WPA Interviews

Alley, Joseph H.

Interview with Joseph H. Alley, Lebanon, Oregon, aged 100 years and 4 months.

My name is Joseph H. Alley. I was born in Scott County. (we used to call it Jeff Davis County) Virginia, April 4th, 1837. I am therefore one hundred years and four months of age.

My Father's name was Abijah G. Alley. My mother's name was Mariah Butcher Alley. My father when an old man could say that he had personally known every president of the United States from Washington to Lincoln. He always went up to the capital to attend every inauguration of a new president, and they would recognize him when they saw him, and greet him as a friend. It was very easy for them to know him for he wore a very long, very white beard. Father went up to see President Buchanan. He told him, `Mr. Buchanan, you are the last man who will serve out your term of office in peace.' Sure enough, when Lincoln came into office the war broke out. When father went up to Washington again they said to him: - `Mr. Alley, you prophesied when the war would break out, now tell us when it will end?'

Father told them: `This is a free land. The war will keep on until every man within its borders is truly free.'

My mother was born and raised and married in Philadelphia. She first married a man named Johnson and has one child. She had two brothers named George, and Bill Butcher.

My father was a preacher all his life and an evangelist. He did not believe in sectarian religion, but he tried to treat all men as brothers. He had three big orchards on his farm, and when we were gathering the apples he would always leave some on the trees for the poor. He used to say, "Don't gather them all, boys, leave some for the passer-by."

My father was also a great writer and a poet. I used to know a great many of his poems, but I cannot remember any of them now, only one verse that went like this:-

I am not a widow, but I am a queen,
I look upon the laboring man as being poor and mean."

My grandfather was very wealthy and owned a big farm and lots of stock and niggers.

In those old days the lot of a poor man was very hard. If a man got into debt and could not pay the law would take everything that he possessed to satisfy the debt. There was a poor man whom I knew who illustrates what I mean. He and his wife had worked very hard and had got together about six sheep, a few pigs, a spinning wheel, and a few cooking vessels. They were doing very well until the wife decided that she wanted a bureau. The cost was twenty dollars, and the man who sold it to them said, "I will take twenty cords of wood and five dollars for it. He went ahead and cut and delivered the twenty cords of wood, but when the time came he could not produce the five dollars. They seized everything that the poor man had. The Sheriff cried off the sale. They sold off the sheep and pigs, the spinning wheel, and everything else, but no one had much money and it did not come to enough. Finally they put up the bureau. My father bid fifty cents. Another preacher bid a dollar and got it. The wood- the bureau- all of their property was gone, they had nothing left.

The poor white men were held down to Negro prices. When a niggar man was sick his owner had to get a doctor for him and give him food. The white man got none of these things, was always in debt to the planter, and when he was old and worn out no one took any care of him.

When I was a boy I went to school only four or five months of each year. The schools were not public schools like we have now, but were taught by private teachers in certain cabins about the country. Each scholar would pay for his own schooling, perhaps $1.50 per month or so. Later on the neighborhood built a fine new schoolhouse down on the Turnpike. It was made from hewn poplar logs. Each log was hewn to about 2 x 12 inch dimensions and then laid up like a crib. People from miles about came to look and to wonder at that fine new schoolhouse.

People raised their own wool and flax then, and made their own clothes. We always had a new pair of britches made in the spring of the year. A few men wore leather britches, but not many. I remember a man telling me about that. He was out hunting one day, walking in the wet snow. His leather britches began to sneak down on him. He cut the legs off with his knife. Then he went home and sat by the fire. Pretty soon after that his britches began to sneak up on him.

We worked oxen in those days, but we also had the finest kind of horses. Oxen are great to work with, though. Give me a cable and a yoke of oxen and I can roll more logs together than half a dozen men.

My Cousin Jim Alley lived four miles from Scott Post Office. The place was called Alley Valley. I often went over there to see him. At that time I was going with a girl-was as good as engaged to her, but she gave me the mitten one night going to camp meeting. I didn't like that, but anyway she got compromised soon.

After that I had another girl. Her name was Liz. I took her to a hanging one day. We rode horseback to the place where the hanging was to be. On the way I gave her one of my watches to wear. I had two watches then. One of them was a big bulls-eye with a gold heart slide on the cord. I gave her that one. When we came to the place where the hanging was to be there was such a crowd that we couldn't find any place to tie our horses. We had to stop two miles out and hitch them in a cedar patch. The hanging was to be in the opening of the hills where there was a natural amphitheater. There were two or three thousand people crowded in there. Liz and I walked down and got separated in the crowd. She went on in the crowd and I stayed down near the gallows. When the hanging was over Liz and I met back at the horses. There wasn't a block or a stone around there for her to mount by, so I held my hands to help her up. She mounted first and when I turned around to get my own horse she skipped out with another man, watch and all.

