Download [Page] [Document]
mcc-bc1-096
The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 82
The researcher's questions resulted in another one of those times when intelligent eyes bored into her, looking at her as if she weren't too bright, causing the researcher to explain that she couldn't write down what she thought, only what she was told. The answer was straightforward. ”Nobody said or did anything??"what could they do?” She explained that they worked for the man, and they lived in his houses on his property. If they said anything, they would lose their livelihood and their home. One other comment made by the woman makes her testimony of the times even more poignant: The years during which she was raped at age 11 and age 12 and had no recourse were also the years of the onset of World II. Two of her brothers were overseas, in the Army, fighting for their country. Marie Toney Harris [married John Harris] and Emma Ragland Harris [married Oregon Harris]. Their husbands were brothers. The Toney family (White) lived on land that was originally bought from the government by James Adair in 1818. It adjoined the land that Adair, Leroy Pope, and Dr. Fearn bought when they conceived the idea of bringing commerce to Huntsville by making the Big Spring Branch navigable by means of locks and dams, to the point at which it flowed into Indian Creek, and then to widen the stream to its mouth in Triana. Adair bought an adjoining 750-acre tract, and on a hill affording an expansive view of the surrounding area, built to serve as his dwelling, a two- room structure that was heavily braced with logs on the foundation and inner walls and with hand-sawed weatherboarding. Adair farmed the land, aided by 20 or more slaves. The land was sold to Richard Ireland Jones of Annapolis, Maryland, who in a year sold it to Henry Robertson of Lincoln County, Tennessee, who owned it six years then sold it to Daniel H. Tillinghast, who in 1837 sold it to Harris Toney. When Harris Toney died in 1844, his cousin, Caleb, who was the administrator of the estate, purchased the property from Toney's widow. Caleb had been living with his cousin Harris and his wife since he had come from Virginia in 1836. According to Jones, Harris' daughter and her husband had a plantation two miles to the north of her parents; John, who never married; and Caleb, who married Lida Barkley, whose family had a nearby plantation. John had been Harris' only son old enough to serve in the Civil War. Shortly after safely returning from the war, he was killed while horse racing (Jones, 1932). Caleb died before building the larger home he'd planned for his family, but his widow carried on and built a new house. The family moved into it in 1859, at the beginning of the Civil War. This would have been the large house to which Dorothy Foster referred. Pat Jones described the Toney Home in an article in the December 4, 1932 issue of The Huntsville Times: The new structure had six rooms, was T-shaped, and was made of yellow poplar throughout. Bricks for the chimneys, as well as the lumber of the 82 - (4115)