings

In the year 1875 master Jones died, but before he died he sent an ex-slave named Tom from the Stanley plantation to go by mule to the county seat and tell a lawyer, Mr. Carter, to come see him. Mr. Carter had been his lawyer for forty years, taking care of his county business and whatever else he needed a lawyer to do. After being shut up with master Jones in his sickroom for two hours, the lawyer came out with a bunch of papers in his arms and said he would be back in a week to have master Jones sign a particular document. No one knew what the papers were about or for. William Jones died six months later and no one knows when he gave the papers to Carrie.

The day after Carrie’s funeral, Mae found the papers in an old trunk that Mollie had given to Carrie. It used to belong to Missus Jones. Mae took the papers back to Chattanooga with her and gave them to her granddaughter Clara. Clara hired a lawyer to check them out for her and he discovered that they were a legitimate deed to a title of land for a person named Carrie Jones. Carrie owned all of the land that used to be the Jones plantation, but it took many years and a lot of lawsuits before Carrie’s children got their mother's land and began to build an empire that was active for many years.

After forty years the names in the family began to change, due to the process of marriages, but the bloodline remains the same. The children that came together the first time met at the old homestead on what was their home when they were slaves belonging to William Jones. Now it belongs to them.

In the days when they lived on the land people could stand on top of Pine Mountain and see what looked like a blanket of green grass with a pure white cotton rug thrown on top of it, with acres of orchards of peaches, pears, apples, walnuts and pecan trees growing beside it. The mulberry creek running through the pasture and a brook with clear cool water flowing into it from the side of the mountain and a wagon trail running along beside the land, leading to a country road that will take a traveler into the village of Waverly. There they would find a newly built railroad for the train that runs from Columbus to Atlanta and at four o’clock in the morning they could hear the lonesome sound of the train whistle blowing off in the distance. Once or twice a week it would stop. You could tell if it was going to stop by the number of times it blew the whistle. It never really stopped, it just slowed down long enough to allow a person to throw out his belongings and jump off. Yes. The plantation on which my ancestors were born, lived and died was a sight to see.