HARRIS MISCELLANY

One very interesting story that I heard on a visit to McNairy County, Tennessee, was about the Harris family beans. This story was first related to me by Cousin Edith (Wright) Rogers of Decatur, Georgia, at the Harris Reunion in Adamsville, Tennessee on August 10, 1991. Her family and mine both originally came from around Leapwood, a little community just north of Adamsville. Edith is descended from Uncle Giles Claiborn Harris, and I am descended from William Ashley “Billy” Harris.

The first Harris of our family to come to McNairy County, Tennessee, was Gideon Lindsey Harris in the late 1800s. Uncle Docky (Doctor Franklin), Giles Claiborn, and William Ashley Harris were three of the sons of Gideon Lindsey Harris..

The story goes that Uncle Docky (1853-1915) and Aunt Sarah Harris (1859-1934) lived on a farm in the Leapwood Community north of Adamsville, where all the rest of the Harris clan lived nearby. Docky and Sarah planted some wonderful climbing beans shortly after they were married and continued to raise them every year during their married life. They were married on July 9, 1874 and were married for over 40 years when Uncle Docky passed away in 1915. Aunt Sarah continued to raise these beans for the rest of her life. She passed away in 1934. After her death, the beans continued to be raised by their children and later by various family members, and they still are raised today.

The Harris climbing beans are a tender variety and savory tasting pole beans. In a visit with Demova (Harris) Brewer, a granddaughter of Uncle Gideon Lindsey Harris, Jr., in July 2003, she said they always called the beans “Aunt Sarah Beans.” Of course Uncle Docky passed away when Demova was 7 years old, so she mostly remembered Aunt Sarah growing the beans, but not Uncle Docky. I asked if she knew what variety of beans they were, and she said they are Brown McCaslins.

Evie Harris, widow of O. C. Harris, and daughter-in-law of Uncle Docky and Aunt Sarah Harris, announced at the Reunion in 1987 about the story of the Harris family beans. She had married into the Harris family in about 1928, and her in-laws, and the rest of her Harris family were already planting the beans at that time. They have been in the Harris family for all these many years. Evie wanted to send some of the beans to various relatives who might be interested.

In 1987, Evie gave 16 beans to Cousin Edith Rogers to start her own crop of Harris beans. She grew them for a few years in her home in Georgia and then decided to give the last bean seeds she had saved to me in 1991.

I found out later that Cousin Lewis D. Harris, now of Mississippi, who is a younger brother of Demova Brewer, also has some of the Harris family beans. He has been planting them each year, but he had such a small amount that he has just been growing them to make more seed, and not eating any of them. Over the last 15 or more years I have ate several messes of beans from my batch of the Harris beans, but I always try to hold back some for seed for the next year.

After the first year that I had the beans, I gave some of my beans to my first cousin, Evelyn (Harris) Buell in Portland, Oregon. She grew them for a few years, but she no longer has any of the beans. I didn’t grow the beans for a few years. I was worried that my beans might not sprout after being dormant, but they did grow. I had a nice crop of beans that next year (2004), and I have continued growing (and eating) the beans each year, although at my current residence I have found there is an abundance of bunny rabbits that really like to eat beans. I have had to put chicken wire all around my garden to keep them out. I do not want this tradition to die. In 2004 I shared a few of the bean seeds with another cousin, Janice (Walker) Word, who now lives at Adamsville, Tennessee.

In July 2004 Janice had this to say about the beans: “I took some of the Harris beans over to show Mrs. Verba Wilkerson, and she said they were called Tennessee Green Pod. They used to raise them, and that is what they called them. She is my aunt's mother and she also is kin to the Harrises. She will be 94 years old in October. I have cooked some of them and they take a long time to cook but they sure are good.” *Note: Verba (Walker) Wilkerson is the daughter of Rev. Cisco Walker, granddaughter of Lucy (Harris) Walker, and great-granddaughter of Gideon Lindsey Harris, Jr.

My wife and my two sons kind of laugh about what I now call my “Hundred-Year-Old Beans” as they don’t have much sense of history and tradition. Actually, the beans have been in the Harris family for more than 130 years now as Docky and Sarah were married in 1874. And my youngest son once thought I was wasting my time planting and watering my “thousand-year-old beans.” They probably are that old at least (if you could trace it back), but we only know they have been in the Harris family for at least 130 years.

Another side story on the beans is that I wrote and asked another cousin about these beans. She is Vernie May Walker (now deceased), daughter of John R. and Myrtle (Harris) Walker, and a niece of O. C. and Evie Harris and granddaughter of Docky and Sarah Harris. She said that her parents had a big batch of the Harris family beans saved for seed. They were in buckets. The seeds were not planted for several years after her mother passed away. She tried soaking the beans to get some of them to grow, but she could not get even one of her batch of beans to sprout. She was quite disappointed. But fortunately, with Lewis Harris and myself, and maybe some others of the extended family, the tradition of planting the Harris family beans is still being carried out today, more than 130 years later.

