John Hunter was the father of Jason Henderson Hunter (previous entry) and six more children.
The above cabin was built by John Hunter and his sons in about 1834-35 in Union County, Ga. It is now listed as the "oldest man-made dwelling" still in existence in Union County, Ga.
About a dozen years ago my two sons and I went through it. It was fairly small inside with only two rooms. I can not imagine how a family of any size could live in such small quarters. Anyway, in the main room was a fireplace made from crude rock. There was a snake skin in betweeen where several rocks jutted out, I suppose it is where a snake molted.
Before they moved to Union county they lived in the Buncombe - Henderson Counties area of North Carolina. John was a distiller. A whiskey maker. He made it legally. North Carolina passed a law to tax distilleries so John moved his operation not far away across the state border in Georgia where he did not have to pay tax.
John was born in Virginia about 1775 and died in Union County, Georgia, in 1848. When he died his single daughter lived with him but most of his other children lived near by.
There is not a whole lot known about John Hunter. Some of his children and their children, and more descendants have a fair amount of interesting history. Bert Lance (in President Jimmy Carter's Cabinet) is a descendant. So is Byron Hubert Reece. Byron was a world-wide known poet.
And also me.
4 comments:
I love that photo. As a child at camp one summer, we went on a hike and passed an old cabin similar to that one. We went inside and the walls were papered with very old newspapers. The movie ads were for silent movies and featured Theda Bara and Rudolph Valentino. It was really fun to read them, and like you, I cannot believe such large families lived in such small quarters.
I have never been to a cabin like that, but I have been to tenement apartments on the Lower East side of NY that are similar in that it boggles the mid to think about how families used to live and work in two rooms and also have boarders! The lack of privacy is incomprehensible to me, and yet it makes the McMansions being built today even less comprehensible to me.
I am a descendant of the daughter (Harriet) who lived in the home with John & Elizabeth. I have seen several pictures of the house, but never heard anything about it until now.
Could you tell me how Bert Lance is related to the Hunter family?
Thanks for sharing!!
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