My grandmother, Minnie Tyson Hunter died July 1948. Almost two years later, March 1950, my Grandfather Frank Paris Hunter died.
When Grandma died we moved in with Grandpa. For twenty month I Had some great interactions with him. He taught me to ride a bike; He pushed me hard up a hill and turning around going down hill he let go and I kept my balance; Once I backed up too close to the fireplace early in the morning a hot cinder popped out and poof! My pajamas flamed up and he grabbed me and threw me down and extinguished the fire, how I don’t remember. My legs were covered with blisters for a while. He saved my life!
He was a drinker. He kept homebrew hidden under the house by brick pillar. He hid his drinking, and we pretended not to know about it.
Sometimes when he drank he got teary. One time in a tearful way he told our last name was not really Hunter. He told me his father was adopted as a baby in Franklin, North Carolina.
About 25 years later when our oldest son was born and we named him I remembered what Grandpa said, “our last name is not really Hunter”.
So I took up the past time of genealogy to find out what our last name really should be.
Grandpa’s father, I knew, is buried in Carmel Baptist Cemetery in Woodstock, Georgia, and he was married to Emaline Ray.
By his tombstone I knew he was born in 1842. In the Georgia Room of the library I looked at the 1850 of Franklin, Macon County, Noth Carolina, hoping to find a William A. Hunter, age 8. No such name was listed.
At the time a neighbor wprled for Southern Bell Phone Company. He got me a telephone book for Macon County. I knew he married Emaline Ray. So I sent every Ray in their phone book did they know of a William Hunter that married Emaline Ray. I enclosed stamped addressed envelopes. There were about 30 Rays that I sent the enquiry to. I got a few back wishing me luck and one with the information I wanted.
The response said something like this. “I hate to tell you this, but your ancestor was named William A. Trammell.. After the Civil War he and his brother Van Trammell shot and killed a man and escaped Franklin, NC, for they were wanted for Murder. And William changed his last name to Hunter.
The letter was not completely true. Van Trammell was his uncle, not his brother. The person killed last name was Lambert of Lambert’s Cove. It was about a year after the Civil War and they had a heated political argument which Lamert was killed. Uncle Van Trammell did the killing and William was somehow pat of it.
William fought in the Civil War, being wounded on Kennesaw Mountain and recuperated at a private residence in Woodstock, Ga. (in the Anderson Community of Cherokee Co., Ga).
They both fled the state. They, and William’s wife Emaline and children fled to Texas. They had a hard time making it so they went back East. Grandpa was born in Paris, Texas. Paris is his middle name.
Uncle Van Trammell settled in Arkansas, near the Texas state line
William A. Trammell changed his name to William A. Hunter, which it should have been anyway. Franklin’s constable, Jason Henderson Hunter, impregnated Rebecca Trammell, daughter of Jacob V Trammell. Rebeca sued Jason H. Hunter for bastardy and won, Jason had to pay $100 a year for child support.
William A. Hunter remembered how friendly the folks in Woodstock, Georgia, was to him so he and his family moved there. He died in 1928.
William and Emaline Ray Hunter house is on Main Street in Woodstock, Ga., which is now a tool rental company.
On the TV series LINCOLN LAWYER one of his client is LISA TRAMMELL triggered my brain into spilling all this out
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