Continuing the Legacy of Benjamin J. Ledford: Son Benjamin Mercer and Grandson Arthur Paul Ledford

The Civil War brought hard times and “make do” situations even to families in remote Union County, Georgia. As we’ve already seen in the account of Silas L. Ledford, third child of fifteen born to the early settler Benjamin J. Ledford (1800-1882), who joined the Georgia Cavalry and the Local Defense Troops, so another son of Benjamin, his eleventh-born, also had a term in Civil War fighting.

Benjamin Mercer Ledford (11/14/1838-03/24/1919) was Benjamin’s eleventh child. His mother was Grace Ownbey Ledford. On May 10, 1862, he enlisted with the 6th Regiment, Georgia Cavalry Volunteers, Company B. He received the rank of captain. He was wounded in the knee at the Battle of Chickamauga . This brought about his subsequent resignation from active duty. He continued to serve in the Local Defense Troops and evidently received the rank of Colonel in that group, for he was often referred to as “Colonel Ledford.”

An interesting incident occurred while he was in service. He was visiting in a friend’s home in Loudon County, Tennessee. While there, Union troops attacked the house. How he had time, before the soldiers came into the house trying to kill any of the Confederate soldiers they found, is not exactly known. But the story has been passed down about how Benjamin Mercer Ledford escaped death. He donned the garb of a woman, and with a bonnet on, was at the dough board kneading bread when the invasion occurred. His life was spared, and for good cause. He married Sarah Blair (09/28/1838-09/13/1889) on July 29, 1863, daughter of his friend in whose house he had escaped death.

Benjamin Mercer and Sarah Ledford made their way back to Union County, Georgia to set up housekeeping. Since her father was a substantial citizen of Loudon County, and owner of slaves, he gave Sarah slaves to help her with housekeeping and Benjamin Mercer with his farm work on Gum Log in Union County where they settled. This couple gave ten acres to Antioch Baptist Church from the land holdings they had acquired.

Benjamin Mercer Ledford became an ordained Baptist minister, announcing his call on October 18, 1873. He received his license to preach by Ebenezer Baptist Church three years later on July 14, 1876. Not only interested in helping the churches in the district where the Ledfords lived, it is believed that he also preached at churches “over in North Carolina” from his home. He was very much interested in education and was successful in securing a grant for a high school for the Gum Log district from Peabody Funds. This school was established about 1880 and was a boon to that section of the county.

Benjamin and Sarah had six known children: Mary L. (1865), Mamie May (1867), Arthur Paul (1869), William J. (1872), Bettie A. (1874) and Benjamin M. (1877, who died as an infant). When Sarah died in 1889, she was laid to rest in the Antioch Baptist Church Cemetery on land her husband had given to the church. Benjamin Mercer married twice more: to Eliza Plott and to Lena Gray (believed to be a Cherokee Indian). He later moved from his beloved Gum Log and lived in Cherokee County, NC. He was interred at the Friendship Baptist Church Cemetery, Suit, NC.

The third child of Benjamin and Sarah, Arthur Paul (01/12/1869-04/07/1931) became a noted merchant and owned and operated his own store in the Gum Log District. Arthur Paul, known lovingly as “Bud” Ledford, started working in the mercantile business by hiring on at the store of Charley Mauney. In 1924, Bud purchased the store for himself. It was a popular trading place in that section of the county. He bought another store on Gum Log Road in 1925, and operated it until his death in 1931.

Arthur Paul Ledford married Alcy Dona Ensley (04/14/1870-04.01/1943) on December 20, 1888 in Union County. Her parents were Robert and Martha Parris Ensley of Gum Log. To “Bud” and Dona were born six children; Mamie Isabell (1890-1981) married John Calvin Hood; Alma Udora (1893-1969) married Jess C. Bradley; Obed Erick (1894-1977) married Nora Brown; Benjamin Robert (1897-1928) married Ada Wilson; Baxter Wayne (1902-?) married Bert(a) Miller and moved to Ohio; and William Blair (1906-1987) married Violet Lance.

Bud Ledford died April 7, 1931 in Franklin, NC after stomach surgery. His body was returned and buried at Antioch Baptist Church Cemetery, Gum Log. Later, when his beloved wife, Dona passed (April 1, 1943), she was interred alongside her husband’s grave.

The Ledford families played an important role in Union County history from the early years until the present. Those who went out to other places likewise were strong contributing citizens. For example, Amy Vianna Ledford (1830-1892), seventh child of Benjamin J. and Grace Ownbey Ledford, who married William Franklin of Union County about 1851, moved with her family to Coryell County, Texas in 1889. We can only imagine the long journey from Union County to Texas by covered wagon, via Arkansas and other stops along the way. They left Union County in 1883 and arrived in Weatherford Texas in 1889—a long and eventful journey with many stops in between.

