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mcc-bc1-078
The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 64
The reason why the Jones family moved from that parcel of land was discovered quite by chance several years later when the researcher was talking with members of the M.G. Chaney family. She related a story Jones had told her. The comments from the researcher's discussion with McKinley Jones about the boy and about the property are presented in the section of this report entitled The Chaney Family, under the subheading, Parcel B-61: The Move to Papa Chaney's Place. In discussing where he lived, McKinley Jones said: Sharecroppers didn't own anything. They'd go to work and give the owner 50%. Daddy moved around, but in the same area. Sometimes just one house to the other. We lived in three different houses within a city block. All the people there were tenant farmers. They tell me when they [the slaves] were freed, they had to give them land, but they managed to take it away from them. Granddad [Hezekiah Lanier] managed to keep the Rideout/Martin Road piece. According to McKinley Jones, Hezekiah Lanier (born 1872), his maternal grandfather, owned land at the dead end of Rideout and Martin Road. The Army Real Estate Map shows that at the time the Government acquired the land, Parcel B-73, which is located on the east side of Rideout Road and north side of Martin Road, was owned by Annie T. Lanier. At some point, Hezekiah had moved to “town,” but “he came out and farmed the land.” Daily Life on the Farm When asked about his life and that of his family, McKinley Jones said: My father [McKinley Jones, Sr.] had a buggy and a mule, and a horse sometimes. In the area where we lived, about all owned their own mules. The horse and the mule was the same thing. If you had both, you could put the horse and the mule to a plow, but you could leave the mule plowing and then take the horse to town. Most people around the area had two mules [rather than a horse and mule]. Most people had chickens, because that was all you'd get, your hogs and chickens and garden. The chicken house was a little, small house. Sometimes you had to bend over to get in. There was a door for you to get in and poles for the chickens to roost on at night. There was a hole up in the wall, about 12 inches by 12 inches, and the roost poles. The nests with straw in them were along the wall. The kids would gather the eggs. We usually didn't break them, because when dad got through with you. . . . 64 - (4097)