THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Rev. James J.
Hood: minister, musician, woodcrafter
I was perhaps 5
years old when I first remember seeing the Rev. James J. Hood at
Not announcing
the next number, he played an introduction and began to sing a solo in
his resounding baritone voice, I Am
a Poor, Wayfaring Stranger. Every time I hear
that old hymn I remember how Rev. Jim Hood sang
it.
After he played
the organ and led the singing, he then went to the pulpit to preach. I
don’t remember what he preached about. In those early years my mind was
not focused for long on any one topic, but found many trains of thought
to pursue as the minister preached. I can remember, however, being
impressed with the Rev. Jim Hood, whom everyone knew, because he lived
“up on the River” at a community in upper Choestoe called “Hood’s
Chapel.” The Hoods had settled there when the county was young, and the
first church and school in that community had been named Hood’s Chapel,
a name that carried even after the church changed its name to Union.
Later as I grew
and came to know more about this mountain preacher who lived up near
the headwaters of the Notla (also spelled Nottely) River from my Dyer
family did I come to appreciate his many talents and abilities. Not
only was he a well-read, able preacher, self-taught in many respects,
but he was a musician who could hold “singing schools” using shaped
notes; he composed music and wrote words for his own songs; he was a
woodcrafter, a carpenter, a cabinet-maker; he farmed, was a blacksmith,
a sawmiller, a teacher, and an inventor.
Born
James J. Hood
married Ollie Saxon on
Rev. Hood’s
woodworking shop was well-equipped with lathes, saws, routers and other
tools. Many of the pieces of equipment he used he fashioned himself in
his blacksmith shop. He operated the machinery with water power that he
had ingeniously channeled to his shop. It has been said that more than
6,000 handmade chairs, benches, pulpit lecterns and other hand-crafted
items were made in his shop. He taught woodworking in the vocational
division at
Among his
several inventions was a burglar alarm. Like an earlier inventor in the
Choestoe District, Micajah Clark Dyer who
invented the flying machine before the Wright Brothers, some of Mr.
Hood’s inventions were firsts as well. However, he did not have the
money to pursue patents for his inventions and so was not officially
credited with them. He was one of the first persons in the area to weld
steel to iron while he was still a lad working in the blacksmith shop.
He taught
himself to play the organ and piano without benefit of instruction
books or teacher. He determined the relationship of the printed notes
on the treble and bass clefs of written hymns and where the
corresponding notes were located on the keyboard. No doubt he possessed
an ear for music, for his pitch was true. Once he had learned music
through teaching himself, he then could teach others with great
enthusiasm and skill. Some of his own compositions were gospel songs, I
Know There Is a Rest Beyond, and The
Pearly Gates Open Wide for Me.
His seminary
training was by his own oil lamp late into
the nights after working hard in the daytime. He ordered Hebrew and
Greek textbooks and proceeded to teach himself
enough of the languages of the Old and New Testaments to satisfy his
curiosity about what seemed to him to be discrepancies in translations.
His ministry as a preacher was wide-spread throughout the mountain
area, not only to most all of the Baptist churches
in
Personable,
dignified, intellectual, hard-working, kind, talented and devout, the
Rev. James J. Hood touched many lives for good. He and his beloved wife
Ollie were married for fifty-four years. He died
[Ethelene
Dyer Jones is a retired educator, freelance writer, poet, and historian.
She may be reached at e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail
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