After May 10, 1861 Miller County, Missouri was a crossroads for the State Guard troops reporting to Jefferson City. These men were Confederates and lived off the land. The known Union sympathizers suffered most by losing cattle, crops and other items needed by the State Guard and often items that the troops could not use. The first Union Home Guard Companies were organized primarily to protect inhabitants from the Confederate Home Guard. Complaints filed in the court house include; Callaway Wyrich lost a mule and several cattle that were shot and killed. Robert Reed lost a gelding and a horse that were stolen. J. C. Casey lost a black sow and a boar. Levi Whittle lost a number of swine to armed men. W. Ponder lost a sorrel mare, a bay horse, his gray mare and a gelding, a good blanket, his rifle, household utensils and other items from his cabin. Wm. S. Irvin lost a wagon, two mares, harness and bridles, 160 bushels of corn and a saddle and rifle. John Williams lost a rifle, four lasso roped, a saddle, four horse bridles and one mule bridle. August 26, 1861 was high tide for the Confederacy. Secession Companies spread all over Missouri like prairie fires in a high wind. Headlines: Secession Companies Rip Miller County Apart. In the space of a few days many men from Miller and Cole Counties took horses with them and hastened to join General Sterling Price on his march from Springfield to Liberty, Missouri but there is another picture described by Uncle Jimmie Miller. He watched his mother�s and grandmothers agony as they stood in the Simpson yard listening to the big guns booming down at Jefferson City for they knew that their son and brother was in that fight. While they stood helplessly wringing their hands at every boom of the cannon and expecting the worst, a very large sized panther jumped the rail fence into the front yard, raised his front paws upon a large tree, yawned lazily and sharpened his claws in the bark. Who was the beast of prey, man or panther? Miller County, Missouri did not suffer too much from �Ol� Pappy Price�s� army because it operated mostly in the Western part of the state, nor from the Union State Guard under Captain Jacob Capps, Captain Daniel Rice or Colonel Emly Golden for these Union leaders were local men and their armies had some discipline. The Confederate Guerillas and Bushwhackers of Miller County, who were really gangs of criminals terrorizing the citizens, operated uncontrolled in the area. Mothers dealing with disobedient children scared them into obedience not by saying, �The devil will get you�, but by saying, �Crabtree is coming.� The Confederate Guerilla General Crabtree and his men became the most hated and feared men in Missouri. It is said that Crabtree killed more people, burned more buildings, stole and destroyed more property than any other man in Miller County before or since the Civil War. Crabtree was finally killed on August 30, 1864. Horse stealing on the frontier was still considered the worst of crimes. When Squire HUGH GARTIN found his horse in the possession of Mr. Shumate, one of Crabtree�s men, he brought charges in court. The gang had made the caves on Wet Bottom of Big Tavern Creek their headquarters. They could not be dislodged. In Court Mark Jones (note: Elizabeth Hill�s step-son -- SB) informed the justices that he was with Crabtree on August 18. Crossing the river the same day somewhere near the Wet Bottom of the Big Tavern he had seen Mr. Shumate with Crabtree. First he had seen the horse at about the same time they were crossing the river. Mr. Shumate was riding Mr. Gartin�s horse with which Mark Jones was well acquainted having known the horse for three years and Mr. Shumate held possession of the horse for two more days. Two days later Mark Jones had seen Milton Stepp in the Crabtree Company. John Bond testified, �I intercepted Crabtree at James Smith�s place in Cole County. I joined Crabtree of my own free will and accord. I went with Crabtree to Thomasville taking recruits for the South. The day before I left home I saw Shumate and he had no horse then. I know Mr. Gartin�s horse. I saw him in Crabtree�s Command. The first man I saw in possession of the horse was Crabtree.� (note: HUGH & RACHEL GARTIN were the grandparents of Stacy West Hill, wife of Jackson Hill. --SB) This was 1862 but when Crabtree�s men were caught in August 1864 Mark Jones name was not on Crabtree�s list. The Kansas City Daily Journal of Commerce dated July 2, 1864 reads, �Guerilla Outrages in Miller County -- A few days ago the town of Tuscumbia, Miller County, Missouri was visited by a band of Guerillas who held it until they had robbed the stores of nearly all the goods and valuables they contained. After accomplishing the objective, they retired without molestation. We understand that none of the inhabitants were killed.� Neighbors were afraid to help neighbors for fear of Crabtree revenge. Crabtree captured 12 Union men. He let five go but lined the other seven up and shot them. One did not die. On John P. Starlings tombstone is the inscription, �Murdered by Bushwhackers in 1864.