Person:Nancy Holt (7)

During the Civil War, the rebels raided the Holt farm many times to acquire anything they could use. Nancy Holt finally got fed up with this, and one time when one of her kids alerted her that the rebels were crossing the White River, she got them all on the bluff and told them they were going to make a stand. She gave them all something to use or make noise from, and she blew a steer horn to make as much noise as possible and yelled "Here they come! Here they come!" It scared the rebs away, and they never returned.

"Fight 'till you die" is what she told her kids when she handed them their weapons.

In July 1861 Elizabeth Holt MagnessTerry lived "on the left bank of White River in the upper end of teh Bull Bottom in Marion County Arkansas" according to S. C. Turnbo's story "How a Lady Found a Rich Bee Tree".

Elizabeth was taking care of these 6 children when her husband Tom Terry died and before she married Patrick Henry Clark: 1) Joe Magness and 2) Robert Magness (children of Wilshire Magness and Elizabeth Holt), 3) Joe Terry, 4) Thomas "Dump" Terry, and 5) Mary Terry (these three were children of Tom Terry and his late wife, Annie Magness), and when Tom Terry left for the war Elizabeth was pregnant with a child whom she named 6) Tom Terry after his father. The younger Tom Terry always went by Tom whereas his brother went by Dump.

Annie Magness was Wilshire Magness' sister. Wilshire Magness was Elizabeth's first husband.

White River Valley Historical Quarterly Volume 31, Number 3, Spring 1992

Nancy Elizabeth Holt (m. Magness, Terry, Clark) (1836 - 1907) by Hillary Brightwell and Lynn Morrow

