Andrew Hooper, Fourth Child of Revolutionary Soldier Absalom Hooper, Sr. (Part 3 – Hooper Family)

Andrew Hooper was the fourth of twelve children born to Absalom, Sr. and Sarah Salers Hooper, and one of the three Hooper brothers who settled in Union County, Georgia by 1840.

Andrew Hooper was born about 1792 and died in 1849. His place of birth is held to be Pendleton District, South Carolina. He grew up in Haywood County, North Carolina where his parents moved when he was young. It was there he met and married Dicie (sometimes spelled Dicey) whose maiden name is unknown.

Like his father before him who had served in the Revolutionary War, Andrew also heard the call of his country during the “unpleasantness” known in the annals of US history as the War of 1812 against Great Britain. His term of service was short, from February 16, 1815 when he volunteered until March 12, 1815 when he was honorably discharged. His army pay for the twenty-six days was $6. 93. However, as will be seen later, he had another recompense coming after his death.

It is not known precisely when Andrew Hooper migrated to Union County, Georgia to settle along Fodder Creek in what became Towns County in 1856. Andrew and his wife Dicey were residents and in the Union Census of 1840, having in their household himself and his wife who were listed as between 40-50 years of age with six children. Ages and genders of the children were two males between 10-15, one male between 20-30, one female between 5-10 and two females between 15-20. It is assumed that Andrew Hooper was a farmer at Fodder Creek. He may have assisted his brother Absalom, Jr. with his grist mill.

The known children of Andrew and Dicey Hooper were:

(1) Jonathan Hooper (1820-1880 ?) who married Lucinda Barrett (believed to be part Cherokee) in Union County on February 9, 1854 with William Burch performing their ceremony. After Towns was formed from Union County, Jonathan and Lucinda moved to the head of Byers Creek in Towns and made a living by sawmilling and farming. Jonathan was a cripple, small of stature. They had Millie Ann, Robert Richard, Jonathan “Pink”, Icey (or Dicea, after her Grandmother Hooper), Green Berry (died as infant), Mary Ollie, Gus, and Ulysses Allen. After Jonathan’s death, Lucinda married a Rizley.

(2) Sarah Hooper (1821-?) married Noah Shook and had children Mary, Jonathan, Permelia and Rebecca by 1850, with additions and/or name changes of Adaline, Dicea and Sarah (listed in 1860 census).

(3) Matilda Caroline Hooper (1824-1911) married William Burton Rogers on November 5, 1843. They lived in the Cynth Creek section of Towns County and at their deaths were interred in the Lower Hightower Cemetery. Children of this couple were Disa Manerva, Jonathan Burton, Melton Augustus, Martin W., Christopher Columbus, Freeman H., Elihu Montgomery, N. Leander, and David.

(4) William J. Hooper (1828-1878) married Jemima Hooper, his first cousin, daughter of his Uncle Absalom Hooper, Jr., in Union County, GA on August 16, 1851 with M. L. Burch, justice of the peace, performing the ceremony. William enlisted in the Confederate Army in May, 1864 with Young’s Battallion, Company 1, Hampton’s Brigade. He was seriously wounded at Lovejoy Station when Sherman was marching through Georgia. Although surviving, his wounds troubled him the rest of his life. By 1870, Jemima Hooper and her widowed sister, Hannah Hooper Gilbert and children, were living in the widowed Jemima’s household.

(5) Andrew Green Hooper (1829-1898) married Martha Talitha Berry. Their children were Dicie Rebecca, John Chapman, William Alonzo; Margaret Haseltine, Louisa Arah, Highley Al, and Andrew Young. Andrew, like his brother William, enlisted in the Confederate Army, Company D, 24th Regiment. He survived the war. His widow Margaret received a Confederate pension after his death.

(6) A female child was listed in the 1840 census without a name, born between 1830-1835. No further information is found on her.

A short time after Andrew Hooper’s first wife Dicey died in 1847, he married Mary Cantrell on July 2, 1847. Mary Cantrell may have been a widow, bringing some of her own children to live in Andrew’s household. The 1850 census has some children not quite identifiable by names of children of Andrew and his first wife Dicea. These were Mary, 29; Nancy, 12, Jane 9; Sarahan 6, Mahala 4, and John 1. It is known, however, that two of these were identified as “minor children” of Andrew Hooper and received a land grant on June 30, 1857 for their father’s service in the War of 1812. It could be that Mary Mahalia (known as “Polly”) may have been a child born to Andrew and Dicey, and that her mother died at childbirth. At any rate, children 7 and 8 of Andrew Hooper were:

(7) Mary Mahalia “Polly” Hooper born in 1846 or 1847. She married David Nicholson.

