Benton County, Tennessee Genealogy
Memoirs
"THE FARM"
narrative of life on the farm in Benton county, TN
written in the 80th year of his life.
The following memoir has been
generously contributed to the web site.
Otis Pafford
- telling of his father, Virgil Pafford
The following is a memoir written by
Otis Pafford, telling of his father, Virgil Pafford
(1858-1916), a well known methodist minister. Virgil was
the son of Lucinda Mitchell and Elcanah Pafford - one of
the sixteen children of William Pafford and Mourning
Melton. Otis was born in Benton County in 1884, and died
in Fountain Valley, California in 1979. He began the
memoir in 1973, in collaboration with his surviving
brother, Clarence (1888-1974), and, I believe, his sister
Mary Pafford Bartholomew. In addition to family
information, the narrative mentions banditry in the
1840's, organization of Methodist circuit ministries in
the 1880's and a small pox outbreak in Lexington in the
1890's.
Please note, the dates given by Otis
conflict in a few cases with dates given by other
sources. I am attempting to clarify these dates.
Conflicting dates will be indicated by an asterisk. I do
not know what sources were available to Otis in 1974, and
so can make no guarantees about the accuracy of the
information.
Isabelle Pafford - grandchild Clarence
Pafford
The Narrative
Virgil Pafford was born in Benton
County Tennessee, a few miles from Pilot Knob, on the
spot on the Tennessee River where the Confederate General
Nathan Bedford Forrest dropped some cannon balls on the
fleet of Union Gunboats on the river, sinking one of
them.
His parents owned 112 acres of land in
the river bottom, on which during this teen years he
raised corn. Periodically all this bottom land would be
flooded when the river broke out of its banks. During one
of these floods he was paddling in a small boat among the
trees at the edge of the field, and with his axe, marked
the water-line on one of the trees. Many years later,
while on a visit to his old home community, he visited
this tree and examined the axe mark which he had made.
This mark was now about on a level with the top of his
head., slightly less than six feet from the ground. After
his father's death and his removal from Benton County,
this land was abandoned, and "given back" to
the river. All of that bottom land is now, of course,
deeply submerged under the waters of Kentucky Lake.
Virgil Pafford's mother, Mrs. Lou M.
Bryant, was born in Virginia in 1826,* and at age
fourteen moved with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Mitchell to Carroll County Tennessee, adjacent to Benton
County, to which the Pafford family had already migrated
from Virginia. I have been told that she attended school
at Lexington at one time, and she herself told me she had
taught school in 1841 at age fifteen. She also shared
with me, another of her memories of 1841. In that year
bands of outlaws rode through the country, running off
the farmers' horses and mules, and stealing anything and
everything they could carry off. She was married about
1852* to Dr. Elkanah Pafford, who later served as a
surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War, and who
died in 1878.* Besides her son Virgil, she had two
daughter; Ellen, (Mrs. L. L. Stem) and Cora (Mrs. Joe H.
Dillon). After 10 years of widowhood she married Alfred
M. Bryant, of Huntingdon. Six years after this marriage
Mr. Bryant passed away, - 1894. Of my own grandfather
Pafford, I have no personal memories whatever, as he
passed away several years before my birth. But I spent a
good deal of time looking at a large portrait of him, -
framed and mounted on a white easel, which was always in
our home during my boyhood, so that I can say that I know
how he looked.
My memories of Mr. Bryant are rather
casual, being obtained from a few visits to his fine old
comfortable home in Huntingdon, but I remember him as a
highly admirable and kindly old gentleman, and I liked
him very much, even as I was somewhat awed by him.
Grandmother was known and addressed as
"Aunt Lou" by hundreds of people in Tennessee.
During most of her adult life she was recognized as a
leader in the religious and educational life of the
state, and in all public affairs having any moral
significance. She never hesitated to make known her
opinion on any matter of right and wrong, or which
affected the ultimate good of the people.