The old Gideon Harris log home and family cemetery are located on the south side of what for many years was called the South Berlin Road which runs southeast from Columbia to Berlin, Tennessee. In recent years a large freeway has been built practically in the front yard of the house, so the historic Gideon Harris home, outbuildings, and cemetery, likely look out of place in this modern world.

This is in the same area where the Silver Creek Community once thrived. It is on the border of the Maury and Marshall County lines. The Gideon Harris property is in Marshall County, about 2 miles east of the county line. It is one and one-half miles east of where the old Silver Creek store, post office, and railroad station once stood. It is also one miles east of the Robert Harris home (still standing, 2004), who was a son of James Gilliam Harris, and grandson of Gideon Harris.

In October 2003, Janice and Sam Word visited the Gideon Harris home and cemetery. They reported that there in now a new highway and the house sets back off the road about 1/4 mile. The wife of the former owner, Paul Anderson, passed away in 1992, and he couldn’t stay there after her death. He had lived there for a little over 20 years. The current owner of the house is Connie Pollock and her husband (2004), and the address of the house is 2253 New Columbia Highway, Lewisburg, Tennessee. The best directions to the farm is to go east on state highway 50 from Columbia, go past the county line at least six miles and then start looking on the right. There will be a farm setting way back off the highway with a sign over the entrance saying "Paradise"; the next farm setting way back off the road with wagon wheels over the entrance is the Gideon Harris farm. The new owners called the place “The Rockin C Ranch.” It is closer to Lewisburg than Columbia; it is about three miles west of Lewisburg.

I was able to visit this house and the cemetery in August 1989. Paul Anderson, the owner at the time, took me inside the house. The house has white wood siding on it now to cover up and protect the old logs. Each room downstairs has a fireplace. There is a nice kitchen in the back of the house that was added later. Originally there was a separate building where all the cooking was done. Before the Civil War, Gideon Harris had slaves, and they did the cooking in the separate cookhouse. The cookhouse, a barn, and some other original buildings were still standing in 1989 when I visited.

Janice and Sam reported that Mrs. Pollock also was very courteous and gave them a tour of the house and outbuildings. They said the old log kitchen is still there (2003). The present owners have intentions to remove the siding and expose the logs; they have already redone the foundation of the house. Janice and Sam walked up the hill to the cemetery which was in need of quite a bit of work. Mrs. Pollock said that they bring out county prisoners a couple of times a year to cut the grass, and there are several markers that need to be straightened (2003).

A number of Harrises are buried in the Gideon Harris Family Cemetery, but the cemetery has not been well kept, as the property was sold out of the Harris family quite a number of years ago. A descendant, Ken Harris, a grandson of my Great-Uncle Thurman Harris, told me a few years ago that he had been going to the cemetery each August to try to trim away some of the brush and had hopes to erect a fence around the cemetery. So far, this has not been done.

Here are inscriptions for the graves still legible in the cemetery. I will list them by rows (as much as possible, as the rows are not always straight), starting with the oldest part first, and looking from left/south (top of the hill) to the right/north (bottom of the hill). Notations in brackets explain how each person fits into the Harris family.

The old cemetery is very much overgrown with tall grass and shrubbery, and it is not fenced in, but it is in the very back of the property, and so far it appears that cattle have not damaged any of the markers, although a couple have fallen over. Just outside a small rock wall on the left side of the cemetery is a slave burial ground. There are no markers in the slave cemetery—only a few field stones—and most of these are gone.

Glenn Gohr's Harris DNA Page
Harris DNA—Group 1
Harris DNA—Group 2
Harris DNA—Group 3
Harris DNA—Group 4
Harris DNA—Group 5
Harris DNA—Group 6
Harris DNA—Group 7
Harris DNA—Group 8
Harris DNA—Group 9
Harris DNA—Group 10
Harris DNA—Group 11
Harris DNA—Group 12
Harris DNA—Group 13
Harris DNA—Group 14
Harris DNA—Group 15
Harris DNA—Group 16
Harris DNA—Group 17
Harris DNA—Group 18
Harris DNA—Group 19
Harris DNA—Group 20
Harris DNA—Group 21
Harris DNA—Group 22
Harris DNA—Group 23
Harris DNA—Group 24
Harris DNA—Group 25
Harris DNA—Group 26
Harris DNA—Group 27
Harris DNA—Group 28
Harris DNA—Group 29
Harris DNA—Unmatched Kits
Harris DNA—Ybase Kits
Harris DNA—Y-DNA Kits
Go to Family Tree DNA
Go to the Harris DNA Study
Go to an Introduction to the Harris Y-DNA Project
Go to the HARRIS Y-DNA RESULTS Page
Go to “Some Early Harrises And Possible DNA Connections” on WorldConnect
Go to “Harris Genealogy from Henrico Co. and Prince Edward Co., VA and Marshall Co. and McNairy Co., TN to TX, OK, CO, etc.” Database on WorldConnect
Glenn Gohr's HARRIS/HARRIES/HERRIES/HARRISS GENEALOGY Page
The Harris Miscellany Page
The Harris Family Reunions Page
The Will of Thomas Harris of Creeksea, County Essex, England, 1617
Glenn Gohr's Genealogy Page