PART ONE (QUOTE): Esly Marion Hunt By :B.R. Hunt Esly Hunt was born April 29, 1816, in Greenville County, S.C. and was the eldest son of William Lacy and Keziah McClanahan Hunt. He died April 29, 1892 and was buried in Steve's cemetery located in the Panhandle of Choctaw County, Mississippi. He was obviously named after his paternal grandfather, Esli Hunt, who had distinguished himself as an American Patriot representing the states of Virginia and North Carolina during the American Revolution. Private Esli Hunt was one of the nine hundred backwoodsmen Patriots at the "Battle of Kings Mountain" who had soundly defeated Major Patrick Ferguson and his eleven hundred Loyalist and British troops. (Major Ferguson was killed in the battle). Esly's wife, Jane Quarles Hunt, was also born in the Palmetto state August 24, 1823. She died June 20, 1903 and is buried adjacent to Esly in Steve's Cemetery. UNQUOTE: ***NOTE: I, Allen D. Hunt, will state that this cemetery is known as and call "Steed Cemetery" by all persons in the surrounding MS area.*** QUOTE (again): Esly's father died in 1836 in Greenville County, S.C. and since Esly was the eldest son he had been required to assume the male leadership role as head of the family at a very early age. He had three brothers, Pilate, John Robert and George McDuffin and four sisters, Rosa, Orpha, Julia and Jane. His maternal grandparents, John and Mary Robinson McClanahan, and their family (excluding Keziah) had already settled in Southeast Choctaw County, Mississippi, and would later migrate to Louisville in Winston County. They operated some of the first businesses in Louisville, which included a hotel. [Four Unreadable Words] lands of Choctaw, Winston and Oktibbeha Counties among others had been made available to white settlers sometime after 1830. The Choctaw Indians were given the option of leaving the land and moving to Oklahoma as a tribe or remaining on the land as U.S. citizens and given a section (640 acres) of land. This was a result of the "Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek" signed by Greenwood Leflore in Noxubee County who represented the Choctaw Indians. Oktibbeha, Winston and Choctaw Counties among others were not made official counties of the State of Mississippi until 1833; however, some settlers came in early and purchased lands from the Choctaws. In Oklahoma, under similar Indian treaties, these early settlers were called "Sooners" but in Mississippi they were just referred to as "Early Settlers." Most of the early settlers in these three counties were from the Carolinas and Virginia and many of these were of Scotch-Irish descent. These were a determined and stubborn breed of settlers and it has been said that when they prayed, they prayed the following prayer: "Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn." Young Esly, who was only twenty one years of age at the time and in the true spirit of a young westward pioneer, rode a mule from Greenville County, S.C. to Southwest Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, in 1837, according to tradition. Here he bought land from a man by the name of Tom Davis and then returned to Greenville County S.C. on the mule. He rounded up the family slaves and returned to Mississippi. (His father, Lacy, was shown on the 1830 census of Greenville County, S.C. as owning 9 slaves). Esly and the slaves cleared some of the newly acquired land and they planted their first crop in Mississippi. This land, although in Oktibbeha County, bordered on the Southeast parameter of Choctaw County. UNQUOTE -- End of this Part One of Two Parts submission.........