Leaving Bluefoot

(or How I got to be from Cofield, Part II )

- by Marvin T. Jones

Last week, my cousin Vivian reminded me that next year, 2007, is not only the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown, but also the centennial anniversary of our grandparents’, Daisy Belle Smith and John Pat Jones, first meeting. Daisy and John came across each other in Norfolk at the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition in 1907. The story was related to the family by Daisy Madeline Jones Mountain, Vivian’s mother - my aunt.

Aunt Madeline told us that within a year of their meeting, Daisy Belle Smith and John Pat Jones were married and started their new life on the large family farm owned by John Pat’s widowed mother, Julia. The farm was part of an even larger one that John Pat’s grandfather, William Jones, Sr., bought over a half-century earlier. It was an enclave of Joneses that spanned a mile of Bluefoot Road and bordered a half-mile of US 13 near Winton.

By 1912, the young couple had two children and felt it was time to set out for a farm of their own. Daisy had heard about a farm with an old house in Cofield, and they looked into it. The cost of the farm was $1500 and the owner and note holder would allow them to pay $300 a year for five years. In addition, he wanted security beyond the property itself.

The house was already quite old when my grandparents bought it around 1912.
I photographed it in 1986, and it is since been demolished.

The collateral was not only the farm and house, but Grandma Julia’s house as well. Grandma Julia knew well about the dangers of loans made in those days and was worried that her house could be lost if John Pat and Daisy failed in any way to complete the payments successfully. Note holders were known to use tricks to seize farms even if the debtors paid on time, and many note holders had become prosperous that way.

So the young couple moved, using a cart path that led directly to Cofield from Bluefoot –the path no longer exists – leaving the two children in Grandma Julia’s care.

The first year, John Pat and Daisy only paid $275 of the $300 due, and that was not a good sign. In the second and third years, the payments were between $250 and $275. This confirmed to the note holder that the property, as well as Grandma Julia’s house, would certainly become his to sell once again. Falling behind in payments by John Pat and Daisy made the note holder lax and inattentive.

They responded to the money shortfall. For Claude Holloman's gin, John Pat and Daisy shoveled cotton seed into their wagon and carried it to the Cofield train station. John Pat sold firewood at the station, and sold vegetables in Tunis. By the fourth year, a year before the entire $1500 was due, John Pat and Daisy showed up with the remaining amount of the balance due. The note holder was completely caught off guard, and had no chance left to trick John Pat and Daisy out of their property. He handed over the deeds. Five children, including Aunt Madeline and my father, were born on the John Pat and Daisy Jones farm, and it is still owned by the family. You’ll find many of us there at the annual fish fry each Easter Saturday.

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Copyright 2006, Marvin T. Jones - all rights reserved