Cousin Jim Alley, from Alley Valley gave a party that night. There was a little girl there named Jane Harris. She liked me pretty well. There was another girl named Jintsey Quillen. I had her cornered and was courting her, but the Harris girl got us separated. After that I and another young fellow went off to see a pretty, second-class girl. Society was divided into three classes there. There were the high ups who owned land and niggers, the second class who were reenters, and the real low hand-me-down class. My mother always wanted us to associate with those who were just a little higher up.

We went down to see this second class girl and had a good time. She was pretty and smart, but when we went back Jintsey ragged me. I got mad. The next day I went down to Harrises. I liked that Harris girl. I went in and was introduced to her and made a date. We went out together and got engaged.

The next Sunday I went to see Liz to get my watch. She tried to make up but I wouldn't do it. Two or three months later I was going to get married. Liz heard about it and went to my cousins and borrowed a horse. She went out to meet me. I was going over the Copper Ridge Road. There was a new road, and an old road. I took the new road over the hill, and she took the old one, so we never met. If we had there is no knowing what would have happened. Her name was Lizabeth Better.

Liz Better married later, a little citified fellow by the name of Thorn. He used to take fits, and after we were in the army he was sitting by a fire of cannel coal and took a fit and fell into the fire. He was badly burned. A while after that he just disappeared; must have died I guess. Liz was following the army then, and she came to me and wanted me to help her down the river, but I wouldn't have anything to do with her. She thought that I was parted from my wife and she could get me again. Did you know that the Rebels divorced all women whose husbands left their wives for the North? I was divorced that way, but my wife came to me before the war was over. She came alone over three hundred miles across country without roads, carrying her child.

There were four brothers in our family, and one half-brother. When the war began we were running a mill on Clinch River. It was a grist and wood-working mill. (Note: The Clinch River is now an important part of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The great new Norris Dam is on this river, Leslie Haskin, Field Worker.) The mill was on an island of about twenty-five acres. The island was formed by the dam making a gut which completely surrounded the mill. We had bought the mill only three years before and had paid $6,000 for it. Besides that we had over $1,000 worth of tools in the shop.

We knew that the rebels were going to try and get us and we had a watch out to give us warning, but he thought that it was a false alarm so we all went up the river shocking oats. We had it all planned that we were to leave soon- to slip away up the river and meet at Dripping Springs and go away, but the Union Army was coming up Cumberland Gap 10,000 strong and my cousin, Dave Ramsey went down to the fort and swore that all the Alleys had got together and were going down the valley to meet the Yanks, "killing women and children as they went."

They sent out a company after us. There was no one on the Island then but my wife, a boy and a nigger man. My wife saw them coming. The rebels had taken all of the boats, but we had a canoe hidden behind the mill. My wife crossed over on the dam and came to warn us up the cliff. The rebels were searching the island and cussing and swearing. They saw my wife climbing the cliff and called for her to stop or they would shoot, but she just kept on. They caught her and sent men to search for us. I was on the oat stack and saw them coming. I asked them what they wanted, and they said, "We're going to take you down to the ford and shoot every damn one of you."

Up to that time we had avoided taking the oath. (oath of allegiance to the Confederacy). They took us down to the ford and across by the ferry. There were about 1,500 men waiting there, all rebels, (I always called them Tories). They all had knives made from files hanging from cords at their wrists. When we were going down we said to Dave Ramsey, "You will go first, we will follow you. We will sell our lives as dear as we can."

They took us on trial. Squire Wes. Beckley was the judge. There was a crooked-mouthed big man who was the chief spokesman. They talked it all over and went away to one side to decide on the verdict. They stood around for a long time talking and motioning together. Finally Wes Beckley came back and said that the decision was that we must take the oath of allegiance.

The men there didn't like that. They said, "No, damn em'. Shoot `em all!"

Beckley said, "No. If they run away they are cowards anyway."

They made us put up our hands and swear to be true to the Confederacy.

After that we walked around free, and after a while we went away-dropped out one by one and went away. We went home to the island. The river was the highest that it had been for years-almost over the island. The rebels had guards at all of the water fords, but we went up the river through rough country through pounding rain. We made it up to a place called "Broad Shoals" on Clinch River and forded there. We didn't even stop to roll up our britches but went right through. The water was waist deep. From there we went out into the flat woods with water shoe-deep all over. We got some pine knots and made a fire and stood there until daylight. We stayed there until next night when a second company joined us. We had guns hidden out and we got them and then met at an old "squaw patch" where there was an old fence and a clearing all grown up to weeds and briars. There we saw another fellow coming through the briars. He was one of our nearest neighbors.