There is much more to the Ledford story, but I will leave it to others to write. Suffice it to say that the family of Benjamin J. Ledford played an important role in establishing a solid citizenry wherever they went from their roots in North Carolina and North Georgia.

c 2010 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published May 6, 2010 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ballad of Tom Collins

The search for family roots hits a person like a fever. There is no let-up in the symptoms until a quest is completed and lines of descent are firmly established. For years I have searched for the authentic name of the father of Thompson Collins (ca.1785-ca.1854), who, with his wife Celia Self Collins (ca.1787-1880) were the first Collins settlers in Union County, Georgia back when it was formed in 1832.

Thompson Collins was my maternal great, great grandfather. He owned a broad expanse of land in Choestoe District and acreage in adjoining counties as well. He was an independent sort of person, self sufficient and enterprising. Why has it been so hard to establish the Collins lineage before him, to pinpoint who his father was, and others from whom he descended? The search has been complicated because the trail leads to many with the name Thomas Collins.

Sometimes clues surface in genealogical searches. I was encouraged when I read noted author John A. Parris, Jr., who for years was a columnist for the Asheville Citizen Times (North Carolina) and the author of a long-running column entitled "Roaming the Mountains." Several of his columns became a book by the same title. Mr. Parris died in 1999. My alma mater, Western Carolina University at Cullowhee, now honors Mr. Parris and his wife, artist Dorothy Luxton Parris, with the Parris Appalachian Cultural Studies at the University.

John A. Parris, Jr., in his "roaming" the Smokies, found imbedded in the folklore of the region the inimitable "Ballad of Tom Collins." This folk song, as is typical of ballads, sought to record the story of an unusual character of times long past whose refuge was the mountainous region of the Carolinas.

The ancestors of Tom Collins left Scotland after the Battle of Culloden which occurred April 16, 1746. That is another story for another time. But this battle marked a turning point for the independent highlanders. They were crushed in the battle, and had to promise never to bear arms against the British throne.

Prior to the Battle of Culloden, some of the Collins highlanders had migrated to America. The lure to new lands beyond the seas was popular, and it remained for the ancestors of the noted Tom Collins to gain passage and launch upon an adventure to the new land. One William Collins had already settled in 1691 and made claim to 620 acres on Poulcatte Creek in Caroline County, Virginia. Various Collins gentlemen are in the records with property ownership, jury duty, and even two who served in the American Revolution, George Collins and Joseph Collins.

Then enters a Tom Collins. He was convicted in 1775 for "sedition of speech," defended by lawyer William Boulware. Tired of the Royalist accusations, Tom decided to remove himself and his family from Virginia and go deep into the mountains of North Carolina. There he established a homestead and claimed land, far from the Royalist government and its demands. In this family of Collins settlers were James, Thomas (Sr.), Thomas, Jr., John and Francis.

The Collinses were among the first settlers in the wilderness of North Carolina. Here, among the rising cathedrals of majestic mountains, they could practice their independence without interference. The stories about Tom Collins hold that he was such an expert shot he could knock out a squirrel's eye at fifty paces, fell two birds from a covey with one shot, and reload his trusty gun before the birds hit the ground.

When the Tories began to invade the pristine region that was then Collins territory, the legend goes that Tom Collins, hiding in rhododendron thickets, could snipe off these enemies to his freedom with a single shot.

But one Saturday night, according to the ballad, Tom took a bullet in his own lungs from one of his Tory enemies. He struggled to a neighbor's house, took corn liquor for his pain, lay down on the bed and died. His beloved fiancée, Mary, was sewing her trousseau in the next room. That wedding between Tom and Mary, was never to be.

The plaintive ballad records the pathos suffered by Mary:

Tom Collins came home one Saturday night,

Laid down on his bed and died.

And his true love in the very next room

Sat sewing those silks so fine.

Oh, Mary, Oh Mary, get up from there,

And dry your weeping eyes.

There are other young men a-hangin' around,

A-watching you weep and cry.

Tom Collins, the martyr to the cause of independence, had no immediate descendants. But he had brothers. And my belief is that his fiancée, Mary, wed one of them, maybe Francis, for this name is prevalent even to this day in our Collins family. And the name Thomas was carried on in Thompson, our first definitely known-ancestor.

The fever to find answers is still present. Maybe, someday, in unexpected linkages, I'll find just who was the father of Thompson Collins.

This note to my readers: My beloved husband, the Rev. Grover D. Jones, is now at this address, having entered as a patient on February 22: Chaplinwood Nursing Home, 325 Allenwood Memorial Drive, Room 208 Cedar Hall, Milledgeville, GA 31061. He enjoys receiving cards.

c 2007 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Mar. 1, 2007 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The 'Sacred Harp' Tradition of Singing

Sometimes it is called 'fa-sol- la" singing. Passed at first by oral tradition long before they were published in tune books, the metrical hymns and psalms of Isaac Watts and others were an important part of frontier worship as groups met first in homes and then in a church house built where they set aside an acre or so of land for a church.