During the years of her second
widowhood she traveled quite a bit over the state,
frequently visiting the homes of her two daughters and
her son. While on one of her stays with us at Dickson,
she took me with her on a few-days trip to Nashville. I
was 12 years old, and this, of course, was a great event
in my life. Some of the impressions received, and the
knowledge and awareness gained, remain indelibly in mind
and memory to this day. But best loved of all is the
image which I hold of the Grandmother herself. She was
what could be called striking in appearance. She was
rather tall and spare; her posture always perfectly
erect; dressed in widows black and carrying an ebony
walking cane with an ornate gold head. She walked with
the step and air of a crusader, ready to meet whatever
was to befall her, yet with the benign light of good-will
and kindliness in her eyes and on her face.
My last personal association with Aunt
Lou was in the winter of 1913-14, when both she and I
spent some time with my father's family at
McLemoresville. I had many pleasant and stimulating
conversations with her, as she sat relaxed in a big
rocking chair in front of the fireplace, smoking her
little clay-bowl and cane-stem pipe.
This was only a few years before her
death, but it seemed to me then, and as I remember it
now, her physical posture was still erect, her mental
powers still keen and active; and her spirit as bright
and strong, as in the year of my memorable journey with
her seventeen years earlier. (Note: another source gives
Lucinda Mittchel Pafford Bryant's date of death as 7
March, 1903.)
Soon after reaching the age of 21,
[Virgil Pafford] was elected to the office of Justice of
the Peace, - a member of the county court. (Note: this
would have been about 1879-1880). After a short period of
service in this office, he resigned from it, having
decided to become a preacher in the Methodist Episcopal
church. During these early adult years, he also taught
some terms of school in his home district
After being licensed to preach by the
Methodist Conference, he began serving a number of rural
churches in his home county of Benton for several years.
In his early years as a minister, before leaving his home
community, he had to fight and win an intense battle over
the use of tobacco. In that time and era, nearly every
farm grew some tobacco; for home use, and as a cash crop
- and nearly everyone, including women, children, and
preachers, used it in some form. Many times he told of
how he would go out behind the barn, near the live-stock
pasture about dusk of an evening, and there pray for
strength; and exhort himself to "be a man" and
overcome this thing! Then, firmly resolved, he would hurl
his partially used "twist" of tobacco as far as
he could send it, down into the pasture. A day or two
later he would be out in the pasture searching anxiously
for that tobacco! But he won the battle! It is possible
that his oldest child may have seen him use tobacco, but
none of the other children every did.
The annual sessions of the Central
Tennessee Conference were held between the first and
fifteenth of October, so it may be considered that
November 1st. was the effective date for the changes
which were made in assigned pastorates. At the session of
October 1887, Virgil Pafford was appointed by the Bishop
and the Board of Elders, to a "circuit" in
Crockett County, comprising the villages of Friendship,
Bells, and Alamo, and probably some rural churches whose
names have disappeared. During this pastorate, he
preached a few times at Dyersburg probably as a guest or
substitute for another pastor. In the fall of 1888 he was
appointed to Lexington; in 1889 to McLemoresville; in
1890 to Huntingdon; 1891 to Rover and a circuit in
Bedford county; 1893 to Dickson; 1897 to Nashville; 1900
to Lexington; 1902 to Tullahoma; 1905 to Lawrenceburg, -
as Superintendent of Lawrence burg District; 1911 to
Lawrenceburg; as Pastor; 1912 to McLemoresville; as
District superintendent; 1914 moved to Lexington.
In 1915 he was stricken with a
malignancy, and before the year's end was almost totally
disabled. But so great was his love for, and devotion to
his ministry, that he delivered a number of sermons while
seated in a chair, it being impossible for him to stand
on his feet more than a few minutes at a time. Later that
year he was offered the use of a small ranch-type home on
the outskirts of Tucson Arizona, by a boyhood friend and
neighbor, who was now a prosperous business man in
Tucson. So in January 1916 he made the journey by train
with his wife and two sons, arriving in Tucson on the
27th. During his stay there he twice underwent major
surgery, and received every treatment available at that
time, but his condition was evidently beyond help, as he
showed no improvement but continued to decline.
