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Farming For A Better Future, page xvi
growing corn, cotton, and soybeans and raising hogs, cows, and goats. They rented a field for cotton that now has the Milton Frank Stadium built on it.
Mr. Jordan remembers his grandmother telling him stories about the family's time in Mullins Flat/Pond Beat. They attended the Center Grove Church and always helped each other in times of need or prosperity. The house built on
Redstone Arsenal was moved to the new home place in the 1940s. That house still stands although it no longer belongs to the many heirs of Murphy Jordan. Mr. Jordan is a first cousin to Ms. Elaine Patton.
Ms. Renee Rice
Ms. Rice was born in Toledo, Ohio, but her mother's family is from the Pond Beat/Mullins Flat community that is now Redstone Arsenal. Among her relatives she counts the Timmons, Joiners, and Shields families. Her great-grandfather Shields owned a 400-acre farm in Pond Beat. Her mother lived there until she was about 10 years old. When the family moved they were only able to afford a 200-acre farm
in Ardmore, Madison County, Alabama. Her grandmother was Pearl Timmons Shields, the daughter of Wattie Timmons, “one of the pillars in
(Right) One of the Many Wonderful Famiy Photographs Provided by Ms. Renee Rice.
the community of Pond Beat.” Ms. Rice's maternal greatgrandmother was a Lacy, another prominent name in the area. On my grandfather's side, she is a descendant of William and Louisa Timmons. Their children - who took the last name of their step-father, Joiner - were very successful and well-known landowning farmers in the Pond Beat/ Mullins Flat area.
Her uncle, Ed Jordan, had a
substantial amount of land in Madison County. He married Ms. Rice's father's sister, Irene, and moved to Toledo, Ohio. Her father moved there after college and started his family. Her father was one of 14 children of a family that lived in downtown Huntsville. Every one of the children attended Alabama A&M University and many of them received advanced degrees from Columbia University.
Ms. Rice has been enthusiastically gathering the extensive family history including stories and photographs for years. Her research and family stories have led her and other family members to become more inclusive when describing their family tree. The extended family of Pond Beat and Mullins Flat often include African American, white, and Native American, such as the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw. The families are truly people of color.
Ms. Parthenia Joiner Hardy
Ms. Hardy is the daughter of Percy and Ellen Joiner. She was 90 years old when she was interviewed in July 2018 and one of the few people still living that remembers growing up in the Pond Beat community.
She was about 12 years old when the family moved from the land they owned in south Madison County to an 80-acre farm outside of Huntsville. She remembers the church her family helped to build, one of the “twin” churches in the community where her father was a trustee. In Pond Beat, the Joiners grew everything you could eat??"every kind of vegetable imaginable and many fruits as well.
Ms. Parthenia attended a one-room schoolhouse in Pond Beat. Her teacher was her Parthenia Joiner Horton, who she is named after. The older Parthenia was married to Claudie Joiner, the younger Parthenia's uncle. When Mr. Joiner passed away, Parthenia Joiner married Connie Horton??"one of their children is Ms. Maureen Davis Cathey, who is like a sister to Ms. Hardy. Once she had completed school, Ms. Hardy worked at the Councill Training School in Normal, Alabama as a typist, then at Alabama A&M University as a switchboard operator, before beginning a 32-year career at the federal Internal Revenue Service. Ms. Parthenia married a Huntsville man in 1952 and moved to Cleveland, Ohio. She still visits Huntsville and family in Alabama on a regular basis.
Ms. Deborah Horton Jordan
Ms. Deborah worked as the chairperson for the reunion held in July 2018 for the descendants of the families from Pond Beat and Mullins Flat. She offered her family's farm in Harvest, Alabama for the reunion's picnic and opened her home for a group oral history interview with several other members of the extended family. Ms. Deborah's grandmother, Celeste (born 1897) was from Pond Beat. She married James Horton, the son of Everett Horton, Sr, a prominent landowner in the Pond Beat/ Mullins Flat area. By 1930, James had passed away and Celeste and - (4520)