Jerry Hopkins

© Laszlo Endrody 2019

Print ISBN: 978-1-54395-768-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54395-769-3

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Twelve

About the Author

Chapter One

In 1778, Captain Jeremiah Hopkins and his friend, Sergeant John Beesley rode in to Western Kentucky. With the war over, they wanted to stake out land to start farming and trapping in the mountains.

Jeremiah fell in love with the mountains. He staked out 1,000 acres right at the top. It was mostly virgin forest; however, it had two clearings, one of 60 acres and one of 40 acres. The only neighbors that he had were Cherokees. He built his cabin on the 60 acre clearing near the trail leading up from the valley below. John Beesley came up and helped him build his log cabin. Later, he built a barn and corrals for his mule. There were two ways to get up to his place; one was the trail from the valley where his friend, John Beesley settled, the other was a trail that Jeremiah made that led down to a neighboring valley.

John Beesley went to work for a Mr. Perkins who owned 4,000 acres in the valley. Mr. Perkins had two pretty daughters; John married his oldest, Sara Perkins and they built their cabin on Perkins’ land. Jeremiah came down and helped him build it. John stayed and worked the land with Mr. Perkins and Mr. Perkins shared everything with John. Most things they did together. They had four oxen and they kept busy and enjoyed the rewards.

Jeremiah fell in love with Mr. Perkins’ younger daughter, Mary. Jeremiah took his bride up on the mountain and they lived up there hunting, trapping, cutting wood, logs, and making hay for the winter. When they came down, they brought meat and sold furs and skins.

Jeremiah helped Mr. Perkins harvest, never taking anything in return. He saved up his money and bought himself a second mule for his wife to ride. Jeremiah then brought down logs and wood for Mr. Perkins. Later, he started to clear some more land for Mr. Perkins with his mules. It took him 15 years of his spare time to clear 80 acres, pulling up all the tree stumps and cutting them up for firewood. After he was finished, he plowed it all up in the fall and the following spring planted the 80 acres with corn. At harvest time, he and Mary came down to help with the mules and he took some of the corn up on the mountain with him. He left more than half to Mr. Perkins. Mr. Perkins now had over 200 acres of good cropland.

Jeremiah came down and plowed every fall after the harvest and then every spring to plant. He usually planted 15 acres of corn for himself. Then he went up on the mountain to hunt and trap. John Beesley had five sons and as Mr. Perkins got older, they started to help him with the farming.

Jeremiah and Mary had a son and as soon as he was 8 years-old, he wanted to help too. Jeremiah cleared 20 more acres for Mr. Perkins with young Jeremiah helping. He was going to clear more land but Mr. Perkins had heart failure and died.

Mr. Perkins left half of his land, 2,000 acres, to Sara and the other 2,000 acres to Mary. John Beesley was so disappointed that he didn’t get the entire 4,000 acres that he didn’t even go to the funeral. He felt that with his five sons he should have gotten it all. His friendship with Jeremiah ended the day that they read the will.

Mrs. Perkins was still alive and the house, fortunately, was on Jeremiah’s half. She passed away when young Jeremiah was 20 years old and ready to get married. About a month after Mrs. Perkins was buried, young Jeremiah married Sally Dickens. Sally’s father owned a 1,000 acre farm across from the Perkins’ land. He had a nice home, four horses, four cows and a bunch of pigs. Young Jeremiah loved to farm. He cleared and farmed 200 acres with the mules and he lived in the old Perkins’ home. He had Mr. Perkins’ barn and corrals. Mr. Dickens farmed 120 acres across the road from him, so they were able to help each other and they both prospered.

One night there was a bad storm and lightning struck a tree starting a fire which burned down about 700 acres of land on the Dickens’ farm. It was Jeremiah senior that told Mr. Dickens to make some big pastures where the burned area was, and that is what they did. Jeremiah senior cut some poles on the mountain and helped fence four pastures. Young Jeremiah had a cow and a calf and Jeremiah Sr. had a cow too that he brought down and gave to his son. Mr. Dickens had four cows and three calves. One of the calves was a steer that would make a good ox. Mr. Dickens traded it for a bull calf with a farmer and their cow herd got started.

When Mr. Dickens died, they had 25 cows in the pasture. Sally and young Jeremiah inherited everything. When Jeremiah Sr. passed away, they had 4,000 acres. Young Jeremiah worked hard and he prospered.

In 1818, Jeremiah II had some calves in his big pasture. One night somebody stole two of them. Due to the fresh snow, he could not track the thief. Then a month later he saw a man in his pasture and he ran for his rifle. When he came out, the man was leading one of his calves out of the pasture. Jeremiah shot for the man’s legs and hit him in the knee. The man he shot turned out to be John Beesley II, already the father of four sons, John III, Mason, Kyle, and Jake. They had to cut John’s leg off to save his life. Mary was still alive when Jeremiah and his wife Sally had a son that they named Walter, after Sally’s father.

John Beesley’s son John was a farmer; Mason studied law and became a judge; his brother Jake became a banker; Kyle stayed farming and he bought out John, after which John opened up a store next to the bank.

John III tried to steal back a horse from Walter that he gambled away and Walter bought. He tried to walk off with the horse at night. James, Walter’s second son, saw him and called his father who got his rifle and shot the thief in the knee. Mason tried to get Walter arrested but no one listened to him.

