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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 244
Yancy Horton's Home Pearl was asked to describe her grandfather's home. She said: “[It] was very well built, [a] colonial house with a porch around the front.” Asked about the material of the outside of the house, Pearl said “planks.” The house was made out of wood. Pearl said: The house had six rooms. It had a dining room. It had a fence around it. You would come in through the fence from the well. The front steps up to the porch were brick. The porch was covered. In the back, you would walk up three steps and then come to the kitchen and then the dining room. The kitchen was at the end of the hall. When you first walked into the house, you would enter the hallway. You had three doors to this house, and it had three bedrooms. The fourth room was kept for company and was for entertaining. There was one closet in each bedroom. The floors were hard wood floors, except in the kitchen and dining room there was linoleum. [Location of the doors?] There was a porch on the front and around the side and one on the back that opened into the dining room. Pearl said their house had “Delco” lights that went out to the barn from the house. The lights were on a post out in the yard. In the house they had [oil] lamps. They had a well with a wooden pump that also had a pipe that ran from the well to the barnyard to water the horses and cows. In saying that her grandfather's home was made of wood, Pearl noted that the only brick house around was Frank Jacob's second house, the one he built after his first one burned. She said Frank Jacobs lived across the road from her family. A road divided the Horton land from his. Further South toward the River Yancy Horton also is shown as owning a smaller piece of property to the southeast, closer to the river, bordering land bought by I. Schiffman & Co. Inc. Pearl said a gravel road divided Yancy Horton's land from Schiffman land. Schiffman, she noted, had all Black tenants. She said you go “up the hill to the Mt. Olive Baptist Church, and then go straight down to the river.” Parcel F-264 fits a description given by Pearl: “[You] went on through the community facing the Tennessee River [Pond Beat], and he [her father] had land in what was called “the Low Place” right on the Tennessee River.” Her father used it for raising cotton and corn. Pearl said the Watkins Family used to live in the “Low Place.” A number of tenant families lived down there.” It was considered part of Pond Beat. Pearl said Jim Watkins lost the land to Yancy Horton Sr. Ella Watkins also lived down there. She had two boys and one girl, named Mattie. One of the boys was named Donzell. “The Low Place was large enough to support a family with each member having their own patch.” Pearl said that many landowners were required to sell land they owned by the river in 1935 to the TVA. 244 - (4277)