A Harlan County Lady

Nancy Turner Cawood

Born 1792

Married

John Cawood

Wore pants and rode a horse

Nancy Turner, born 1795. Daughter of William and Susannah Turner. The first white woman born in Harlan County, Kentucky. Probably among the first white people to settle in the Harlan County area before Harlan became a county, in 1806. She was born, tough as tanned leather. She married John Cawood, an early settler according to my Great Grandma, Polly Ann Saylor. She during the Civil War fought with the men; she mounted a horse and rode through southern Virginia and eastern Kentucky, Harlan, Bell and Leslie and would carry news as well as food to the troops. She also carried a gun and was known to have fired it a few time at and fell a few enemy souls in battle; following the Civil War much was said, speculated and rumored about the feats of the lady, Nancy Cawood. It was said on one occasion she had fired away all her ammunition and dismounted her stud and wrestled an enemy to the ground and took his firearm and proceeded to negate his fighting capacity. There was a great deal of truth in the stories about Nancy but women in those days got little credit for the service, if service was for the south. The only woman ever honored for her service in the Civil War, and there were many who served in different capacities as nurses, doctors and with gun fire; this was Mary Walker, a doctor; years later she was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor; it was later revoked and taken back; then; when President Jimmy Carter came to office, he restored, posthumously, the Medal of Honor, to Mary Walker and this time it stuck. These were turbulent times in Southeastern Kentucky; brother fought against brother; young and old of both sexes were involved and often relatives killing one another. Feuds followed. Anger was slow to subside among the survivors of the war; Many rebels were tried and hanged for their participation in the war on the side of the south; political party lines were drawn. When John Cawood and Nancy Turner started their family in Harlan County, Kentucky around 1818, there were still Indians around. The Indians came from over in Virginia and killed a man named Wallen, that had come among the first to this area; he was thought to be the first white man to be killed by Indians. Later, the area in honor of this white man's family named the area Wallins Creek as early as 1806. There are records of surveys and land grants to the Brocks, Blantons, Cawoods, Heltons, Howards, Smiths Skidmores, Foresters and may others. I often told the story to Circuit Court juries about Nancy Turner being the first white woman born in Harlan and her escapades with the military service in the Civil War and someone would always want to know which side she was on and I speculated that since she was the Daughter of William Turner and her brother William Turner the 3rd owned a large number of slaves, she was probably a rebel. Her husband John Cawood was among the first white men to arrive in the area. It was raw nature, later, Wallins Creek became a functional modern city with a bank, theatre, restaurants, and city police force. By the census of 1820 there were over three hundred households and it was getting so crowed that the settlers began to emigrate into areas that became Leslie, Clay, Owsley, Perry, Letcher, Bell and adjacent areas where they could own large tracts of land, five hundred to one though acres on which to provide grazing and pastures for the live stock; Chestnut and Beech trees were abundant and hogs became fat enough to kill on food from these trees. "Coon, deer and possum" provided settlers with much wild game food and the hides brought cash with which to buy staples like salt, pepper, flour and as they would say "Brot on stuff".

Another story Polly Ann would tell is that John Covey Howard a huge man whose weight exceeded that of most fattened hogs married Matilda Brock, Granddaughter of Jesse and Rebecca Howard Brock and by her had 11 children and she disappeared and was never heard of again and of course all kinds of rumors began to surface.

Matilda's Great Grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee by the name of Susannah and that she may have escaped with the Indians on the "Trail of Tears" to Oklahoma. The Howard's of course wanted to make her disappearance look real and a theory by them was she had become enamored with a drummer and had eloped with him. A drummer in those days may have been a peddler of ointments and salves, good for all that ails man and beast. Maybe a black bear of which there were many from Brushy Mountain had captured her while working in the garden but on her side of the family the Brock's, James Brock Sr, her father and mother, her brothers and sisters had a different idea of what may have happened and this included my Great Grandmother, Polly Ann Saylor who had married Matilda's cousin, Curley John Brock. It was their thinking that John Covey had used up her production power and wanted another companion and just simply made rid of her; she disappeared in 1847 and this did not jive with the Cherokee exodus to Oklahoma. None of her children ever heard from her which they argued would not have been consistent with her convictions, anyway or side you take, the matter remains unresolved. To this day both familes, the Brock's and Howard's have intermarried merged and have descendants numbering in the thousands inhabitating every state in the Union and on the death roster of almost every County in eastern Kentucky as having been killed in the Civil War, WW1 and WW2, Korea and Vietnam wars. I am an example of this having blood lines to the family tree of both sides.

Farmer Helton

08 June 1982

Pineville, Kentucky