Holt families from the East were among the first settlers in the 'White River Valley. This article centers upon a woman whose southern upland forbearers migrated in typical fashion from Virginia westward. Richard Holt (1740-?) a Virginian, had a son Fielding (1767-?) also born in Virginia. In 1806 Fielding's family, including William H. Holt (1799-1860) moved into Cannon County, Tennessee, near Bradyville, where William and his wife Mary L. Stevens Holt reared most of their family. On July 27, 1836, William's new daughter Nancy Elizabeth arrived. When Nancy was three years old the Holt family loaded a covered wagon, and traveled six weeks westward, stopping in Ozark County, Missouri. The William Holt family settled on Little North Fork River in southwest Ozark County about three miles above modern Theodosia. They remained there for ten years until 1849 when they resettled southward into Marion County, Arkansas, above the mouth of Shoal Creek on White River. Neighbors included the Joe and Patsy Magness family who arrived in 1827 and gave their name to the Magness Bottom on White River. As Nancy Holt became a woman during the early 1850s, Wilshire Magness courted her, they married, and the young couple began a family with the birth of their firstborn in 1854, another in 1857, and a daughter who died in infancy and was buried in the Joe Magness family graveyard. Wilshire and Nancy lived along Marion County's Big Creek. A half century later when Ozarks Chronicler Silas Turnbo interviewed Nancy, she recalled an incident from her youth involving Wilshire. Nancy spun and wove all the wearing apparel for her family including a pair of nice jeans for Wiltshire. She striped the cloth of his new pants with red and blue colors. Wiltshire donned his new threads and paid a visit to the Johnson blacksmith shop in Panther Bottom. While there Jim Johnson fancied the pants and ultimately purchased them for three dollars and fifty cents in silver. Wiltshire promptly gave Jim the pants and rode home in his drawers. The sight of Wiltshire's unusual arrival home frightened young Nancy. When she found out the truth, Wiltshire had to endure a tongue lashing from his wife for startling her so. Unfortunately, not long after, Wiltshire died in early 1859. In 1860 Nancy married Tom Terry (whose first wife had been a sister to Wiltshire Magness). During a Sabbath day in the summer of 1861 Nancy proved she had more than just domestic skills. While her husband Tom and his two brothers searched for a bee tree, Nancy found her own colony of bees. When she called the men to her discovery they thought she was kidding them, but soon the men had to acknowledge one of the [3] Largest honey reservoirs ever found in the neighborhood. Nancy later bore a son to Tom in January 1862; that summer Tom Terry enlisted in the Union cause and paid dearly with his life in the conflict. During Tom's absence Nancy supported six children-two from her marriage with Wiltshire, three from Tom's first marriage, and one that she and Tom had together. The Terries had a sizable cattle herd of 100 or more at the beginning of the war, but by 1862 the land pirates had stolen most of them. Nancy was able to keep a few milk cows that provided for the children. The cows were on the open range while their calves were penned in a cow lot near the family's dogtrot house. Nancy told Sills Turbo about her most anxious moments during the war when two armed men interrogated her in front of the house. They asked her for the whereabouts of rebels-she said she did not know; they asked about federalize-she still answered in the negative. The men slowly rode their horses away from the house, whispering to each other as they went. Nancy sensed foul play coming and directed the children to carry all domestic articles lying in the yard into the house and armed the older children and herself with an axe, hatchet, butcher knife and club. Sure enough, the rascals returned driving the milk cows toward the penned calves intending to round up all the stock from the Terry farm. Instinctively, Nancy grabbed the dinner horn in the hall of the dog-trot, blew it fiercely a couple oftimes, and yelled at the top of her voice, "Here they are, come quick!" She repeated the sequence another time. The spooked bandits decided to retreat across the river while Nancy continued blowing the horn and yelling. Her bluff worked. Nancy learned later that these men joined other southern men at a well known rendezvous in Marion County called Short Mountain. Surviving this desperate event, Nancy then moved her family northward into a Union region in Ozark County, Missouri, where she had better protection from roving guerrillas. While on Little North Fork in Ozark County the war was never far away. In fall, 1864, Gen. Sterling Price's Confederates failed in their invasion into Missouri, and Southerners retreated southward throughout the Ozarks. Nancy told Silas Turnbo of seeing these stragglers-partly clothed, barefoot, ragged and hungry-pass through her neighborhood. On one occasion she saw a grizzled group of men. One of them drove a boy, who carried a sack of corn, in front of the group. When the boy faltered from the physical effort, the brutish man would strike him on the shoulder with a club. Nancy confronted the men and gave some milk to the boy while the men voiced their displeasure at her generosity. Madam Rumor later reported that the straggling warriors murdered the boy farther south in the hills. While Nancy and her family enjoyed protection in Ozark County during the last couple of years of the war, she reported seeing others suffer the indignity of hunger and retreat from their Arkansas homes northward in search of asylum at Union-protected Springfield or elsewhere. Patrick Henry Clark became acquainted with Nancy's wartime husband Tom Terry while both served the Union army. It was Patrick who brought the news of Tom's death in August, 1862, to Nancy. Patrick Clark remained in the region and by the end of the war Patrick and Nancy married. During this third marriage, Nancy bore five more children, two boys in Arkansas and three girls in Missouri-all in the White River country. Besides these glimpses of another time, Nancy left evidence of her domestic art in the form of quilts and coverlets passed down to her children. One coverlet, woven on her loom during the late 1870s or early 1880s, is preserved by grandson Hillary Brightwell. The coverlet contains a most intricate [5] design rarely seen today. The Brightwells have found only one other coverlet with the same design mounted in the Golden Pond Museum, Land Between the Lakes state park, Kentucky. Even more rare are samples of the hand drawn templates that have miraculously survived. Nancy referred to these strips of paper while working at the loom. The origin of the coverlet pattern itself remains obscure. It is probably one of the many taken from newspapers of the day and circulated among neighbors. Does anyone know its name or origin? (See photograph.) Nancy made this coverlet inside the Clark's log house. The white is cotton and the brown is wool; Nancy used a homemade black walnut hull dye to color the wool. The coverlet is two halves of the same pattern sewed together. The cotton, of course, came from the family plot and was used after many tedious nights of extracting seeds from the cotton. The Brightwell family will continue to treasure these artifacts of pioneer craft-a tangible legacy from Nancy who would be proud to see her descendants respect them as a symbol for the home they represent.

http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/periodicals/wrv/V31/N3/sp92d.html

http://www.terry-family-historian.com/TFHMAR1986.htm

TERRY FAMILY HISTORIAN Published quarterly in March, June, September, and December.

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VOL. V, NO. 1 MARCH 1986

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               EDITOR:  Robert "Mike" Terry

