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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 165
Ed Peters noted: When the Army bought the land in 1941, much of it was in the hands of people who had been born to slave women or were only a generation or two removed from those who had been. They farmed their own land, owned their own stores, shops, mills, and gins and put up their own money so they could have schools for their children. The holdings of some of the Mullins Flat and Pond Beat families, notably the Jacobs and Hortons, were extensive amounting to hundreds, even thousands, of acres. The First Automobile in Pond Beat. Early said that Tom Hancock brought the first automobile to Pond Beat. He said it was a fine car??"probably a Cadillac or Hupmobile. However, cars weren't allowed on public roads, so when Hancock went to town, he had to go in his wagon. According to Skip Vaughn, Early chuckled when he explained how the hapless owner drove the car around the fields for a while and then parked it in the barn ‘where it rotted down and remained until the Army came and got rid of it.” Haunts. In the 1987 interview, Early said he “visits an old cemetery near the entrance to Test Area 5 and remembers the apparition that he saw rise from a woman's grave and hover over the roof of a nearby house where her husband and his new wife were spending their first night together.” Finding a Spouse. Early said that it was difficult for people in the communities to find someone to marry who was not “too close” kin. He said he forestalled getting married until a new family moved into the community from Mississippi who had a daughter “he fell in love with.” Others who were interviewed confirmed Early's statement that it was hard to find a candidate for spouse that wasn't somehow related. In at least one instance, it was determined that first cousins had married, however, one person interviewed commented that the cousins had done so “to keep property in the family.” After Leaving Pond Beat. Early Lacy was a farmer until 1955 and a retired Methodist minister. He said he worked on the arsenal at the DDT plant and was there for ten years until he was fired for being an unsafe worker after he fell and crippled his right foot. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION. Taken from an e-mail letter written to the researcher by Dennis Simpson. His uncle, Henry Clay Simpson, died in 1918. Early Lacy remembered Henry Simpson and told Dennis about him: Early [Lacy] told me as a little boy, Uncle Henry would pick him up in his horse and buggy and would take him to his home and showed him his chickens, turkeys and pet snake. He said Henry would let him feed his snake chicken eggs. He [Earl Lacy] also said Henry was the only person in Pond Beat that had a telephone, and [he] allowed all his neighbors to use it if they had an 165 - (4198)