Mr. Williams Account Continues.
MR. BUD TATUM
But Tatum ran a sort of inn. He had a stage stop at his place out on Waring
Creek usually called Warren Creek). This is where John Wesley Hardin
said he stopped the first night after his get-away from Comanche after
killing Collier, the Brown County officer. (I think this name is right. I
have read the papers at Comanche and obviously Hardin provoked a
difficulty. This was where the state changed horses (first after changing
at Grandma Pierson’s Hotel). Mr. Williams as
a young fellow stopped by here and went out to the barn where the Negro
girl was milking, and Mr. Tatum said, "Cad, come back." Bud
Tatum came from Tennessee or some such state with the older Henry
Carter, the father of the Henry Carter that was Mr. Williams said, so
tough. He was a brother of old Uncle Jimmie Carter.
The latter was a very fine man. That Tatum told him that before they
left the old state where they were all acquainted that Henry Carter shot
his wife’s father from his horse and that his wife held the reins while
he did it.
(See Elias Seaton’s account in his book of the Indian raid near Tatum’s.
(Other Tatums lived at Comanche. Three generations of them were water
well drillers and good at it. I told Ernest Tatum, one of them that maybe
his grandfather did not know who John Wesley Hardin was when he spent the
night there and he said, "Oh yes, grandpa did too.")
(In 1911 I went with my father out to old Uncle Jimmie Carter’s place
on the Cow House south of Hamilton. He
went to draw Mr. and Mrs. Carter’s wills. Stayed to dinner which I
understand was good. Through some peculiarity I did not go in, sat in the
livery stable buggy, with the two horses, reading. Something scared them
and they took off down the land scaring me, but fortunately were stopped
by a rail fence. On the way my father pointed out a creek called Dead
Man’s Creek, because a dead man was found there in an early day.
Many years later one of the Chambliss’s
whose father homestead or took land out on Blue
Ridge, told me one night a stranger came by and spent the night with
them saying he was the brother of the slain man and on his way to catch
the killer. That later he came back by and said he found him. This was
close to the old Captain Stiles’ place.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
CHESLEY'S HAMILTON COUNTY INTERVIEWS
BY
HERVEY EDGAR CHESLEY, JR.
Born: 21 November, 1894
Died: 17 July, 1979