A Wake for the Living (Southern Classics Series) by Andrew Nelson Lytle & Andrew Nelson Lytle

Author:Andrew Nelson Lytle & Andrew Nelson Lytle [Lytle, Andrew Nelson]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: J.S. Sanders books
Published: 1992-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

Growing Season:

A Morning’s Favor

John Taylor Lytle was the captain’s oldest son. He was named for his mother’s father and in his youth was a wild one. I have seen an admonishing letter from his mother, demanding of him piety and the observance of Christian rites. He finally got religion and built a church house on his farm and made slaves and family attend with the zeal only the saved can manifest.

Early in the century he moved to Hickman County in West Tennessee, probably on his father’s holdings. Either the air was not salubrious or his wife got lonesome. Anyway they returned to Rutherford and settled on land his father gave him there. To examine the property of the captain’s heirs is to learn how astute and conservative he was. Land was cheap, but slaves were not. Three of his children were given enough slaves to undertake extensive farming operations. And taxes were small.

In the pre–Civil War era men attended to their public and private business, not confusing them. They did not tax themselves beyond necessity. Middle Tennessee greatly flourished in 1837. John Lytle’s tax on slaves valued at 18,000 was 9.15. His younger brother William paid even less, although he owned a few more. All of William’s taxes came to less than fifty dollars. This included town property and a carriage valued at 400. The assessment on this was 20 cents. This is cause enough to sigh as we take a backward glance towards this society.

In 1811 there was a tremendous earthquake in the Mississippi Valley. Stars fell on Alabama and the Mississippi River ran backwards. It formed in West Tennessee a body of water one hundred miles long. This is Reelfoot Lake, which had and still has an air of desolation about it. But it is a fine place to hunt and fish. It may have been this earthquake that sent John back to Middle Tennessee and not just the unsettled look of the western part of the state. Perhaps he fished the lake before he left. He certainly knew about it. He would take a servant and drive there in a wagon, to remain for a month’s sport. He had a sense of color and form and liked mightily to hunt. Coming and going he would copy the quilt patterns of houses he stayed in and, back home, turn them over to the women to duplicate.

His house in Rutherford, six miles out of Murfreesboro, was standing some few years ago, and I went through it. It was frame and unlike the usual country house of the region. The living room was paneled halfway up and papered the rest of the way. Across from a not too wide hall was the dining room. The kitchen and outhouses were mostly gone, and maybe the dining room had not been originally used for dining. But the house was commodious enough.

Upstairs the bedrooms had large dressing rooms attached, and I had pointed out to me a bloodstain on the stairs from the whip laid on a serving girl who stole something.

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