� Finally in September 1864, the very month in which Ulysses Grant Jones was born, the Union Militia subdued the Confederate leaders and Southern sympathizers in Miller County with savage ferocity. Military service ended in January 1865 but angry defeated rebels took revenge by burning the barns, fields and homes of their Union neighbors as they returned home. One thousand men from Miller County took part in the Civil War. Seven hundred served the Union and Three hundred served the Confederacy. What happened to Grandma Betsy�s family during this period? The Hill family was a clannish group. They seemed to move as a group and each member of the family was ready to help out other members. Elizabeth�s father, John Hill, must have died during this period because Polly Kizzire Hill�s name appears alone with her children in the 1870 census. Elizabeth�s brother, John A., had married Pauline (Polly) Burrell and she had three children, FRANK, LEWIS AND LUCY J. HILL. John�s wife died soon after Lucy�s birth. Elizabeth�s brother JACKSON HILL had married LEVI HAMPTON�s sister (*Mary) around 1856 and they had two children. Nancy was born in1857 and Johnnie (Wild John) born in1858. Jackson�s wife died and the children were raised by relatives. JOHN HILL (*Wild John, age 12) was with Lewis and Betsy Jones in the 1870 Census and Nancy (*age 13) was with her grandmother, Polly (*Kizzire) Hill (note: Alex & Jemima/Zemineah/Levi also living with Polly in this census. --SB) JACKSON HILL�s second marriage was to STACY WEST, daughter of WILLIAM & SUSAN WEST. (note: Susan (Brazier) West was William�s second wife, stepmother to Stacy. Stacy�s mother was VINA GARTIN, b. 1812 in VA; m. 3/Nov/1834 in Miller Co., MO; d. May, 1846 in MO--SB) Elizabeth�s brother WILLIAM survived the Civil War but took the red measles after he was home and died. Elizabeth�s step-daughter, LUCY ANN JONES married WILLIAM BURRELL. The fate of William Burrell has not been determined but later Grant Jones said that Lucy Ann Jones had married a man by the name of MESSERSMITH and had gone West with him. Grant Jones knew Lucy Ann Jones very well and had a deep affection for her. Mary Ann�s sister, (*Lucy Ann?), MARGARET JONES, who had married JAMES ROARK, was just a name to him. Margaret and her husband James Roark had evidently gone to Colorado earlier. Elizabeth�s sister, ELIZA HILL, married ROBERT HAWK, a hero of the Civil War who marched with Sherman through Georgia from Atlanta to the sea, who had many stories to tell of his experiences. After Lewis and Elizabeth Jones had moved from the Wells Farm to the Berry Farm their little daughter (*Eliza) died of a foot infection. She was never counted in the census since she was only eight years old. Elizabeth�s sister, MARY HILL, had married JAMES HAMILTON. Grandma Betsy Jones was named as �Housekeeper� in the U. S. Census, Her son Grant Jones described their house; �It was a double log house. Each room measured 16 feet by 24 feet. A separate log house was a kitchen and it had a small bedroom off the side of it. Kitchens in the south were usually outside the main house because the use of fireplaces for cooking and other tasks caused many fires. The house was all of logs instead of lumber. The logs were hewed flat on two sides. The cracks were chinked up with little blocks of wood about a foot long. These plastered up with clay. Most of the houses then were made of round logs but hewed log had a flat surface inside and out. These houses were more easily covered with siding when time permitted and the inside could be finished with wainscoting, paneling or plaster and paper. The floors were made of lumber sawed out of oak or hard maple trees. These boards were rough on both sides and were not tongued and grooved but were laid very close together.� His mother and sisters had to scrub these floors for cleanliness and the cleaner was lye water or water with soft soap made from wood lye. Corn cobs were used in place of brushes to scrub the floors. Scouring with sand and wear often made the floors smooth. Cooking took much of the women�s time and Grant Jones described cooking for me: �We had a large fireplace and chimney made of stones and a very wide stone hearth in the kitchen. There were two trammels made of iron which fastened in the wall of the fireplace. The trammels held the big iron pots used for cooking. The bar was hung so it could be swing in or out of the fire. If the fire got too hot, or if something needed only to be kept warm the heat could be adjusted by swinging the pot away from the fire. The big iron pots were used for making stews, soups, boiled meat and vegetables and for heating large quantities of water. Bread was baked in dutch ovens. This was one of the most useful cooking utensils. It was a round iron pot with a handle and an iron lid that had a half inch lip all around the edge. It was often called �Old Bread Oven�. Live coals were pulled from the fire onto the hearth and the oven placed in the coals. One must be careful that the coals under the oven were not too hot. Sometimes three short legs held the pot above the hearth. The iron lid could be hotter than the bottom since the food was not in direct contact with the lid. When the lid was covered with live coals the lip kept the coals from tumbling off. The oven was preheated and then carefully greased with a piece of pork rind . The sides and bottom inside were sprinkled with corn meal to prevent sticking foods. The oven was then ready for baking and corn bread or johnny cake could be poured in or biscuits placed in the over. Other uses include baking potatoes, cakes, cooking meats and heating stews. Sometimes our meat, including fish, sausage, bacon or ham, was fried in skillets over coals on the hearth. Some foods such as potatoes, corn, onions and nuts were baked in hot ashes.