(8) John Harley Hooper (1849-1912), son of Andrew and Mary Cantrell Hooper married Martha Evaline Brewster. Their seven children were Jane, Martha Ann, Mary Etta, William Luther, John, Georgia and Lula.

Andrew Hooper and his family joined the lure of new lands in the 1830s and became a part of growing Union County sometime between 1834 and 1840. Numerous descendants still reside within the mountain region near where their ancestors took up residence.

c2010 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Nov. 4, 2010 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

James "Jim" Berry, the Last of the True Mountaineers

Visit New Liberty Baptist Church Cemetery in Choestoe, stretched in front of a beautiful white country church house, with Enotah (Brasstown Bald) Mountain lifting its towering peak in the distance, and you find graves of many early settlers to that section of Union County. Today, we will focus on two graves bearing names, not of early settlers but the descendents of some of them.

These graves are of a husband and wife, James "Jim" Berry and Varina "Tib" Souther Berry. The dates tell us Jim lived from August 14, 1896 through June 26, 1982, and Tib lived from May 12, 1887 through October 15, 1963. Many who knew Jim Berry, and who wrote about him, like Charles Roscoe Collins and the roving reporter for The Atlanta Journal, Charles Salter, called him one of the last of the "true mountaineers."

Living in the old log house, somewhat updated from the time his wife Tib's grandfather built it in the mid-1800's, James was a widower from 1963 when his wife died until 1982, when he passed on at age 86. A philosopher of sorts, Jim Berry enjoyed company and was a great talker. His simple lifestyle was often an amazement to the many visitors who dropped by his house just off the Jack's Gap Road to hear him talk and to get his viewpoints on the issues of the day.

Jim Berry was not a Union County native. His wife, Varina, claimed that honor, but not Jim. His grandparents came from Old Gilmer County (a portion that later became Fannin) and from the mining town of Copperhill, Tennessee. Like settlers to that section, his forebears left North Carolina in a general migration and found land on which to carve out a new life in the mountains of North Georgia. The Berry Family moved from their Gilmer County home and got land along Fodder Creek in what became Towns County in 1856. There Jim Berry was born in 1896 to William Berry and Becky Shook Berry. Jim Berry had siblings William Berry, John Berry, Tina Berry McFall, and Martha Berry Chastain.

James Berry spent his childhood and early youth working on the family farm at Fodder Creek. He had little formal schooling because his father was an invalid. It was necessary for Jim Berry to work hard to try to make a living on the hardscrabble farm for his father, mother and siblings. They had cattle and hogs that ranged the mountains and, when rounded up and driven to market in Gainesville, provided a little extra income for the family.

When America got involved in World War I, James Berry served in the US Army. After basic training at Fort Gordon, he was selected to be in the unit that guarded German prisoners of war at Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia. He remembered those two years of his life as hard. Guarding the prisoners took great vigilance and discipline. When the Armistice was signed in November, 1918, Jim Berry was one of the guards chosen to accompany the 550 German prisoners by train to Charleston, SC, where the captives were loaded on boats and returned to Germany.

Upon his honorable discharge from the army following World War I, James Berry returned to Fodder Creek in Towns County. He purchased 80 acres of mountain land, and there continued the same life of small patch farming in the bottoms along creeks as he had done growing up.

Then another opportunity came for this World War I veteran. The Pfister-Vogel Land Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin had purchased thousands of acres of mountain land in Towns, Union, Lumpkin and White Counties. They needed workers. Jim Berry signed on, and because of his previous experience as a guard in World War II, he was assigned to the security detail of the company's work force.

Part of the land purchased by the Pfister-Vogel Land Company included the old Brewster holdings along the Jack's Gap Road leading toward Bald Mountain. An aside in the Jim Berry story lets us know that this tract of land had a history. It was sold to the land company by John Brewster. On that land, during the Civil War, Washington Brewster was killed near Jack's Gap by a roving band of Home Guard. The Brewster Place also had other families living there through time. Some were Jesse Spiva, Ben Spiva, Cornelius Spiva (who was killed in Germany during World War I, the first casualty of that war from Union County), Jim Harkins, Van Duckworth, and, finally, James Berry himself. Near the house was an old cemetery where Brookshires, Brewsters and Spivas were buried back in the era when family cemeteries were started near the old homeplace. The Land Company allowed James Berry, one of their important security guards, to live in the old Brewster house.

And that move, from Towns County to Union County, set the stage for the rest of citizen Jim Berry's life and times. Not only did he have work in the outdoors and woodlands he loved, but romance was on the horizon for James Berry. In the sequel to this story, we will learn about the life and times of Varina "Tib" Souther and James Berry. Stay tuned for the remainder of this delightful story.

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published September 18, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.