CONTRIBUTED TO THE OBSERVER 

LEE COUNTY — 

Local historian Ron Williams has recently compiled a new book, “Fieldstone Pillars,” Book 2. Like Book 1, it continues to focus on the older communities in the southeast corner of Chambers County, Alabama: Hopewell, Berlin, Osanippa, McGinty, Bethlehem and Glass. It also crosses the county line to include Striped Nation and Blanton, of Lee County.

Williams’ ancestors were pioneers in this area of Chambers County and he grew up in the Hopewell community, in the home built by his third-great-grandparents, David S. and Nancy Woodall Williams, in 1839. 

Growing up in the Old Williams Homeplace and listening to the stories of the older members of his family and community fostered a love of local history.

“Fieldstone Pillars” is a collection of over 30 years of research relating to the places and families of the area.

“Our history is built on fieldstone pillars,” Williams wrote. “I grew up in a house which rested on stones that had been wrestled from the ground by my pioneer ancestors.  The old homeplaces and one-room schoolhouses sat on fieldstone pillars. Our ancestors worshiped in churches with fieldstone foundations. Every bite of food was cooked in a fieldstone chimney. And when they died, a single fieldstone was placed at the head and foot of their graves.”

The book is full of newspaper clippings and pictures which relate to the area as well as personal reflections of those who called the area home in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is 225 pages of memories. There is a surprise on every page.

Some special sections of the book are the memories of the late Ernest Williams and the late Mattie Lee Hunt Wood. 

Williams wrote of his childhood growing up on the Holladay farm off Ben Brown Road. He shared many colorful memories of his school days in the one-room schoolhouses of the area and of life on a farm in the early 20th century.

Wood, who was the sister of River View’s M.M. Hunt, wrote of her childhood in the late 19th century in “I Remember.” 

“I do know that I was the fifth child of George and Cynthia (“Simpy,” Papa called her) Hunt,” wrote Wood. “They were good Christian people (Baptist) but, seems to me now, very poor. Still, Papa was amongst the most prosperous farmers in Striped Nation, the name of our community.”

Memories of many other families are represented as well. 

If you are interested in a copy of Fieldstone Pillars, please contact Ron Williams at 706-773-5330 or email hopewellroad@yahoo.com.