Thursday, September 10, 1897
ONE of the most alarming things that has come under our notice recently is to the effect that in some southern sections, citizens are leaving their farms and moving their families to towns for safety, being afraid to leave their families alone in their country homes to attend their fields or other affairs requiring absence from the house. It looks as if mounted police may become a feature of rural society and be on patrol all hours of the twenty-four. It is claimed the expense would not be great, and the tendency would be to suppress all manner of lawlessness.
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A GARTER snake was killed near here, by Moff Waugh, which was about three feet long and which had sixty-four live snakes inside of it, each about seven inches long. Jasper Friel counted the snakes. It has been often alleged that some serpents when alarmed, swallow their young and eject them again after reaching a place of safety. There remains considerable doubt on this question and it is likely that the alleged proofs of it, from living ones issuing out of the body of the parent when crushed, are to be accounted for by the ovoviviparous mode of generation. As a rule, non-venomous serpents lay eggs, depositing them in a heap of decaying vegetation and leave them there to be hatched, paying no attention to them. Venomous serpents hatch their eggs inside of them, and thus they are termed ovoviviparous. This would indicate that the garter snake, tho not poisonous, belongs to the latter class.
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A MAN, nearly naked, passed thro town last Friday looking neither to the right nor left. He had on a coat which was ripped up the back to the collar, showing that the other articles of apparel were wanting. A pair of tattered overalls reached to his knees. He had an old pair of overshoes on his feet. He made no halt and did not seem to be begging.
OBITUARY
Howard Dilley, son of Amos J. and Minty V. Dilley, died July 26, 1897, aged seventeen years, two months and twenty-five days.
It has been said that “Death leaves a shining mark.” This was truly exemplified in the death of this young man. He was ill only a few days with typhoid fever, but bore his afflictions patiently, not a murmur was heard to escape his lips. To know him, was to love him. He always wore a smile and met his friends with kindly greetings…
It seems sad that one so young and full of hope should thus be cut down in the morning of life…
BIOGRAPHIC NOTES
The Callisons of Locust have a claim for special recognition in our biographical sketches as one of the oldest families of southern Pocahontas. Members of that relationship have done a great deal in developing their section and have shown what can be done with our soil in our climate by well applied energy and industry. The progenitor of this relationship, so far as it is traceable, was James Callison, senior. This person and his wife, Elizabeth, were natives of Ireland, but, as the name indicates, were of English origin. No doubt the Callisons were among the families that King James the First encouraged to settle in the north of Ireland.
Late in the previous century it appears that James Callison went from Greenbrier county to Granger County, Tennessee, and made a permanent settlement and reared his family. The sons of James Callison, the emigrant, and Elizabeth, his wife, were James, Anthony, Isaac, Jesse, Samuel and Eliahs. Their daughters were Rebecca, Abigail, Mary, Nancy and Ruth…
About 1782, James Callison, son of the pioneer emigrant, came from Tennessee to Locust, now Lower Pocahontas, and settled on a tract of 164 acres, preempted some years previously by his father. Soon after locating on Trump Run, Mr. Callison took a great fancy to Miss Susan Edmiston, the charming daughter of James Edmiston, senior, who was then living on the farm now owned by George Callison, grandson of the lovely woman just referred. James Callison and Susan Edmiston were the parents of five sons and two daughters…
These people whose lives make up the past, whose history so few survive to repeat, sowed in tears, in privations and hardships what we who now live are reaping in a joyful harvest. What they sowed in tears, we the living may reap with grateful joy if we have proper appreciation of what they did and suffered in their day and generation. Let us not forget that the frugality, industry and careful attention to duties that enabled them to secure this goodly heritage is all important for us to observe and imitate in order to keep it all from slipping away and vanishing from our reach
Like busy bees, our pioneer friends all over our county tried to improve every shining hour, and turn to some good account every opportunity in sight, no matter how hard it may have seemed. It has been well said that those who look only for easy places will finally wind up in the hardest places and have no way to get out except by death. ~ W. T. P.