Legacy

This story takes place circa 1930 in the back hills of Tennessee, Congers Gap to be specific.  Congers Gap was a stretch of Tennessee  mountain country that stretched  about fifty miles long and if one measured from hill top to hill top it could then be  said it was twenty miles wide.

 

The area had initially been populated on the most part by folks of Scottish descent.  At one time there had been two hundred homesteads scattered around on the wooded hillsides.  There were meadows here and there, which was good as people had to raise their own food.  A meadow with a two or three acre expanse was almost all a person could farm with a mule and plow.  There would usually be a half an acre committed to hard field corn as it was a staple in the hill folks diet.

 

It’s interesting to note that a lot of hard working hill folk ground their own corn in a very primitive fashion on a large flat stone near their cabin.  Much like the  native Americans but on a slightly larger scale, stone wise.  Cracked corn was field corn busted up a little as opposed to ground corn.  When soaked in water for a few days it became softer and then was the main ingredient in Southern Fried Grits.  Usually fried in a water and melted fatback sauce.

 

As I said, in its heyday Congers Gap was home to some two hundred families, but as this story unfolds, times have changed and most have folded the show, died off, went to the city and so forth.  So now it was down to about thirty five families.  Mostly MacDonald’s, MacDougal’s, and McCoy’s.   All were somewhat related even if it was at the fourth and fifth cousin level.  Very clannish tight group.  Those holdouts from city life that preferred that way of living did so from habit and sense of home.  After all, where one is raised and things are familiar, one finds the comfort of familiarity and love of home.  Of course there’s the older residents, set in their ways and won’t even budge for nothing or no one.

 

However most of the days of total ignorance were past, as in the center of Congers Gap there is a one room schoolhouse, church, General Store, and a sort of Post Office.  With the advent of the Sears Catalog, the Post Office became a popular spot.

 

And while its still mostly horse and buggy, or mule and wagon, there are at least two old Model T Fords gadding about, and one Farm has a actual tractor.  The nearest thing one could call a town is a little place at one end of the gap called Burton Hollow, population about three hundred.  Past that it’s another one hundred and eighty miles to Knoxville, considered a Metropolis in it own right for that era.

 

So much for background and we now shift the focus to the heart of this story.  It began at the small farm of Hector and Agnes McCoy.  They had one child, a son of eight years whose name was Fergus.  This particular bunch of McCoy’s were harmonious with nature and their neighbors.  Always willing to lend a hand or give grain to someone whose crop hadn’t done well or illness prevented it even being put in.  Generally even though the hill folk were scattered with some mileage between them, they were still a tight cohesive community.

 

One of the notorious fixtures of the community who had wide spread fame, was one Wellington P. Crow.  The “P” stood for pet.  Yes Wellington was a real crow and pet of Fergus McCoy.  Wellington had been found as a very young crow out of the nest too soon. Possibly because something had happened to his parents and Wellington was trying to survive.  Crows were not generally popular among those trying to raise corn, so they got shot a lot.

 

Now Fergus who also had a pet Raccoon found Wellington more hopping than flying, because Wellington hadn’t been taught to fly and instinct hadn’t quite taken over yet.  So Fergus took an immediate like to that young crow and picked him up, much to the crow’s objection.  Fergus took the little squawker home and named him Wellington P. Crow.  Wellington soon settled down realizing his captor was a friend indeed.

 

Although Fergus kept Wellington in a hastily built stick cage for about three weeks, after that the cage wasn’t a necessity as Wellington had become completely tame.  Fergus made a perch and nesting box on the front porch of the cabin for Wellington who could come and go as he pleased. Mostly Wellington stayed close to home and could frequently be seen out scratching with the chickens.  The McCoy’s used to laugh at that and said they wondered if Wellington was confused about his identity.

 

Once in awhile Fergus would give Wellington a hand full of cracked corn.  That pleased Wellington to no end as it made him feel loved and important.  Wellington after such a treat would spend quite a bit of time simply strutting back and forth on the porch rail as if to say, “hey you chickens, look at me, I’m the man”

 

As Wellington started to disappear sometimes for several hours, Fergus feared someone might shoot him without realizing he was a pet, and no ordinary thieving crow.  So Fergus and his mother Agnes decided to flag Wellington in a cute fashion.  Agnes sewed up a little white collar, resplendent with a little red necktie.

 

This was fitted to Wellington who seemed oblivious to its presence.  That was good, because that meant Wellington wouldn’t be trying to get it off.  Actually Wellington looked rather scholarly in his mini outfit.  Wellington soon became a recognizable fixture all over Congers Gap, beloved by all.

