This turn of events upset Jeffrey. He became very assertive, seemingingly demanding that I arrange to keep some of his favorite stories in print. So I have. With the help of my family, readers of various ages and the editors at NewSouth, thirteen stories were selected from the five out-of-print books to be included in this new volume.
Jeffrey hopes readers approve of the selections. So do I.
K.T.W.
1
Fayette County, Alabama
Many communities in Alabama have local legends about strange images that have appeared on tombstones, mysterious markings with no logical explanations.
There is, for example, the story from Red Level about a man who, many years ago, was riding horseback when his horse ran away, and the man’s head got caught in the forks of a low-hanging tree limb. He was killed instantly. The image of a man hanging from a tree limb appeared on the rider’s tombstone soon after his grave was put in place, the story goes.
Other areas have their own images of devils’ heads and black cats and grinning skulls and such that have formed on tombstones. Each of these supposedly supernatural pictures has its own story, a story told and retold, changing gradually with the retellings.
Some of these silhouettes are associated with romantic events, tragic love stories of long ago. One of the best known of this type is the figure of the young girl that appeared on the tombstone of Robert Musgrove over in Fayette County many years ago.
The Musgroves were among the pioneer settlers in northwest Alabama, moving there from the Carolinas with the final wave of emigrants in the 1820s. They brought their household goods and their farming equipment in wagons, jouncing along over the rough roads hewn through the wilderness. They came to stay.
Some members of the family stopped in Walker County while others continued their journey into northern Fayette County where they settled along Luxapallila Creek.
Just as there were differences in opinion among the family as to where to settle, there were sharper differences in loyalties when the War Between the States came along. Many Musgroves served proudly in the Confederate forces while many others remained staunch Unionists. It was a bitter and bloody time with deaths from ambush, torture, hangings, house burnings, and beatings reported frequently (and many not reported at all) in those isolated, wooded hills.
The scars of that conflict had not yet begun to heal when Robert L. Musgrove was born in September 1866. As a boy, he heard stories of death and plunder when armed guerrilla bands enforced their own brands of justice, and he listened to the names of his own kinsman cast as heroes and villains in those outrages.
As did the other youngsters in his neighborhood, Robert helped his parents with the work on their farm, found time to roam in the woods and along the creek, and attended church at Musgrove Chapel every preaching Sunday.
Members of Robert’s family were dedicated Methodists, and, very soon after their arrival in Fayette County, they built a log church which they named Musgrove Chapel. The benches were uncomfortable, and the one-room building was hot in the summer and cold in the wintertime, but the Musgroves filled those rough benches to hear The Word proclaimed, and if their bodies suffered, their souls were revived.
Or so they told Robert.
Robert, looking down the benches at the Sabbath gatherings of Musgroves, wondered if his kin had in truth been involved in the atrocities he heard about. He tried to imagine what the men looked like when they were younger.
Musgrove men, old timers recall, were invariably handsome. They, most of them, were tall and muscular, and they moved with the ease and grace peculiar to the outdoorsmen they were. They had ruddy complexions, dark hair, and bluish-grey eyes. It was a pleasing combination.
As he grew older, Robert Musgrove became the handsomest of all the clan. On those rare occasions when he went to town—to Winfield or to Fayette Courthouse or even as far away as Tuscaloosa—it is reported that every woman who saw him walking along the streets stared after him as long as he was in sight and then sighed, “Aaaaahh,” softly and longingly.
Robert, they say, never even noticed those stares or heard those sighs. Though he, his friends said, could have had his choice of any beauty in northwest Alabama or northeast Mississippi, Robert wasn’t interested in girls at all then, not seriously. His mind was on trains.
Ever since he saw his first train (there is a difference of opinion over whether this event occurred in Tuscaloosa or in Columbus, Mississippi), Robert Musgrove was obsessed with interest in steam locomotives.
He purely fell in love with trains. “I’m going to be a train engineer,” he announced. Trains were all he ever thought about. An engineer was all he ever wanted to be.
As soon as he was old enough (maybe earlier since birth certificates and child labor laws and such had not been heard of then), Robert got a job on the railroad. He started as water boy for a crew laying tracks, some folks recall, but Robert didn’t object to the hard, menial labor. The only thing that mattered to him was that he was working on the railroad.
He was as proud as a man could be when the Georgia Pacific Railway Company opened a line to Fayette in 1883, the first railroad in his home county. Until that time, Tuscaloosa and Columbus, Mississippi, had been the nearest rail terminals to the county seat.
“Now some of my kinfolks can find out how important railroads are,” Robert commented. To him, railroads were still the center of his universe.
Robert returned to his family home every now and then, when he had time off from work. If his visits were on Sunday, he always joined his kinfolks and friends for worship services at Musgrove Chapel. After church, when worshippers gathered in cluster to talk a bit before heading home, Robert took pride in telling them about his railroad career.
The St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad was Robert’s road, the one he worked for. He had a good boarding place in Memphis, Tennessee, and he was assigned to the run between Memphis and Amory, Mississippi. Robert worked as conductor, brakeman, fireman, and after a good many years passed, he achieved his lifelong ambition: he became a railroad engineer.
Robert, associates say, treated his engines as though they were living, loving things, as though the engines understood his respect and affection for them. And the engines responded to Robert Musgrove’s attentions.
“His engines could do almost anything. They seemed almost to anticipate his expectations, as though they were trained animals instead of masses of metal,” they said.
After Robert became an engineer, he relaxed a bit and began diversifying his interests. He discovered, among other things, that girls are nice. And he wished he had made that pleasant discovery earlier: Robert was already well into his thirties then.
For a while, Robert had many girlfriends. He was still quite handsome, as all Musgrove men are handsome, and his career as an engineer made him even more attractive to women. So Robert enjoyed his popularity. He had a good time with his female admirers in Memphis, and he delighted in his feminine friends in Amory. There were also a good many young ladies between those two cities whose company Robert Musgrove treasured.
He wasn’t quite sure when or how it happened, but a beautiful young woman in Amory captured his heart. It wasn’t long before he was thinking of marriage and a home and a family—brand new thoughts for him. Robert had lost none of his enthusiasm for railroading, but love had opened new vistas of joy.
Miracle of miracles, the woman he loved also loved him. When he asked her to become his wife, she accepted. It was spring, the loveliest spring Robert Musgrove had ever known.
He acted like a love-smitten youngster, associates recall, even when he was at work.