Walter had two sons, Walter II and James. Walter II had a problem; he had no voice. He was perfectly normal and strong but he could not say a word. As a young man he fell in love with their mountain land and he pretty well stayed up there hunting and raising hogs.

His brother, James, was the farmer and was very successful at it. James married and then lost his wife when little Jerry Hopkins was born. James raised him with the help of a black woman. Jerry was ten when his father went off to war; he joined the Union Army.

The only Beesley that amounted to anything in farming was Kyle. Kyle had a daughter that married Ben Murphy. Between Kyle and Ben, they owned 400 acres. Ben had a little daughter, Betty. She was 11 when Ben joined the Union Army. All the other Beesleys joined the Confederacy.

Kyle died shortly after the war broke out in 1862. Sergeant Ben Murphy lost his life to a rebel sniper while he was checking his pickets. Shortly after that, his wife died of a fever, leaving little Betty an orphan. Betty stayed with Kyle’s wife, her grandmother, who died just as the war ended.

Captain James Hopkins died in 1863 down in Mississippi fighting some rebel troops. This left Jerry an orphan. He went to live with his uncle on the mountain. Walter came down and picked up the family bible, James’ bank book, and then boarded up the house. He put the livestock out on the pasture to be picked up later. Jerry went up on the mountain with Walter and they hunted and trapped together. Jerry loved this life. He was only 12 but could shoot and hit what he aimed at.

When the war ended, all the Beesley boys came home. John IV was a captain. They Beesley boys put their heads together and decided they would take over the Hopkins land, but to get it legally they had to catch Jerry and ship him out of the state to some orphanage. By the time Jerry had grown up, they would have gotten the land at a tax sale. Judge Beesley ordered the sheriff to pick him up. They decided that Betty Murphy was not needed either. Her grandmother died and she was shipped off to an orphanage in Ohio.

The sheriff took Jerry into custody. The judge declared his uncle Walter an idiot and shipped Jerry off to an orphanage in Ohio. The judge then declared John Beesley IV the trustee of the Hopkins’ property and he opened up the Hopkins’ home. They hauled away all the furnishings then burned the house down to the ground. The judge held a hearing on James Hopkins’ debts and John III declared that James Hopkins owed his store 500 dollars, which was the exact amount he had in savings in the bank. The judge turned the money over to him.

Shortly after that, Jake the banker got shot in the knee and he lost his leg. They had to take it off to save his life. The Beesleys assumed that it was Walter who shot him.

Judge Mason Beesley ordered the sheriff to arrest Walter. He tried to get up close to his cabin to get a shot at him, but he was afraid of Walter. While he was sneaking up on the cabin, he stepped on a bear trap and busted his left ankle. He dragged himself down a ways then Walter found him and took him down with his mule and dropped him off in front of the doctor’s house. Walter then went back up to the mountains. The doctor had to take the lower leg off to save his life.

They hired a deputy to take Jerry north to an orphanage in Dayton, Ohio. When he got there, a union major was running the orphanage. This was sort of a corrections type of orphanage, so they had him locked up. He behaved himself, which was not hard, it was normal for him. He went to all the classes they had for the kids and he did well. He talked to the major several times and told him that his father had been a captain in the Union Army and lost his life down in Mississippi. The major took a liking to Jerry and let him go out with some of the boys and play ball. He assigned him some chores, which he always did to the best of his ability.

He was there for about four months when he got assigned to go cut some wood with Sergeant Lenten. Sergeant Lenten was a cripple; he had a very bad leg. They went with a wagon out into some woods and were going to fill the wagon up. Jerry got 8 or 10 pieces of wood into the wagon and then dropped out of sight. He started traveling away from there as fast as he could and took his axe with him.

He had his jacket on, but it was still very cold that first night. He slept between two logs in the woods. He needed food and needed a blanket. The second night he slept in a hay stack. That next morning, he found a nest where a chicken had been laying some eggs. There were nine eggs, so he took them with him. Later, he built a fire and placed five of the eggs on the stones he put around the fire and let them cook in their shells. As soon as one cracked, he took it and ate it. They were still runny and he sucked the yolk out. He was still hungry, so he ate the other four too. It was better than walking around with eggs in his pocket.

Later that day, he found a corn field right next to the woods. The corn was already tasseled out so he picked some. It was still early, but it was sweet and he ate a bunch of it raw. Later on, he got a stomach ache. He was sorry that he ate so much of it. He took some corn with him and figured he could roast some later. He had to get his bearings somehow to start going home to his Uncle Walter.

He was walking in a creek bed and came face-to-face with a union captain.

My boy the captain said.

Hello, Sir, Jerry replied.

Out cutting wood? he asked.

Yes, Sir.

Then how about cutting a couple pieces for me for my fire; I think I’m going to stay here tonight.

Jerry asked him where he was going and he told him Illinois. He said that he had been in a hospital and they had just let him go and he was going back home. He then asked, What is that you are carrying, corn?

Jerry told him that it was corn and he was planning on roasting it later for a snack.

I will make a deal with you, boy. You cut some wood for me and give that corn to my horse over there and I will give you some pan bread and bacon for a snack, the captain stated.

All right, Sir, Jerry replied.

He then walked over