The Old Segrest Homeplace
Although they arrived in Macon County soon after it was ceded by the Creek Indians, I have never heard of my Segrest forebears owning any plantation. Other Segrests who were a part of the same Nineteenth Century migration into Macon County apparently acquired significant amounts of land, but I do not believe that my ancestors did. If they did, they must have lost it long before I came along. My immediate ancestors seemed to have moved from farm to farm in the Macon County area from the time that they arrived in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. I know that Daddy’s immediate family lived briefly in Tallassee Alabama for a very brief time when he was very young.
The closest thing to a “homeplace” for my forebears, was the place that I am calling “Uncle Earls.” Daddy’s family apparently lived there off and on for quite some time, but to my knowledge, they did not own the place until Daddy bought it, in 1934, along with the land where Daddy built the Little House. He bought 160 acres in all. Daddy sold 80 acres to Uncle Earl, that included the place where Uncle Earl lived with Grandma and Grandpa. But the family was already living there, and had lived there in the past, before Daddy bought it. So, Uncle Earl’s home place was more or less the Segrest homeplace, for my closest Segrest relatives. Grandpa died there in 1944, and Grandma in 1948. Daddy had bought it, and Uncle Earl bought the part that included the old house pictured above from Daddy.
The old house where Uncle Earl and Grandma lived was torn down, and Uncle Earl used the salvageable material to build a new structure sometime after 1944. Before that, it was an old fashioned four room house with a “dog trot” hallway down the center. I don’t actually remember the hallway, or whether the ends had been closed in. The old roof line drained in four directions, not quite coming to a point at the very top. The new roof on the house that Uncle Earl built tapered two ways with a single roof line at the top traversing the entire house from east to west. The hallway was eliminated, and there were six rooms in the remodeled house. It included a “double” fireplace with a single chimney that served both the living room on the front, and the center room on the back that was a combination bedroom/sitting room. Uncle Earl was a carpenter by trade, and did most of the reconstruction.
The main house of my recollection is Uncle Earl’s rebuilt house. Grandma died at Uncle Earl’s in 1948, the same year that Uncle Earl married Aunt Daisy.
One of the peculiarities of Uncle Earl’s house, or it may have been the old house, that for some reason I accepted as quite normal at the time was that all through the house, on the side of the doors opposite the hinges, there was a triangular hole where the corner of the door had been cut off. The quite logical explanation was that it allowed the cats to freely roam the house in search of mice! But Daddy and Uncle Earl told the story of a dark night in the old house long before, when something strange entered through the hole and was making a strange noise as it made its way into a corner. They decided that they needed to catch whatever it was, and used quilts to jump on and almost smother an old setting hen. Stories like that were very amusing to them. They told them over and over again!
The house was furnished with old fashioned, cane bottomed straight chairs. I think that all of the grandkids—my cousins—must have learned to “plow” with those old chairs. You see, you could turn them upside down, with the top of the back and the front of the seat on the floor, and hold onto the back legs of the chair as if it were a plow. The front corners of the top of the front legs were worn smooth and flat from miles of plowing!
Soon after the remodeling of the house, Uncle Earl decided that he needed a storm pit. Before that, Uncle Willie had a storm pit—some boards and tin over a ditch on the other side of Uncle Earl’s house from the Little House, as I remember it. I don’t ever remember going to Uncle Willie’s storm pit, and don’t really know why anyone would have gone there! The “ditch”, as we called it, was much more useful as a place for kids to play. You could slide down the clay banks—especially if there was pine straw on the bank. But I guess if it “came up a cloud”, Uncle Willie actually got in that thing. If there had been a real flood, he would have drowned!
But Uncle Earl built a real storm pit. He dug a hole about 10 feet square and four feet deep right behind the west end of the back porch of the remodeled house. (Of course, I had to help dig, at about age six , and enjoyed it a lot!) The entrance to the storm pit was a covered stairwell that led down into it. It had a concrete floor, and concrete block sides. The dirt that came out of the hole was around the west and south sides. On the east side the concrete wall came up above ground level, and a couple of blocks were left off, leaving openings that the “old” folks could look through. There was a roof, with rolled roofing. It was a neat place. With the passage of time, it became a bit moist and dank, but that was okay. You could store vegetables down there!
Some of my best memories involve “heading to the hole, ” (our affectionate name for the storm pit) because it was “coming up a cloud”. Sometimes Uncle Earl would meet us half way, and help us across the fence to make sure we got there safely. We never got blown away, like Grandmother and Granddaddy Mote’s house did in Calera in 1910!
Out in front of Uncle Earl’s, where the lane that led down from the big road turned west to go to the Little House, was a huge Black Oak Tree. The tree was actually on Mr. Frank Pierce’s place and the family story was that many years earlier, the Pierces cut the tree down to keep it from sapping up the moisture from the adjoining field. Sprouts sprang from the stump. Grandpa Segrest cut off all sprouts but one. That one sprout became the huge oak tree. At one time, it was actually marked with a metal plaque by people from Auburn University, denoting the largest black oak tree in Alabama! Under that tree, and in that tree, was a great place to play. Forks in limbs made a good place for a tree house, but the limbs were so big, your hardly needed any boards. Many watermelons, cantaloupes, and tomatoes have been shaded, eaten and sold/or from the shade of that old tree!
