Remembering Granny Shields

By Carl M. Teasley

March 1978

Granny Shield's body lies beside that of her husband William in the Zion Church Cemetery to the left of the parking area as a person drives or walks in towards the church building. She died in 1940 at the age of 75 but her love, examples, teachings and actions live on in the lives of many she touched.

"She was the walking example of a real Christian," says Howard Bramblett. "I've seen her many times on the road near Parksville singing or shouting - just praising the Lord. "

"Many a time," said John Bazzell, "we were in the cotton patch and Granny would throw down her hoe and go to stomping the ground and shouting." Jack Rogers told me one time: "It didn't take much to set her off. If she felt like it, out it'd come."

So by picking up here and there a person could learn about this woman gone now these 38 years but so well remembered.

"Granny had eleven children of her own and helped raise 23 grandchildren," George Ward told me. "I went there to live with her when I was four years old and stayed til I was grown. Now I'm 70. "

"How large was the Shield's place?" I asked George."

"Forty-five acres," he answered, "you know the Edge Prince place. Well, way up behind it towards the gap was Granny's place."     '

"Can you tell me more about her and a certain rock?" I asked. George looked at me quick, startled.

"You mean the rock where the bottle of whiskey was hid? She prayed that the Lord would reveal, where it was, and I found it, and she found it there in Mitchell Cove beside the Harbison Trail. She dug it out of the leaves saying, "You can't hide a snuffbox behind the door." There were two trails from the house over into the cove, the high trail and the low one. The lower one was the quickest .... Way back then the Trevena's, Prince's and Hannah families lived around us. Meigs Copeland bought land for the old Tennessee Power Company.

Granny hated whiskey! Why one time two boys came courting, two of the girls and hid their whiskey out under a rock at the end of the clothesline and she prayed and, found it and brought it into the house and shamed them, then broke it in front of them."

"We slept on shuck beds back then," he went on. "They lasted 'bout as long as a straw tick. And games" be chuckled, "why she used to have a saying when we would be playing ball. She'd say, hip a thigh, hip a thigh, shoe ruiner ball"

John Bazzell and George both told me that Essie is the only survivor living of Granny's children,

"It was a long house,” Jack Rogers told me. One room was added onto the original four to make room for more family, And up behind the house on a sloping hillside was where she had her beegums. Yes, sir we had honey a plenty. One man from Cleveland came every year to get two or three lard cans full of honey. I think his name was Satan. Granny's bees were black, and mean."

I asked George to name Granny's 11 children. He named 10 easily (Jack says to me beforehand, "George can name everyone but his own mother. He always forgets her"), He named Sarah, May, Josie, Susie, Essie, Alice, Lou, Henry, Nerve, George and (after a long time) Martha.

There was a Fairview church story George told. It concerned a revival and cold weather and somebody saying "Preacher if somebody don't get to shouting and warm this place up, we'll have to go home."

"We used to can and barrel stuff to eat - pork was salted down. But I remember one old poor cow that was let loose on the Crapy place and she got so big and fat we couldn't hang her up. Harvey Franklin killed her for us. We just cut hunks of meat out of her after it turned cold and cooked them."

"Granny and us hunted, trapped -- why she hardly was still a minute unless she was sleeping. And us boys why, one time 1 was so tired -- I got so tired I set my plow around on the wall at the house and tried to use the table and the stove to plow with after 1 got into the house ... A doublefoot can sure tire a person out. We used Neal's Paymester and Thompson Prolific corn seed. Farmed out on shares of one quarter and one thirds all throughout Zion Valley. And Granny would get us kids outside on odd days just to throw rocks out of the fields downhill

"All us kids went to Zion School. It was a one roomer and 3 teachers I remember were Lizzy Lewis, Hattie Lyle and Lloyd Lewis (I learned more under him."

"That family of Granny's eat well. It took 50 pounds of flour and 2 bushels of meal a week to do us," and George told a "wumpus cat" and a "flying Jenny" story about there. And about Billy Lockmore's shingle machine they had used to make roofing.

How'd Granny look?

"Slender and tall," George said, "never over 125 pounds .. But at 75 one day she had a stroke out in her beeyard, lingered 3 or 4 days and died."

A person gets mental pictures of good people like that, and keeps them in their hearts as well. How nice it is when they walk with us in the way!

Her name was Caroline.