Many people accumulate old relics, souvenirs, and bric-a-brac of various kinds, old furniture, bedsteads, or pictures--the older they are the more highly valued--and many other things like old swords, guns, pistols, hunting knives and ancient what-nots, but it remains for a prominent citizen and a leading lawyer of Kemper county to collect the hewn logs of an old house, move them a dozen miles or more, and reconstruct a pioneer settler's home, as it was about 1835.

This Kemper county citizen is Attorney L. P. Spinks of DeKalb, who salvaged the logs of the home built by his great-grandfather, John M. Spinks, for a daughter, Jane Spinks, when she married a Dr. Jones. To this union were born several children, among others being Spinks Jones and Callie Jones, whose children and grandchildren now live in various sections of the state. Dr. Jones died, and his widow married a Mr. Mosley, and to this union were born a number of children, one of whom, Elva, married J. L. Gunn, late of Kemper County. Mrs. Gunn was mother of the wife of D. P. Davis, now a member of the legislature from Kemper county. Another son of Mrs. Gunn was the late I. F. Gunn who served several years on the Meridian police force, and still another son, Randolph Gunn, now a Meridian police officer.

Moved North of Dekalb
The old logs cut, hewn and notched by the late John M. Spinks were recently reclaimed, and moved to a farm of his great-grandson L. P. Spinks, just north of Dekalb.

The logs, long and straight, were hewn from virgin timber when the Indians still roamed the forest and hunted deer and wild turkey along streams near Blackwater church, some 10 miles south of Dekalb. The Red men of that day have long ago gone to their Happy Hunting Grounds, as have those who "rossed" and dressed the logs with sooted line and broad-axe, but these fine timbers remain as evidence of the white man's skill and inborn constructive ingenuity. Only evidence of the Red man's occupancy of the Blackwater territory is an occasional broken arrowhead, picked up after a washing rain.

Trappers and traders were sparsely settled in isolated communities before signing of the Dancing Rabbit Creek treaty in 1830. Beaver, otter, mink, and weasel were plentiful and game abounded. Traders came to barter whiskey, powder, lead, red calico and colored beads with the Indians for furs and dressed doe skins, but migration of home builders from Virginia, the Carolina, and Georgia did not set in until about 1830. Hundreds of home-seekers trekked down the historic 3-Chop-Way, a highway between Greensboro, Ga., and Vicksburg.

Traveled In Covered Wagons
Traveling with one of the covered wagon caravans that crawled along the 3-Chop-Way was John M. Spinks and his family. Reaching Daleville (now Lizelia), they turned north and selected a homestead about three miles west of Blackwater. Settlers who had preceded him, helped to hew logs and rive boards for the roof. When the material was assembled, a "house-raising" at the Spinks homestead was announced at church services. Families came from far and wide on the appointed day, the men with augers, adz, axes and hammers, the women with buckets, pots, pans, and dishes, for the workers must be fed.

Venison, wild turkey, fried fish, stewed squirrel, corn cakes and various sorts of dried fruit pies made up the bountiful noonday dinner. That night the Spinks family moved in and the countryside enjoyed "a house-warming" and an "ole Virginie reel."

Sam Dale, known over the countryside as a "right smart fiddler," came from his home at Daleville and sawed out Black-eyed Susie, and Hop-Light Ladies on the old fiddle that he brought from Georgia to Mississippi. The music, the dancing, and the merry-making went on until roosters began to crow for day, when everybody went home to dream and talk of the good times at the John M. Spinks "house-raising."