This method of singing was taught in widely-practiced singing schools in the south, beginning in the 19th century. The song leader would announce a tune, known to most people, and then "line out" the words to go with that tune. The preacher or the song leader would often be the only one in the congregation to have a book. By repetition, the members would soon learn the words of the song. When "New Britain C. M." was announced as the hymn tune, the singers would know that "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound," the inimitable words by John Newton (1725-1807), would be sung to the announced tune. "C. M." stood for common meter, a metrical count of syllables in the phrases of the song being 8.6.8.6. The version of this beloved hymn we so often sing now was published in Virginia Harmony in 1831 and repeated in subsequent hymn books even to the present day. It was also in Jesse Mercer's Cluster.

Much of this singing tradition has been attributed to the "Old Baptists," although other denominations like Presbyterians, Mennonites and Methodists also sang the old tunes to sacred words. Why, then, were so many of them attributed to Baptists? George Pullen Jackson formerly a professor of music at Vanderbilt University in his Story of the Sacred Harp, states that "freedom" has always been a watchword of the Baptists. Prior to and during the Revolutionary War, Baptists worshiped freely, without centralized religious authority. They wanted no part of the established religious orders and state churches practiced in some of the colonies. They did not want even their singing linked to what they considered governmentally controlled denominations.

Most of the Old Baptist tunes found in the early years were secular songs with religious texts. They were remembered tunes that our ancestors sang in the hills of Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales and brought to America with them. These tunes had been "spiritualized" with words written to show Christian experiences. For example, the minor-key hymn, Wondrous Love was set to the tune of a song about Captain Kidd, pirate.

Fortunately for the hymn, the tune name was given Wondrous Love, not Captain Kidd. The meter in the old folk song in a minor key carries well the words of "Wondrous Love": "What wondrous love is this! Oh! my soul, Oh! my soul! What wondrous love is this, oh! my soul! That caused the Lord of bliss, To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul, To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!" We don't know who penned the words for the four-stanza hymn in its irregular (12, 9, 6, 6, 12, 9) rhythm. Even modern hymm books list the words as being An American Folk Hymn. It was published in William Walker's Southern Harmony in 1835. Benjamin Franklin White collaborated with Walker in compiling Southern Harmony, but when Walker took the manuscript to New Haven, Connecticut to be published, he did not include White's name as co-author/compiler.

Evidently, this breached the friendship of the two musicians. Ben White packed up his family and moved from Spartanburg, S.C., to Hamilton in Harris County, Ga. There he became editor of the local newspaper, The Organ. He also began working on The Sacred Harp songbook. Many of the songs he published in the newspaper. In 1844 the whole collection of songs was compiled by B. F. White and Joel King and published by Collins Press, Philadelphia. Subsequent editions came out in 1859 and 1860. The hymnbook was reprinted in 1968 by Broadman Press, Nashville, Tenn. White and King's Sacred Harp became the official music book of the Southern Musical Convention in Upson, County, Ga., (1845), the Chattahoochee Musical Convention, Coweta County (1852), and the Tallapoosea Singing Convention in Haralson County (1867) and countless other Singing Conventions as they organized in counties after the Civil War. The book was popular not only for its songs but for the Rudiments of Music, a 21-page manual of music instruction which was often used by singing school teachers.

The Union County Singing Convention held at the court house in Blairsville was an all-day event and well attended by singing groups from the mountain areas of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Some of the singing school teachers of the 1930s and 1940s were the Rev. James Hood and Mr. Frank Dyer of Union County, and Mr. Everett Prince Bailey of Fannin County, GA and Polk County, Tenn. Groups of Sacred Harp musicians still meet and sing the old songs. Noted names among them are descendants of B. F. White and the Denson Brothers, Howard and Paine; families of McGraws, Kitchens, Cagles, Lovvorns, Parrises, Manns, Drakes and others, some in the fifth generation of those who contributed to the Sacred Harp back in 1844.

In Watson B. Dyer's Souther Family History, (1986), page 154, he printed in our great grandmother's handwriting (Nancy Collins Souther [1829-1888], wife of John Combs Hayes Souther [18271891]), a copy of a song they were learning at church. She had written the words April 13, 1868. I was thrilled to see the words of the song that had been "lined out" as my great grandmother wrote them. She wrote:

"Come all ye righteous here below,
O hal-le, hal-le-lu-jah.
Let nothing prove your overthrow,
O hal-le, hal-le-lu-jah.
But call on Me both day and night,
O hal-le, hal-le-lu-jah.
And I'll visit you with delight,
Sing glory, hal-le-lu-jah!"

She penned words to other stanzas as well. I looked in the reprint of White & King's Sacred Harp for the song my great grandmother wrote out to help her memorize the words. I found the tune, "The Good Old Way" (L.M.-long meter) with the refrain, but the words given for the stanzas in the song book were not a match for what my ancestor wrote. There were many versions of the stanzas, as various people were inspired to write verses to fit tunes. I felt a deep kinship with her. The words she wrote fitted a commonly used tune she sang as she worshiped in the little New Liberty Baptist Church in sight of her cabin. She had a desire to participate more readily in the services by knowing the words to a song they enjoyed singing there. She was the mother of ten children. Maybe she gathered them all around and they had a little Souther choir at home as she taught them the words to The Good Old Way tune.

c2006 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published June 22, 2006 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.