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W. P. A. History of Pontotoc County, Mississippi

CHAPTER 1  CONTINUED

Pioneer Families

WILLIAM MCCOY came to Pontotoc County with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. William McCoy, from Laurens County, South Carolina, in the 1840s.  A sister, Mrs. Joshua Falkner, and her husband and baby, also came, traveling in a wagon pulled by horses.  The baby cried all the way across the rough trail.

When they first arrived Mr. William McCoy worked for a Mr. White, above Ecru, helping to clear the land.  He said that deer were so plentiful that he threw his axe at them when going through the woods; turkey and other wild game were also plentiful.  There was an old deer lick in what is now the business section of Ecru.

Before the end of the first year Mr. McCoy took his family and relatives to the Oak Hill community, where with the aid of the Milams and the Goggins who came about the same time, he started building a home.  The men went to the woods and cut logs with an axe , after which they tied chains to them and snaked them with horses to the cleared place.  With broadaxes they hewed the logs and notched the corners so they would fit.  The house was a two room structure with  a "dog trot" between.  The floors were smoothed by hand and held in position with pegs; the cracks chinked and daubed with dirt.

The old house is in an excellent state of preservation, and descendants of the original settlers live in it today.

Here Mr. William McCoy and his wife, who was a Spruill, reared twelve children:  Sinn, Frances, George, Fannie, Corrie, Will, John Teague, Sam, Emma, Hannah Ward, Josie, and Ida.  Only one of those is still living.  She is Mrs. William Sudduth of the Zion Community.

The house is now a seven-room home and is located one mile north of the Oak Hill Baptist Church.  It is in an excellent state of preservation. (1)

(1) Mrs. S. P. McCoy, Jackson, Miss.

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