HOW A WOMAN PUT TWO ROBBERS TO FLIGHT

                     By S. C. Turnbo
    The writer has mentioned the Bull Bottom in these 

sketches on several occasions. As is well known in Marion County, Arkansas, this bottom is situated on the left bank of White River in Cedar Creek township. I am informed that George Weaver made the first settlement here. Weaver sold the improvements on this land to old man John Terry, the first settler on the Asa Yocum place and Mr. Terry gave the improvements to his sons Tom and Ron Terry. After Tom Terry's wife died and Wilshire Magness died Mr. Terry and Wilshire's widow were married in 1860 and lived in this bottom until ravages of cruel war forced them to abandon their home here. When Mr. Terry enlisted in the union army his wife whose name was Elizabeth was left alone with the children to contend against hardships, thieves and robbers. There were 6 children, Joe Magness and Bob Magness, children by her first man Wilshire Magness, and Joe Terry, Dump Terry and Mary Terry, which were Tom Terry's children by Mr. Terry's first wife who was a sister to Wilshire Magness, and Tom Terry an off spring of the marriage between Mr. Terry and Mrs. Magness the latter child was 6 months old. Mr. Terry's wife in describing the hardships she encountered in this bottom while her and the children were staying there alone said that one day two men who were horseback and well armed approached the house and rode up to the yard gate and stopped and demanded to know if she knew where any rebels were. She told them that she did not know anything about them. After they had repeated the inquiry a few times they reversed the questions put to her and they wanted to know if she knew where any feds were and she answered in the negative. The were very inquisitive and continued to ask her questions until they found that they could not obtain any information from her. They then backed their horses from the gate and reining them around as if they were going to ride off and stopped and held a whispered conversation and then they started off down toward the lower part of the bottom. I was convinced that they had gone off to procure help to rob the house and drive off the stock. I and Mr. Terry owned more than 100 head of cattle which Terry kept on the range in the hills of Music Creek. This was just after we were married, but in 1862 the land pirates taken all but a few of them and disposed of them. Mr. Isaiah Wilkerson who lived on Music Creek just above the mouth noticing that the principal part of the cattle had been stole he gathered up the remainder which included a few milk cows and drove them across the river where we could find them. The cows were giving milk and the milk from the cows kept the children from starving. After the two men had left I went to work with a determination to save my stuff in the house and my milk cows if I had to fight for the property and with the help of the children that was old enough to do anything I went to work and carried all our household stuff into the house that had only one door. I forgot to mention that there were two houses with a hall between them. Then I armed myself and the oldest children with something to fight with such as the chopping axe, hatchet, butcher knives, clubs and so on. Then I and the children sit down and waited for the return of the bandits and in a little while I saw the same two men coming back driving the milk cows before them. I saw at once that it was their intention to steal all we had and I says, "Children, let us not let them scoundrels have an easy job taking our stuff from us." When they had reached near the cow lot gate with the cattle the calves began to bleat and the children began to cry for the little innocent and helpless children depended on the cows for a living and when they realized that the robbers intended to take the cattle from us we would all have to meet starvation and distress. My heart seemed to sink in despair for they had the power to drive them off but I had set a resolution that I would fight to the last moment to save the cows and my household. But what could I do to help myself, they would take all we had in sprite of all the efforts I could do to prevent it. The robbers were preparing to let the calves out to the cows to make ready to drive them off and about the moment I was ready to interfere with their theiveish plans a thought came into my mind that I might get rid of them before they had time to ride roughshod over me and the children and I put it into execution at once by snatching the dinner horn from where it was hanging on the wall in he hallway and blew a lout blast with it, then stopped a moment and blew it a second time then I hallooed at the top of my voice and used these words, "Here they are, come quick." Then I repeated the blowing of the horn and yelled out the same words. The two marauders seemed to be awfully surprised and remounted their horses and urging them into a gallop and run to the river bank and down it to the waters edge and plunged into the river and swam across to the opposite shore and up the bank they went beyond my view. As they were getting away I blew he horn and kept repeating he same words loud as he strength of my lungs would admit. I succeeded in bluffing them and saving my property from he rascals so far. No doubt they were fully convinced that a body of federal soldiers were nearby ready to pounce on them. I learned afterward that these men never stopped until they reached the John Knight cabin in the range of the Short Mountain which was used as a gathering place of a number of southern men in war days. In a short time after this I moved out into Missouri where I received better protection from the unwelcome bandits and guerrillas. Mrs. Elizabeth Terry, who after the death of Mr. Terry, married Henry Clark, died at her old home in the southeast part of Taney County, Missouri, February 13, 1907, and was buried in the graveyard at Protem on the following day.

    The first Tom Terry mentioned  in "How a Women Put Two 

Robbers To Flight" is a son of John Terry of Indiana. Tom first married Annie Magness and they had children: Joe, Thomas "Dump", and Mary. Annie died and he married Annies brothers', Wilshire Magness, widow, Nancy (Holt) Magness. Wilshire and Nancy had two sons,Joe and Robert "Bob" Magness. Then Tom and Nancy had one son, Thomas Terry. Tom was killed in the Civil War and Nancy later married Henry Clark. Submitted by Betty Martin, 605 N. Robinson, Harrison AR 72601.

