APRIL 14, 1943

Last Monday Lena, my little nephew Bob Chesley, and I took Mr. Williams down into the old Leon River community about where he had been telling. Went to old Rock Church, to the Rock Church Cemetery, where famous people were buried, though at this time it is so overgrown you can’t see any of it. He pointed out with his cane the location of old Snow’s Mill. Took a picture of him doing so.

Then we went to a very old cemetery further down the river on the present Boyer place where the monuments were just prairie stone originally. This was the place where Bill Payne had lived and nearby he had killed Poe. Believe the records show the place was sold to Payne by D. C. (Crockett) Hendricks. At this old graveyard was the broken fragment of a headstone. I thought I could still read the words "Jesse Griffith," and thought it was the burial place of the school teacher of that name.

Mrs. Amanda Evans had told Felix Williams and me of the occasion when her father, old Man White and Griffith were coming horseback from Gatesville to Hamilton in 1860 and were attacked by Indians with arrows, and both were wounded and Griffith died from it. I thought the stone showed 1859.

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