 

However as crows tend to be, Wellington was a thieving crow.  And he wasn’t bad about bothering anyone’s corn as he was very well fed at home. But he liked bright objects and one was never to sure what Wellington would bring home to his nesting box. Mostly just fragments of shinny junk, but once in awhile a shinny coin.  It was always hoped he found it on the ground and not in the General Store.  No way of telling for sure.

 

Then one day Fergus noticed a couple of brass buttons in the nesting box, and in the next few days about ten more got added.

 

Concern grew that Wellington might have picked them off of someone’s drying on the line laundry.  But that possibility was dispelled on close examination of the buttons.  They were Civil War era buttons off of a Confederate Officers coat.  That was puzzling because there were no veterans of the Civil War or even descendents of, in Congers Gap.  Talking among themselves Fergus’s father Hector said if he recalled right from what he saw in an old book, the uniforms had fourteen buttons.  It was noted that Wellington had only brought home twelve.

 

Assuming there might be a couple more buttons  yet somewhere, early next morning after Wellington had his breakfast, everyone took a good look at the direction he was flying off to.

 

Wellington was making a straight line in a particular direction as if he was on a mission.  The McCoy’s thought I wonder why in that direction; no one live anywhere near that direction.  The only thing over that way was the old road that hadn’t been traveled in close to eighty years.  It only led to the bridge over Hampton Gully which had been washed out in a flash flood about 1858.  No one rebuilt it because it really led to nowhere particular in the first place.

 

Well Fergus and Hector decided to see what they could see, so they doubled up bareback on the family mule and headed that way.  It was about a four mile trip as the crow flies, but six as the mule rides.  They got to the now pretty overgrown remnants of that old road and made their way to the edge of the steep and deep gully where the bridge had once been, it was not a sheer drop but about eighteen feet down at a barely climbable fifty degree slope.

 

They looked down and there was Wellington, busy picking another shinny brass button off of what was left of a rotted away Confederate Officers Civil War uniform, it was around the bleached bones of the original wearer.  Also the bleached bone’s of a horse was there.  They climbed down to take a closer look.  That officer had insignia that indicated he was an official military courier.

 

The scenario somewhat indicated that the rider had been coming at a near full gallop at night not knowing the bridge was out.  Thus the fall killed him and his horse.  Farther examination of the area disclosed a couple of saddle bags, fairly deteriorated but being leather, not as bad as the uniform was.  Inside what the two found made their eyes pop out, in each bag was four bars of confederate government gold.  Each bar was so marked.

 

Needless to say they buried the soldier and brought the gold home.  What to do with it was the next problem to solve. After much conversation for the next two days, it was decided that the right thing to do was turn it over to the proper authority’s as it was not coined gold, but government bars.  So they enlisted the aid of one of the two neighbors that had an old model T Ford, and began the arduous trip to Knoxville, some one hundred and eighty miles away.  In those days on those roads, what would have been a three and a half hour trip today; was about a two and a half day trip then.

 

Anyway, they got to Knoxville and couldn’t exactly find anything that looked like a government office.  So they tried the next best place, the Court House.  There they were ushered into to see Judge Percy L. Potter.  The Judges eyes lit up like a Christmas tree; and he had to stop gasping from surprise and regain his judicial composure.

 

The judge said indeed it was government gold, the government of the Confederacy which no longer existed and as such being non existent had no claim to the gold.  The judge did say however that some smelted bars also had State marking, These did not, but had they had, then a particular state would have recovery rights.  And finally he said the good news in this case is its finders keepers and it all your boys.  The judge then gave them a certificate attesting to their rightful ownership.

 

Armed with that certificate they went to the biggest bank they could find and converted the gold to cash.  Quite a lot of cash.  At today’s gold prices that would be well over seven million dollars.  However in those days it came to about twelve thousand dollars.  But frame that in buying power at a time when the finest pair of new shoes was a dollar and seventy seven cents, a nice new dress eighty five cents, and a fancy new refrigerator only eleven dollars.  Even a fancy new car could be had for a wee under five hundred dollars.  Then twelve thousand had a lot of buying power.

 

Now the McCoy’s were not grasping opportunists seeking personal wealth.  And even though Hector sliced off a few hundred for his family, he was still part of that tight cohesive caring community in Congers Gap. Improvement of community is what the majority of the money was spent on.

 

To fast forward that is how the town of Wellington got created and financed in the middle of Congers Gap.  New and bigger, better Schools, churches, and stores were the nucleus for a growing thriving town.  Today its population is almost eight thousand souls, even has a small hospital.

 

One last thing I think is interesting is the fact that there is an ordinance in Wellington prohibiting the shooting or harming of a crow in any fashion.