After that we went on in the woods. We lay out daytimes and went on nights. It took us six days and nights getting away; we never had a bite to eat; we crossed over three mountains-Clinch Mountain in Virginia, and Guess(?) Mountain, and the Cumberlands between Virginia and Kentucky. Then we were in Kentucky.

After we got into rough country, of course, we traveled all day. At night we just lay down on the ground like hogs, weary and starved to death. When we got across the mountains and were almost through we saw another party of 30 or 40 men and thought they were after us, but they were some of our people who had been coming through also. They had been camping only half a mile off all the time. When they saw us they thought we were rebels too, and went running like scared sheep chased by hounds.

When we reached the Union Camp Colonel Cranor took us in and gave us breakfast.

We showed those rebels. Four of us (brothers) served three years in the army. My brother made Wes Beckley take the oath later, the old traitor! I'd like to have seen that old Beckley take the oath of allegiance to us!

During the war my feet were frozen so that my toe-nails came off and never grew again, and I was shot once in the calf. My Brother, James P. Alley was shot in the center of the chest with a big Enfield ball, but it glanced along a rib, laying open his body until you could lay an arm in the cut, but he lived. My brother F. G. Alley was shot in the wrist. He was in twenty-seven fierce engagements under Sherman. Abijah G. Alley, my youngest brother never got a scratch. He is still living in Wise County, Virginia.

It is a terrible thing to go into a hot engagement, bullets coming like mosquitoes all around. The nervous strain is intense. When the real firing would begin every man in a company would be forced to stop and urinate.

The men up on the Big Sandy were a rough lot as a rule, but Big Bill Tackett, a Big Sandyian was my messmate during the war. He had a big heart in him. My mustache was very black then, and Bill and I trained our mustaches and let them grow as long as we could. We used to wear them curled back and hooked over our ears. Big Bill was always jealous of mine; it was longer than his. We had a big celebration in the army once and shot off 2,700 rounds of ammunition in our small three inch brass canons. Bill was swabbing and I was jerking off. It was getting pretty dusky with powder smoke, and a loader made a mistake and rammed home the powder too soon. Bill had just rammed his swab down the bore when the charge went off. It blew off one of his arms, tore the other hand and wrist to shreds, and fairly cooked his face. He fell over right under my gun. They took him away and I thought that he was dead. The next day the doctor told me that Bill wanted to see me. I said, "Is that fellow still alive?" I went in to see him. His head was all bare and his eyes swelled shut, and one arm gone, but with his torn hand he kept feeling of his face. He said, "I told that doctor they had ruined my mustache forever."

I never went home after my discharge from the army. I went west and peddled for a while in the Sac and Fox country, among the Indians. That was long before the country was opened to the whites. My wife came to me three hundred miles across rough country carrying our boy. Then I worked for a man for a time, running his land on shares. I raised three thousand bushels of corn from thirty acres of land. The man was well off, had a big house and everything fixed up fine. I asked him how many acres of land he owned and he told me "80 acres" I was astonished. Back in Virginia a man was not considered much unless he has one or two thousand acres, at least. But this man's land was fine! I hitched three big horses to a plow and sub-soiler, put a shoe on the point of the plow, and took it out into the field. The land had been in cover (cover crops) for ten years. I lined up those two big plows with a straightedge until they would both cut to a hair and walked it down the field as straight as a die. I worked that land down like a lettuce bed. Then I furrowed it out with a Georgia stock that weighed 30 pounds, got a neighbor to help drop the seed and with one mule and a light plow I `jump-covered it. I paid back the neighbor who helped me by setting tobacco. That corn grew up the biggest and tallest that I had ever seen. Then a great wind came and blowed it down and tangled it all up. When harvest time came I hardly knew how to gather it, it was so tangled. The owner of the land had a big basement barn in the side of a hill. We threw that corn into a window on the upper side and filled that barn, and besides that there was a great pile of it thrown out on the thrashing floor.

We thrashed all our small grain on a threshing floor then. We would put in the grain on the floor and then tie three horses to the end of a sweep and drive them about in a circle. The men would follow the horses, tossing the grain.

With that big crop of corn I got a new start and then went out to the Indian Territory. I built three houses in Afton, Indian Territory, and I built the first hotel there. A white man could not hold property in the Indian Territory then. In order to hold land I had to get some "citizen" to take it in his own name. A Cherokee squaw told me that she could get me into the tribe, but I never wanted to. The man who held my property for me was named Crowell. He was a rascal. He thought that I was green and tried to take my property away from me. He was a white, but a squaw-man.