    S. C. Turnbo was born 1844 Forsyth, MO and died 1924 

Broken Arrow, OK. Most all his stories were written about happenings in the Ozark region. Notes by Betty Martin.

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WHERE LIZE SIMS WAS KILLED AND BURIED By S. C. Turnbo

One Sunday morning during the hottest days of the Civil War a party of mounted men met Lize Sims on the public road on the Keesee Farm on the north side of White River and shot him to death and left his body lying on the road side where it leads down the hill toward Buck Creek. His father was an old man and lived then in what is now the Mrs. Nancy Elizabeth Clark dwelling where Mrs. Clark died on the 13 of February 1907. As is well known this house is In the south east part of Taney County, Mo. On the same day that Sims was killed his body was brought to his fathers house and the writers sister Margarette Turnbo and Adaline Jones and Jane Jones daughters of John Jones and Mrs. Moore mother-in-law of the dead man took the body out of the wagon box and carried it into the house. John Jones made a rough coffin while some of the women stood on the look out for the approach of enemies. Only part of the flat on which they lived was under fence then and a spot of ground was selected on the flat just outside of the fence and a little more than ¼ mile south of the house where a grave was dug and the remains of Sims were buried there on the following Tuesday after his death. Since that time the entire flat has been put in cultivation. The spot of land on which this grave was dug was well known until 20 years afterward When the locality where the body received interment was obliterated by time and cultivation of the land and no one now knows the exact locality of its whereabouts. A few days after the burial of the dead man some of the old man Sims family tied a white cloth around a post oak tree where he was slain which remained there many months before it rotted away. Lize Sims wife was named Nitha. She was a daughter of Anderson Mouce. Nitha Sims visited her husbands grave 10 years after he was killed.

http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/turnbo/v18/st536.html

HOW A LADY FOUND A RICH BEE TREE By S. C. Turnbo

"One beautiful Sunday morning In the month of July, 1861," said Mrs. Elizabeth Clark, "I in company with my second husband, Mr. Tom Terry, and his two brothers, Richard and John Terry, we were living on the left bank of White River in the upper end of the Bull Bottom in Marion County, Ark. My husband had a big bee hunt in view and that was his Intention that bright Sunday to hunt a rich bee tree. I remember that I owned a big homemade cedar pail with one handle to it. The vessel was old fashioned and held more than one half a bushel. I had used it to make vinegar in out of honeycomb but intending to carry it with me to put wild honey in that day I emptied the vinegar out of it into another vessel. Mr. Terry’s two brothers also carried a vessel each. I was mounted on a sorrel horse but the men were afoot. A trail lead up the hollow or gulch in the part of the Bull Bottom Bluff opposite the house and we followed this trail to the top of the bluff. When we arrived on the dividing ridge between the Tom King hollow and the Nipps hollow we stopped and I dismounted and my husband told me to remain there while he and his two brothers taken some bee bait and made a circuit a short distance around and leaving some of the bait here and there to entice wild bees to sip on it in order to course them to their abodes. I had seated myself under the bows of a large whiteoak tree with my cedar pail sitting near me when I noticed a honeybee light in the pail. Then another lit in the vessel. I looked about to see where they came from and here come three more and lit on the inside of the vessel. I soon discovered that they came straight down almost and on looking up among the limbs of the whiteoak tree I found that bees were going in and coming out of a big limb of the tree which branched straight out from the trunk. I was convinced now that I had discovered the abiding place of a colony of bees and I hallooed at the top of my voice for my husband and he answered and ask me what I wanted. I says, "Come here, I have found a bee tree." And I heard him call his brothers. When they had walked up In 50 yards of me Tom says, "What did you say, Elizabeth?" and I replied, "I’ve found a bee tree." "Now Liz," says my husband, "you are just trying to get a laugh on me and John and Richard." "Well, says I, "come and see for yourselves," and when they found that it was true and not a joke they were greatly surprised and set about to fell the tree. It was so large that it taken them some time to chop it down, and as soon as it fell they began to chop into the honey and taking it out. After filling the three vessels with rich honey it was found that the cavity in the big limb contained plenty more which we were compelled to leave for the want of more vessels. By this time a heavy thunderstorm was forming which threatened to pour down a heavy rain on us and we all started back home and while we were following the trail back down the gulch in the bluff opposite the house the rain met us in the left hand hollow where the trail crossed the bed of the gulch just above a shelving rock which crosses the bed of the gulch. Here we all stopped and went down under the cliff where we could shelter from the storm. The rainfall proved to be heavy and the gulch was soon a roaring torrent and a great column of water poured over the precipice. While we were waiting under this rock for the storm to abate my husband picked up a flat soft stone and with his pen knife he shaved it down thin and smooth and made it round, then cut the following figures and words on the stone. "1861. Sabbath. Thomas Terry." I have this stone to the present day. I keep it as a souvenir of the war and my second husband," said Mrs. Clark. http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/turnbo/v17/st510.html

