For the Hannah family of Green Hill..... I am always impressed and touched by the bond maintained between our great grandpa John F. Buck Hannah and his brother, James Hiram Jim Hannah. Both of them were raised on their parents farm here in Green Hill. Jim was born May 30, 1875. Sometime around or a little prior to 1900, Jim Hannah left Green Hill and went to Dunklin County, Missouri as a single man. I am not sure what led him to Dunklin County, but I feel pretty surely that it was to go to his sister, Frances Fannie Hannah Richardson. She had married Wiley Richardson In Lauderdale County, AL in 1888. Dunklin County, Missouri Deed Records show that W.W. Richardson purchased 40 acres of land (inside the present day city limits of Cardwell, Missouri) in 1894. I feel pretty sure this was Wiley, and that maybe he and Fannie were living in Cardwell by this year. So, it was most likely to his sister Fannies that Jim went. Jim married Alice Stewart in Dunklin County sometime around 1900. She was originally from Lauderdale County, Tennessee. This is the county around the area of Dyersburg, Tennessee. I am not sure how, when, where Uncle Jim met Alice and I know nothing of her family. There are many existing letters, starting with the earliest around 1910 and the latest around 1945, that Uncle Jim wrote from Cardwell to his brother Buck Hannah here in Green Hill. The letters are very insightful about Jims life in Cardwell and how he felt about his family back here in Green Hill. In the letters, he continuously invites Buck to come out to visit. He asks about family members in Green Hill and he gives information about Green Hill folks who had immigrated to Dunklin County. In the early years after he arrived in Cardwell, around 1909 - 1915 era, he waged an intense campaign, by letter, to persuade Buck Hannah to purchase land in Dunklin County, as well. In one letter he even included a hand drawn map of a farm for sale that he wanted Buck to go in partnership and buy with him. I was surprised by the letters, that great grandpa Buck made various trips out to Cardwell to visit Uncle Jim. So did their sister, Aunt Emma Hannah, and even on one occasion (at least) their mother, (great great grandma Almedia Holtsford Hannah) went out to Cardwell. We are able to document, through his letters, Jims progress in obtaining a home and farm in Dunklin County. He purchased forty acres there in 1910. There was an older house, with a dogtrot in the middle, on the farm and Uncle Jim and his family were photographed in front of it. Uncle Jim farmed and also did carpenter work during his spare time. In one letter he writes that he had been helping to cut big butts (large trees) down near Red Onion, Arkansas (a community about a mile south of his home). Eventually, but I am not sure of the date, Uncle Jim built a new large frame farmhouse on his farm. This house still stands today and has housed the Hannah family for many years. While standing on the front porch of Uncle Jim Hannahs house, one looks across the broad, flat cottonfields and can see the levee along the St. Francis River and also the Cockrum Cemetery far in the distance. The Cockrum Church of Christ is across the road and a bit north from Uncle Jims house. It is interesting to realize that Uncle Jims house has been the drawing magnet for visitors from the Hannah family for decades. Included here are some photos of the old house, the new house and the family. It is interesting to note in the photo of the old house how there are so many trees in the background, remnants of the Dunklin County riverbottom swamp forest. In one letter that Uncle Jim wrote back home he stated that they had purchased dynamite and were planning to blast out the last remaining stumps on his farm. Large ditches were dug all around this area of boothill Missouri to drain the swamps. (Side note: Interestingly, mom has always told a story passed down by her dad, Raymond Hannah, about great grandpa Buck. The story goes that when he was a young man he was working on a canal somewhere and many people died from malaria. An old lady gave him onions or hot peppers out of her garden and he ate one daily. He attributed this daily diet to his never contracting malaria. So.....where was this canal he worked on. I have figured it might have been the old Muscle Shoals Canal here at home.....but......could he have gone out with Uncle Jim as a young man to work in Dunklin County in the drainage projects there??????The more I read of the huge drainage works that were undertaken in Missouri and the more I read of the letters between the two of them that reveal how familiar Buck was with the Dunklin County area.....the more I wonder about if it just MIGHT HAVE BEEN the huge drainage ditches out in Missouri that great grandpa Buck helped to build) When mom, Louise Smith, and I first visited Cardwell in 1991, we found Uncle Jims house. At that time, his daughter-in-law, Lucille Hannah May, was still living there. She was still living there upon our return multiple times. Lucille has now passed away. When I visited Cardwell last week and made the ritualistic trip down to Uncle Jims house, on state route AC, 3 1/2 miles south west of Cardwell, I found the house empty. Cotton grew right up to yards edge, as usual. Three towering pecan trees, I am sure that were set out by Uncle Jim himself, graced the yard. Collin Brown and myself stood on the front porch....just as generations of Hannahs (Missouri ones and Green Hill ones) have done before. The hooks from Uncle Jims porch swing were still screwed into the porch ceiling. But no swing hung there now to sit on and swap stories of the lives of the Hannahs from two different states - but all with a common background. I looked across the fields toward the St. Francis River and the Cockrum Cemetery, as Collin and I stood on the porch, and I thought of Uncle Jim and great grandpa Buck. And I wondered.....what they would have thought back in 1915, when the two of them walked those cotton field roads together, if they had known that one day Collin Brown (Bucks great great grandson) and Brian Smith (Bucks great grandson) would stand on that porch in 2013 and look across the cotton fields. I am afraid that Uncle Jims house wont survive long, now that it is empty. Cotton rows made soon run across the spot where where Uncle Jim and Great Grandpa Buck once sat on the swing together. And I hope that somehow, in some way, I have passed on to another generation the story of these two Hannah brothers....ancestor and kinfolk, and of how a brothers bond CAN be maintained without telephone, internet, and even day to day contact. I think there is a lot to be learned from this long distance relationship that these two brothers maintained. And to make the trip from Green Hill to Uncle Jims house, as our family has done many times, is an experience that has a connecting effect....connecting us to these two brothers and the things they said and the things they did, the work they accomplished and their dreams and hopes and aspirations. And I told Collin, as we came away....I dont expect you to feel at home in Cardwell, but I do hope this trip makes you feel a connection to this place...a place that our family has been connected to for many years. I hope the legacy and stories of Uncle Jim Hannah stay alive and are repeated for many more years. It is a story that is too beautiful and valuable to our family to be forgotten.....that far from Green Hill, amid the flat, sandy cottonfields of southern Missouri, another Hannah boy lived his life and raised his family and left a legacy. For all the Hannahs, please repeat the story of Uncle Jim Hannah to your descendants some day. James Hiram Jim Hannah - Born May 30, 1875 Died Feb. 23, 1969 Married Alice Stewart.......and to this couple were born: 1. Jessie Hannah 2. Lessie Hannah 3. Bessie Hannah 4. Infant Daughter (Jim said they would have named her Tressie if she had lived. She is buried in the Cockrum Cemetery, Cardwell, Missouri, in an unidentified grave.) 5. James Houston
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 18:44:34 +0000
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