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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 262
Ed Peters (The Redstone Rocket, July 8, 1987, p. 11) interviewed Ovoy Horton, his cousin Charles Burns, and Early P. Lacy. Mr. Burns and Mr. Lacy are discussed in another section of this report. The following quoted selection is taken from Peters' interview with Ovoy Horton: Ovoy was 24 years old when he made his last crop on the land that had once belonged to the man who had purchased his great-grandmother [Amanda Jacobs Horton] for $900 and made her a free servant. In the fall of 1941, the Army had already bought their farm and the Hortons had moved away but were permitted to return and harvest the crops that they had in the ground at the time the transaction was made. The patriarch of the big Horton farm in Mullins Flat was Ovoy's Grandfather Everett T. Horton. He had several hundred acres that extended from the Silver Hill area (area of the test stands on Dodd Road) to the southern face of Madkin Mountain and took in the old rock quarry. Ovoy loved where he was and didn't want to leave, but as it turned out, he was able to maintain touch with it by working for the Army for the next 30 years. The Horton name was prominent in both the Mullins Flat and Pond Beat communities. The Horton School was located on the north side of Buxton Road inside what is now McKinley Range. Horton's Ford (Huntsville Spring Branch) is where people went to be baptized. Even while gathering his last crop, Ovoy Horton had found employment with Kershaw & Butler, the construction contractor that built the first buildings here for the Army. After a few months he went to work for the Army. He drove trucks and forklifts and worked in ammunition bunkers and warehouses. He worked in a carpenter shop and said there was walnut furniture in use here for many years that he made from trees that he cut himself. He was laid off briefly in the years following World War II but was recalled soon and in the interim did not leave the arsenal, as he took a job with John Powell Chemical Co. setting up an insecticide factory in building 5681. He retired from the Army in 1973 and has since retired from a second career at Chrysler in Huntsville. He says that during the years he worked here he often visited the places he had fond memories of. These include the site of the family home in Silver Hill, still identifiable from an old pear tree that was in the yard. The Silver Hill School he attended was situated on the knoll just past the entrance road to the Redstone missile historic test stand. He can identify the area where the creek used to back up, cutting his grandparents' house off from the rest of the world. During such periods, his horse, Belle, had been trained to swim across with a passenger and return to pick up another. That same horse was swept from under his father while trying to cross Huntsville Spring Branch in high water. The father managed to grab on to a tree and fired his gun (men in the community wore guns in those days) to attract the attention of a rescue party. He [Ovoy] can take you to where ‘Adolphus Love's store was, across from the present day Product Assurance building. He also points out wooded 262 - (4295)