People kept coming to Afton for the purpose of being there in case the lands were to be opened. The town grew. I lived there for fifteen years before the town was surveyed. I just built my houses and hotel at random, but when the town was surveyed my hotel was on the very best lot in the town. By that time I had a sixteen room hotel; besides that I owned a livery stable with fifteen or twenty head of horses, and had a meat market, a bakery, where we baked 100 pounds of flour at a baking, nine head of fine poland china hogs, sixty chickens, and a $75.00 dollar cow. Then I was burned out and lost everything. All my possessions when I left there was $150.00.

My first wife died while I was in the Indian Territory. After my first wife died an Indian woman wanted to marry me, but I was afraid of those Indian women. I was used to being my own boss and those Indian women mostly bossed their men. This woman was good looking and neat, she had gold teeth and looked fine, and she has oil lands and an income of one or two hundred dollars a day. Every time she saw me she would say: "Joe, when you going to go up to the Court House with me and get married?" I never married her though. A man who knew all about her told me later that she was the very best kind of a housekeeper and very neat. He said I was a fool that time not to take her. I think maybe I was.

After that I went to Mexico and ran 160 acres of land for four years. My land was in the San Hone(?) (San Jone(?)) Valley at the foot of Cap-rock Mountain. When I went to Mexico I took one white mule, two thoroughbred hogs, six chickens, seventy-five bushels of corn, and $75.00 in money, all that I had. To get to Mexico I went in a box car with the stock. I built a log house there, dragging the logs from Cap-rock Mountain. It was a terrible country, rough and tumbled, and a dreadful job to get the logs out.

It was in Mexico that I married my last wife. Her name was Sally Roberds. A better woman never lived. She died here at Lebanon, Oregon. She went out on the porch one morning and the boards were icy. She slipped and broke her hip, and died nine days later. It nearly broke my heart. I was sick for months after she died. I have lived at Lebanon now for fourteen years, so I cannot be called a pioneer here.

Now I will tell you a few things that happened while I was in Indian Territory. The man who held title to my Indian lands for me was a rascal. His name was Crowell. When the land was surveyed and sold to the whites he did everything that he could to get it away from me, but I had lots of friends among the citizens. The Indian agent was selling the lots and I got him to put them up by number, not by description. They put up my hotel lot and I had a citizen bid for me. He got the lot for a reasonable price. Crowell was right there, but he did not realize that it was the hotel lot. I finally got it for $25.00. Then Crowell realized what had happened. He said, "Golly, that was the hotel lot!"

While I was on the Territory I leased 80 acres of land from another citizen. Her name was Mary Johnson, and she was a missionary's daughter. I rented it from Johnson, and he was an honest man, but he died. His daughter was mean as the dickens. She tried to get me off from the land, but I made her sign a lease and so was able to keep it.

Crowell was a Rascal. He had the first store that was started at Afton, first a room about 14x14 feet, but he finally built a fine store-house. He got it all cheating them Indians.

There was an old Indian preacher there who married people-whites and squaws. He would sit on a stool and read the Bible, then he would say, "You stan-a-da up. You like-a-da this woman? You stick-a-da to her well; You stick-a-da to her sick; You stick-a-da to her all time? You married."

After the Civil war I went back to visit at one time. My brother-in-law did not like me. He had four boys in the Confederate army. One of them, Jim, had a leg shot off.

While I was back there where he lived, on the Big Miami, he had a hog-killing. He had 15 hogs to kill and Jim with the wooden leg did the shooting. He shot several pigs and then he squealed one. I said, "Let me kill one". I had brought an old 3-shot pepperbox with me. The boys didn't know that I had it. I walked back about 25 steps and took out that old pepperbox and killed one. They all looked at me, and after that they treated differently. They thought that I was a dangerous man."

This finished Mr. Alley's interview. Mr. Alley, though one hundred years and four months is in reasonable health, and his mind, though inclined to wander from the main topic of the conversation, seems quite clear. It was impossible, however, to guide his discourse much, for at the least interruption or break in his talk he seemed to find it difficult to continue the flow of his narrative. Mr. Alley walks but little, partly due to lameness resultant from frozen feet received during the Civil War. He propels himself about either in a wheel chair or by means of a kitchen chair fitted with rollers. In spite of his lameness and age Mr. Alley is an active workman and inventor. He still personally makes and sells a patent clothes-line stretcher, his own invention and besides that makes a variety of "Picnic forks' "Toasters", "Kitchen forks" and other utensils, bending them into shape from wire at a bench shop within his home. He presented the interviewer with one of his "Picnic Forks."

Mr. Alley has been a Mason for 60 years. In religion he has a preference for the Seventh-day Adventists, though at present he attends the Methodist Church.

Copyright © 2000 Patricia Dunn. All rights reserved. This transcription may not be reproduced in any media without the express written permission by the author. Permission has been given by the Transcriber to publish on the LGS web site.