Book Description

Chapter One The sky was a bright blue, and there was not a cloud to be seen anywhere. A soft warm southerly breeze was blowing. I paused in my labors to look around. The hills were sprinkled with the bloom of Rhododendrons, pinks, and purple with a scattering of white. There were the deeper pinks mountain Laurel; mixed with an abundance of wild flowers of every variety. It was a fine day! A soft warm southerly breeze brought the aroma of fresh baked bread, blend¬ed with the cherry and hickory from the fire where Paw was clearing stumps for a corn field for next year, and the unmistakable pleasing smell of honeysuckle. I could see a thin trace of smoke from the fire where he was burning brush and logs on top of the stumps. I William Lee Staulworth was a man by some folk's standards, for I was big for my age. I was used to good hard work and it had filled me out all over. I stood five feet and ten inches tall in my bare feet, and weighted around one hundred and sixty pounds. With brown sandy colored hair that hung to my shoulders, and slate blue-green eyes. Paw always said, "I would be a big man and stand well over six feet tall". He said, "six feet and over ran strong in our family". I will be sixteen next spring, on the fifth day of April, 1734. I had been mowing hay with a mowing scythe in the north bottom since just after sun rise this morning. Paw and his older brother Obadiah had cleared this bottom two years ago. Now there was a good stand of grass growing on it, and it would take all the hay we could put up, to winter feed two milk cows and Paw's team of horses. We had moved into this little valley up in the blue hills of Virginia two years ago, after Paw's father had died. We buried him down by the mouth of what some folks called Cherry creek, under a huge oak tree. That's where we had buried Paw's Mother a few years earlier. She died from the Small Pox epidemic in the spring of 1731, which ran rampart from New Orleans to Boston. Some folks had called it, "The American Plague"! Paw carved their names in that old tree; it took him half a day For him do it, but it was a good job of carving letters. Paw could read his letters and so could Maw. They would read to us after supper and all the chores were done, they would read from the family Bible and sometimes from one of the other three books Paw kept in the old chest. They must have had some kind of learning? Where or when they did not say nor did I ask. Paw spoke little about the history of our family, of who we were, but he did say, "We were an old and proud family used to hard work, and we were honest people". Paw had told us, "those who carried our name were often hunted down and killed, for we had a common enemy"! He wouldn't talk much more than that about whom our enemy might be, or why. Paw had to sell his fathers place to pay off debts, after his father had died, and there was very little left. That's when we moved into this little valley nestled in among these blue hills of Virginia. His older brother Obadiah, just up and took off one day last fall, saying he was going to look to the setting sun. No one has heard anything about him since. Paw had trailed him for a week before he finally lost his trail. Paw said, "He had fol¬lowed his trail over the mountains to a big river flowing south-westerly, where he lost his trail". I had often looked towards those western mountains and wondered what lay on the other side, and beyond. When we were lucky enough to have visitors, Maw would insist they stay for supper. After which we would all sit around and listen as they told stories of far off land's and of the going on down in the tide-water country back east. That's what folks called it. Sometimes someone would mention the name Claiborne's, and I could see Paw stiffen up a bit, and then glance towards Maw. She would stop and give Paw a strange look, but they never mentioned it, that I recall, but it was a thing to remember! Our life was good