Recognizing the probability that his
earthly stay was nearing its end, he wished to return
home to Lexington. He began this journey on October 5th,
with his wife and two younger daughters, who had joined
the family in Tucson, after the end of their school year
in Athens in June.
He passed away on November 1st, about
three weeks after his return to Lexington. His life span,
April 18, 1858 - November 1, 1916.
In all the communities in which he had
served, he was acclaimed as a good pastor, evangelist,
sermonizer; a good neighbor and citizen and a good
Christian man. All the members of his family can testify
that he was a good husband and father. Among his
associates in the religious world he was recognized as a
builder. Through his influence and efforts, several
church buildings and parsonages were erected, where none
had ever been before. Most of the people who knew him,
loved him, - all respected him. Be it said to his credit,
he had at least one enemy in his life-time. A notorious
"boot-legger" in Dickson tried to shoot and
kill him one time, because of his part in prosecuting and
convicting the said boot-legger, and thus ending, for a
time at least, his illegal and harmful business.
Virgil Pafford never held a pastorate
any farther east than Tullahoma, as that town was near
the eastern limits of the conference of which he was a
member. However, he visited the college at Athens, and
the University of Chattanooga at least once, and was
warmly received at both places. The University conferred
upon him the honorary degree of "Doctor of
Divinity," in recognition of his long and devoted
service to the cause of Christian Education, and the
Christian Precept, and the Christian community.
His marriage to Mary Emily Stem, also
a native of Benton county, took place on December 15th
1880. To this union were born nine children: Willa
Pafford Stewart, 1881, Benton County, Tenn. near her
father's birthplace; Otis W. Pafford, 1884, same place;
Willard M. Pafford 1886, same place (died 1896); Clarence
F. Pafford, 1888, Crockett County; Virginia Pafford
Adams, 1892, Bedford County; Lorena Pafford, 1895,
Dickson (10 mos.) died 1895; Mary Pafford Bartholomew,
1897, Dickson, Helen Pafford Reed, 1898, Nashville; Ruth
Evelyn Pafford, 1900, Nashville (3 mos) Died 1900.
Willa Pafford attended the Athens
Branch of the U.S. Grant University in 1899, 1900-1901,
in which last year she graduated there and rejoined her
father's family in Lexington, where they had moved form
Nashville the previous autumn. During the year and a half
between her arrival at Lexington, and her marriage to
John W. Stewart, she taught the school at Poplar Springs,
a prosperous community about 11 miles northwest of
Lexington. In later years the other three Pafford sisters
also attended school at Athens. I can not recall exactly
which girls in which particular years, but all the
schooling there ended in the spring of 1916, when Mary
and Helen left there and went to Tucson. Clarence (C.F.)
attended school at both Athens and Chattanooga, but again
I am not entirely sure of the exact dates. In some of his
school years he did some preaching for one or more
mountain-country churches in the area. As for myself, I
never made it to Athens or Chattanooga. In fact my last
real formal schooling was the first month of the first
year of high school in Nashville in the fall of 1899.
Actually I attended school at Lexington for a few months
but it was rather a hit and miss program. The school was
conduced by a Professor Sutton from Perry County, on
something like a lease or concession basis, he being paid
for running the school by the city, county or/and the
school district. I made some advancement during these
months in mathematics, for I really worked at that; but
the pleasurable high-light of the period was the Latin
class. Prof. Sutton's family was stricken with small-pox
- along with several others, - and he was quarantined at
home for several weeks. For some reason he appointed me
as relief "teacher" of this class in his
absence. The entire membership of this class, besides
myself, consisted of 7 of the prettiest and nicest girls
in Lexington., all in the same age group as myself. Those
girls sure had a lot of fun with me, for I did not know
any more Latin than they did, but I hope I at least held
my own with them, and I certainly enjoyed it too.
Submitted by Isabelle
Pafford
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