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
This old house:
The Souther-Dyer House, 1850
“It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a
house t’ make it home” declared poet Edgar A. Guest.
If the roof and walls of the old Souther-Dyer
house on Town Creek School Road near New Liberty Church, Choestoe, could speak, quite a story of life and
living would unfold.
The house was built in 1850 by John Souther
(1803-1889) for his son, John Combs Hayes Souther
(1827-1891) who married Nancy Collins (1829-1888) on
Thompson Collins was the first with the Collins last name to
settle in the Choestoe District of Union
County, coming before the county was formed in 1832.
John Souther settled his family
there about 1835 or 1836. Both families
had migrated from
John Souther as well as Thompson
Collins had large land holdings. John
bequeathed 160 acres (land lot # 150) to his son, John Combs Hayes Souther, who went by the name of Jack. It was on some of this land that the log cabin
was built with fireplaces and fieldstone chimneys constructed at each
end of the house. In the home that Jack
and Nancy Collins Souther established, ten
children were born, nine of whom reached adulthood.
Their children and spouses were Mary Elizabeth Souther who married Smith Loransey
Brown; Celia Souther, named for her
grandmother Celia Self Collins, who died at age 16; William Albert Souther who married Elizabeth Caroline “Hon”
Dyer; Sarah Evaline Souther
who married Bluford Elisha
Dyer (a brother to Elizabeth Dyer); Joseph Newton Souther
who married Elderada Swain; Nancy Roseanne
Souther who married William Hulsey;
Catherine Souther who married William
Bruce Moore; Martha Souther who married,
first, Jasper Todd Hunter, then, upon his death, married his brother,
James Hunter; John Padgett Souther who
married Martha Clementine Brown; and Ruthie Carolina Souther who married, first, William Sullivan,
and, second, James Logan Souther.
JCH “Jack” Souther was a farmer. He had droves of hogs that ranged on the
mountains near his home, feeding upon acorns and foraging other food
from the wild. The hogs were herded up in
the fall and driven to market in
Covered wagons went from Choestoe
across Tesnatee Gap into
In the cabin, Nancy Collins Souther
carded, spun and wove the wool sheared from the Souther
sheep. Cloth for clothes, warm woolen
blankets and coverlets came from her loom. She
was industrious, and taught her daughters the skills of weaving,
knitting, and sewing. They gathered herbs
for medicines and dried the fruits and vegetables grown on the farm to
preserve them for winter use. Nothing was
wasted. The Souther
family lived as well as anyone in the valley, due to their
industriousness and frugality.
The bottom lands along Town Creek yielded good crops. Life was good in the chinked log cabin where
they were cozy in winter when the fierce winds blew and snow covered
the landscape.
On
Children, grandchildren and great grandchildren as well as other
kin and friends loved visiting Sarah Evaline
Souther Dyer who lacked only three months
reaching the vintage age of 102. She died
Her father, John Combs Hayes Souther,
objected to the war and hid out in caves in the mountains to escape
enlistment and excessive pressure exerted by the Home Guard to join the
Confederacy.
Sarah could remember Indians still in the mountains when she was
a child, and how they came to the Souther
house peddling baskets and other crafts. She
still had some of the split-oak baskets to show the grandchildren. One was used to gather eggs and another for
freshly-laundered clothes that had soaked up the sun from the lines at
the side of the yard.
A son of Sarah Souther Dyer,
Franklin Hedden Dyer and his family lived
in the house and looked after his aging mother until her death in 1959. He moved sometime after her death to
A few years ago Mr. Bill Duckworth purchased the old Souther-Dyer house. He
is in the process of restoring it, peeling off layers of construction
added through the years and returning it to the original logs used by
John and John Combs Hayes Souther to
construct the house in 1850.
For more than 150 years the structure has stood as a monument to
the hardiness of early settlers who set the tone of life in the
The Souther-Dyer House, 1850
c2003 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published
[Ethelene Dyer Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She
may be reached at e-mail [email protected];
phone 478-453-8751; or mail
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