See S. C. Turnbo's Tales of the Ozarks: War and Guerilla Stories, page 88.

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Nancy Elizabeth Holt was AUNT to storyteller Silas Clabe Turnbo's wife, Mary Matilda Holt. Nancy Elizabeth and Fielding Holt were brother and sister. Mary Matilda Holt Turbo was Fielding's daughter.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Mzeejoe@@netzero.net on ancestry.com.
2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 S. C. Turnbo's writings all refer to Patrick Henry Clark as Henry Clark and Nancy Elizabeth Holt is called Elizabeth. slw.
3. ↑ ^3.0 3.1 S. C. Turnbo's article on How a Lady Found a Rich Bee Tree.
4. ↑ Tracy Brightwell on ancestry.com - exqsme@@hotmail.com.
5. ↑ Missouri State Board of Health. Magness, Robert. Death Certificate.. (25 July 1914. Taney County, Missouri. File # 24995.).
6. ↑ ^6.0 6.1 Looney. Taney County, Missouri Cemeteries, Volume 5.
7. ↑ ^7.0 7.1 Rising, Marsha Hoffman. Opening the Ozarks: First Families in Southwest Missouri 1835-1839. (Volume IV. American Society of Genealogists, Derry, New Hampshire 2005).
8. ↑ Piland, Shirley Carter. History of Ozark County 1841 - 1991. (Gainesville, MO: Ozark County Genealogical and Historical Society. 1991).
9.   United States. 1850 U.S. Census Population Schedule. (National Archives Microfilm Publication M432).

   1850 United States Federal Census
   Name: Elizabeth Holt
   Age: 15
   Birth Year: abt 1835
   Birthplace: Tennessee
   Home in 1850: Marion, Arkansas, USA
   Race: White
   Gender: Female
   Family Number: 142
   Household Members:
   Name Age
   William Holt 50
   Mary Holt 48
   Richard Holt 18
   Elizabeth Holt 15
   William Holt 12
   Lewis Pomfrey 12
   William Pomfrey 9
   James H Pomfrey 9
   Joseph Pomfrey 6
   Sarah L Pomfrey 4
   Mary Ann Pomfrey 1

10.   United States. 1900 U.S. Census Population Schedule. (National Archives Microfilm Publication T623).

    Name: Nancy E Clark
    Age: 63
    Birth Date: Jul 1836
    Birthplace: Tennessee
    Home in 1900: Big Creek, Taney, Missouri
    Race: White
    Gender: Female
    Relation to Head of House: Head
    Marital Status: Divorced
    Father's Birthplace: Georgia
    Mother's Birthplace: Virginia
    Mother: number of living children: 8
    Mother: How many children: 9
    Household Members:
    Name Age
    Nancy E Clark 63
    Darindia Clark 29
    John Carier 20
    George W Wood 9
    Erey Clark 6

11.   .

    1880 United States Federal Census
    Record Image VIEW
    View blank form
    Name: Nancy E. Clark
    Age: 42
    Birth Year: abt 1838
    Birthplace: Tennessee
    Home in 1880: Big Creek, Taney, Missouri
    Race: White
    Gender: Female
    Relation to Head of House: Wife
    Marital Status: Married
    Spouse's Name: P. H. Clark
    Father's Birthplace: Tennessee
    Mother's Birthplace: Tennessee
    Neighbors: View others on page
    Occupation: Keeping House
    Cannot read/write:
    
    Blind:
    
    Deaf and dumb:
    
    Otherwise disabled:
    
    Idiotic or insane:
    
    View image
    Household Members:
    Name Age
    P. H. Clark 44
    Nancy E. Clark 42
    William R. Clark 23
    Thomas T. Clark 17
    Almos L. Clark 14
    James B. Clark 12
    Sarah D. Clark 10
    Hanna Effa. Clark 7
    Ida L. Clark 5