� �There was a cold spring house for milk and butter, a smoke house for cured meats and a back yard pool for keeping fish alive. The pool was fed by a spring and it was about 20 feet long, 12 feet wide, and around 6 or 8 feet deep. I remember seeing as many as 10 or 12 catfish in there at one time. These fish weighed from ten to fifty pounds a piece. They were fed on corn and were only taken out when it was time to eat them. The fish were caught on trot lines in the river and stored in the pool for future use.� �The rafters of the kitchen were used for storage. Dried fruits and vegetables such as green beans, navy beans, lentils, corn and peppers were hung there and also apples, peaches, pears and berries.� �Nearly everyone bleached fruit using burning sulphur as a preservative. To bleach fruit fill a 10 gallon tub with sliced apples then put two tablespoons of sulphur in a saucer and strike a match setting the sulphur on fire. Cover the tub with the burning sulphur and apples with a cloth and let it stay all day. At night take the sulphur out. Repeat the sulphur treatment for three days. Transfer the apples to a large jar and tie a clean cloth over the top of the jar. The apples could be eaten anytime without further preservation.� �Vegetables were also preserved by burying them in the ground. To preserve cabbage dig a shallow circular trench on a gently sloped plot of ground. The diameter of the trench will depend on the number of cabbage heads one plans to preserve. Dig a drainage ditch leading down hill away from the circular trench. Throw some of the dirt from the trench into the center of the circular trench and pat into the shape of a low mound. Cover the mound with straw. Pull up cabbages roots and all. Place the cabbages in the trench on the circular mound so that the root of each is covered by the head of another. Cover the circular trench with straw and dirt. The dirt had to be deep enough to prevent the cabbage from freezing. Since the temperature was relative mild the straw hole could be opened from time to time to remove the cabbage. The same method could be used for potatoes, turnips, apples and some other fruits.� The pattern of the meals was described by Grant Jones. �Our breakfast were always fried ham and eggs or bacon and eggs with hot biscuits, butter, maple syrup or molasses and fruit of some kind. When buckwheat cakes were served instead of biscuits we might have some homemade cured sausage. The morning drink was coffee for the grown ups and the youngsters had spice tea or sassafras from the bark of the tree that grew wild in the woods. Sassafras and spice tea were said to clean the blood and was said to be a health tonic. Our dinners, I suppose, were boiled meat, beans or potatoes, sometimes turnips, cabbages or wild greens. The bread was always made from corn. Suppers were nearly always much and milk or bread and milk.� Can you imagine spending a day with Grandma Betsy Jones back in 1868? Her alarm clock in the morning was the sunrise. Since the men wanted to go to the woods or fields early, breakfast always came first. The fires had been banked at night to hold the live coals for starting the fire in the morning. If the fire went out the children must be sent to a neighbor to bring live coals home on a shovel. If this wasn�t possible only the use of a flint and steel or perhaps later matches were available. Both these methods would be slower and delay the breakfast. A hot bed of coals was needed for biscuits to be cooked in the dutch oven and also for heat for the skillet to cook meat. After the breakfast there were cows to milk and the poultry to care for. The money crop in the poultry line was the flock of geese, 100 strong, kept for it�s feathers. Feathers for feather beds, pillows and feather comforters were secured from the flock of geese. Surplus feathers could be sold to Branham and Short�s store for money. Store records reveal the following purchases; Bond for feathers-$14, Dickerson 6 pounds of feathers $2.40 and Bilyeu 6 1/2 pounds of feathers $2.40. Grant Jones remembered that the feathers brought 50 cents a pound. The beds were straw ticks made usually of rye straw and also feather beds from the geese. The bed steads were 3 1/2 to 4 feet from the floor. There were no springs or slats but rope cords were fastened with wooden pins along the rails and drawn tight. At house cleaning the ropes were removed and boiled and washed and then put back on the bed. Sometimes the rails had holes bored for the ropes rather than pins. Sometimes the headboards also had holes and the rope was weaved back and forth about 4 inches apart. The children had trundle beds that were pushed under the big beds to get them out of the way during the day. The beds had six foot high posts which were used to hang mosquito netting curtains to protect the sleeper from malaria carried by mosquitoes. Sometimes the trundle beds were left under the big beds to provide the children with protection from mosquitoes. Those beds were difficult to make. It was necessary to stir the straw which tended to pack down. The feather ticks were lighter and could be shaken for the same purpose. If the bed looked lumpy it was smoothed with the handle of a abroom. The sheets were usually made of home spun cotton that was prepared by the women. Bleaching was accomplished by spreading them on the ground to receive the dew during the night. --continued in Part 6 Sherry Balow balowmsg@earthlink.net