William's surname Trammell and Hunter

Two of my Hunter first cousins asked why our great grandfather William A. Hunter, who originally had a different surname change it to Hunter. Here is why our last name was changed: (and changed back) Years ago, in the early 1950s we lived with my grandfather Frank Paris Hunter. He was a son of William A. Hunter. Frank hid his bootleg booze under the house. Occasionally when the booze affected him sometimes he would get emotional. One day he was weeping. I asked him why. He told me he did not know his real last name. His father was adopted and he used the name of the people who adopted him. Rebecca Trammell, daughter of Jacob Trammell and Mary Polly Hogshead, had an affair with the local constable, who was Jason Henderson Hunter. Jason got Rebecca pregnant. She sued him for Bastardy and won. He had to pay Rebecca Trammell child support. Jason Henderson Hunter got several other women pregnant also so in court the judge ordered him to pay child support for four or five more kids. Jason was a married man with 4 or 5 children already, so he probably could not afford the welfare payments so he and his wife and their children quickly moved out of state. They moved Bollinger County, Missouri, on the Mississippi. Here is a brief history of Jason. He was in the Federal Army during the Trail of Tears, He was one of the soldiers guarding the Indians marching them to Missouri. Interesting they stopped on the way at various points to pick up more Indians and whatever. Franklin, North Carolina, was one of the stopping points. Franklin, NC,. Franklin was one of the points years later he lived and was the constable. When they moved to Bollinger County, MO, was another stopping point for the Trail of Tears. In Bollinger County, he became a Missouri state legislator and when the Civil War started he organized his own Confederate and fought Yankee ships on the Mississippi. After the war he and his family moved to Greene County, Arkansas, where he also became a state representative and started his own Pencil Factory. One time when I went with Anna on a business trip to Memphis I found the cemetery some of his kids are buried in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I could not find his grave but suspect it is there, unmarked. Jason Henderson Hunter went through at least 3 wives and at least 4 child bearing lovers. Back to his son, which is our Great Grandfather William A. Trammell/Hunter. William’s mother Rebecca died as a young lady. Her parents Jacob & Polly Trammell adopted William. By the way, not that it matters, but Jacob’s wife Polly Hogshead was an Indian. She drowned while tending he fish baskets in the Little Tennessee River. Our Great Grandfather William A. Trammell/Hunter also fought for the South in the Civil War. He enlisted as William Trammell. His unit went to a bunch of fights, like Mobile, Alabama. William was shot in the knee of Little Kennesaw Mountain. He recuperated in a private residence in Woodstock. After the war he was given a mule by the people who cared for him and he and the mule walked back to his grandparents in Franklin, Nc. Back home, about 1865 1866 he and his uncle Van Trammell got into a heated political argument with a guy named Lambert in Lambert’s Cove, outside of Franklin. Lambert was killed. The sheriff went to arrest arrest Van and William and they skipped down. They went to Texas. Van settled in Arkansas and William and his small family tried cattle raising cattle and almost starved. Then William remembered how nice the people were that cared for him when we was wounded. So he took his family to Woodstock, Georgia, and that was their home until they died. And they have hundreds of descendants in the area today. Someplace between the time Lambert was killed and when they moved to Woodstock (about a 10 year period, they changed their last name to Hunter, which was their last name all along, since the judge in Franklin, NC, ruled in Rebecca Trammell’s favor. William spent about 25 years using the last name Trammell, but after that name was wanted for murder he changed it to Hunter. Which presented a problem. The state of Geogia was giving wounded CSA veterans who was wounded in the war a pension. They had no record of a William A. Hunter in the CSA and getting wounded. William had to get several cronies that enlisted with him swear he was in the war. One that stands out was P.C. Wild, who married a Trammell.