My father, Robert Earl Segrest, Sr., was born on November 15th, 1911 on a little farm known at that time as the Dunn place. If you are traveling on Macon County Rd. 30 and pass Bradford’s Chapel Methodist Church on your right, continue on for about 1/2 mile and you will see Fletcher Segrest Rd. on your right. About 1/2 mile down Fletcher Segrest Rd. you will go up a hill and the rd. makes a turn to the left. The house was about 200 yards off to the right. This same house had also been the site of the birth of Earl’s next older brother, Forrest Chandler Segrest, Sr., who was born there on Dec. 27th, 1909. They lived on the Dunn place until Dec. of 1912, when they moved to the Plant place. The Plant place and what has become known as the Segrest family homeplace are one and the same. At that time, however, the property belonged to a man named A.K. Plant.
The following year, on Oct. 27th, 1913, James Woodrow Segrest(Uncle Jody) was born.
In Oct. of 1914, Earl’s Grandfather, the Reverend J.E.D. Braswell and three of his children, Willie, Ida and Elizabeth moved from the Richardson place to Notasulga. Immediately after they moved out Grandpa and his family moved into the house. When my father was sharing this family history with me, no explanation was given for this move. I can only assume that it had something to do with the rental arrangements.
One year later, in Oct. of 1915, they moved to Dorman Av. in Tallassee. Grandpa and the two oldest children, Marvin and Carrie, took jobs in the local cotton mill to support the family.
On Feb. 17th, 1917, Carrie Mae married Pinkston Slay. The ceremony was performed by Reverend Braswell in the house on Dorman Av.
On March 1st, one of Earl’s older brothers, Ralph Vernor, known to everyone simply as R.V., along with his uncle Willie Braswell who had come down from Notasulga, returned to the Plant place to prepare the land for spring planting. Grandpa Segrest had worked out a deal to farm the place on halves with Mr. Plant.
On March 3rd, Marvin married Runnie Denny at the Denny home located just around the corner from Dorman Av.. Runnie’s sister was present and very displeased that Runnie was getting married. She cried and created quite a scene throughout the ceremony.
On May 12th of that year(1917), Earl, Forrest, Jody, Verla, Willie Reese, their mother Minnie and her sister Elizabeth(Aunt Sissie) rode the train from Tallassee to Calebee to join R.V. and uncle Willie at the Plant place. Grandpa stayed behind in Tallassee until August to work off the family’s debt to the cotton mill “company store.” There was a flag stop on the B&SE railroad where it crossed what is now Macon County Rd. 9 just north of Calebee creek.
Incidentally, Minnie’s sister Elizabeth had come to live with the Segrest family in Tallassee in Feb. of 1917, shortly after their sister Ida had married a man named Charley Wynn. So the Segrest family got off the train at Calebee, walked up the Calebee Trail and arrived at the Plant place at sundown.
In Dec. of that same year they left the Plant place and moved to a house on the Ben Walker place. This house was located on what is now Macon County Rd. 9 about a mile north of the flag stop on the B&SE.
In the spring of 1918, Marvin and Pinkston came from Tallassee along with their wives Runnie and Carrie to live with Grandpa and help farm. Grandpa was farming on halves with a man named Bob Davis. There were 13 people living in the two room house until July 5th when Carrie gave birth to a son, Pinkston Jr, for a total of 14. Room was so scarce that some of the children slept in the box with the dirty clothes.
On Dec. 4th, 1918, the family returned to the Plant place where they would stay until 1927. On the night following their return Grandma Segrest gave birth to a son. The baby was born dead. He was given the name Carl, and R.V. and Marvin carried him in a shoe box to Bradford’s Chapel and buried him in the family plot.
On June 1st, 1925 Earl’s Aunt Sissie(Elizabeth)died in the house on the Plant place. She was buried at Bradford’s Chapel.
In Nov. of 1925 Verla married Wiley Haney at the Tallassee home of a man named Ed Lackey.
That same month Allen Jordan brought his mother Mary, formerly Mary Anne Boles, to live with the Segrest family. She was the sister of Susan Francis Boles who was the wife of David Lemuel Segrest, Grandfather of Earl and his siblings. Mary and her husband had once lived on what was known as the Jordan place. The house was located 200 yards or so east of Uncle Jody’s old house where I recall there being a stand of magnolias when I was a child. They may possibly still be there.
On January 7th, 1927 Marvin accidently ran over his son, Linwood with the school bus he was driving. They were coming home from school and Linwood was flagging the bus across the railroad near Milstead station. The road at that time crossed the tracks twice between Milstead station and Calebee creek. They were at the crossing nearest Milstead when the accident occurred. Linwood died later that day at Dr. Lightfoot’s office.
On Dec. 12th, 1927 the family moved to Calebee into a house known in my lifetime as Almo Johnson’s house. Grandpa began running a store down at the railroad crossing below the house. This was the same crossing where the family got off the train when they returned to the Plant place in 1917.
Grandpa was running the store on halves with a man named Ed Reynolds aka Red Reynolds. When his mother died around the 1st of June that year(1927), Ed came to the store and took all the money on hand. He was on his way to Fitzpatrick and apparently needed the money for his mother’s funeral arrangements. In any case he left the store without money to operate and that, along with the floods that had come that year spelled the end for the store. Daddy recalled it raining so much that June that he and some of the other boys went swimming in the corn field beside Calebee creek just below the store.
On Dec. 12th, 1928 the family moved back to the Plant place. This would be Grandpa and Grandma Segrests’ last move.
I am grateful for the opportunity to share this first hand information from Daddy. I will always be thankful that I took the time to listen and record his account of some of the major events in his early life and those of his family. Thank you for helping to preserve information that can easily be lost with the passage of time. I look forward to exploring your website and sharing my thoughts on your ideas and opinions. While I’m not an advanced scholar I am not shy with my thoughts and opinions and enjoy engaging in open discussions with people who have varying opinions and are free to express them in an open forum. Thank you again for inviting me to share Daddy’s story.