Franklin County, Alabama - Biographies - Laura Bertha Massey King as told to Carl Elliott February 1959

My maiden name was Laura Bertha Massey, and I was the twelfth and youngest child of my parents, Hezekiah and Margaret (Bonds) Massey. I was born on November 2, 1873, and am 85 years of age and of good memory as this is being written down.

I am the widow of Joe King. We were the parents of eight children.

Andrew Turner Bonds, who was generally called "Andy" Bonds, was my mother's oldest brother. I had barely turned 10 years of age when he died in 1883, so my recollections of him are limited. He was about six feet tall, was fat, and had a long beard which made him appear older than his sixty years. He was a member of the Masonic Order, and was a veteran of the Confederate War.

As a very young girl I attended the funeral ceremony at the graveside of Uncle David Langley, husband of Catherine (Massey) Langley, my father's sister. On this occasion I rode on horseback, behind my mother to the Bonds Graveyard. The Masons were in charge of the funeral ceremony. My Uncle Andrew T. Bonds carried a large Masonic Bible and wore a Masonic collar.

The burial of David Langley had been some months before the funeral ceremony. Seventy-five years ago it was very common in this area for a funeral ceremony to follow the burial by several weeks or even several months. Such was true in the case of Uncle David Langley.

Catherine (Massey) Langley was the wife of David Langley, and a sister of my father, Hezekiah Massey. She was a daughter of Elijah and Thanie (Bolton) Massey. My brothers and sisters all called her "Aunt Cath' Langley. She survived her husband by several years.

My grandfather on my father's side was Elijah Massey, son of Hezekiah Massey and father of my father, Hezekiah. His wife was Thanie (Bolton) Massey. Though I never did see my grandfather, Elijah, nor my grandmother, Thanie, I know as a matter of family history that they were the first of our set of Masseys to migrate from North Carolina to Pickens County, Alabama. These two moved again to Franklin County, Alabama, in the eighteen fifties. They lie buried beside their daughter, Catherine (Massey) Langley, near the Reggie Johnson Place on the Jay Center Road in Franklin County, Alabama. Both of them died before I was born.

My father Hezekiah Massey could read and could write a little. He didn't belong to a church, but when it was appropriate for the Bible to be read he would ask my mother to do so.

Hezekiah Massey was a Confederate soldier during the War Between the States. I believe he served more than one enlistment. He already had a large family when the war came on and I think he found it necessary to stay out of the Confederate service a while during the war in order to provide for his family.

Hezekiah Massey was born December 12, 1822, and died September 18, 1910.

My mother's father was William Bonds of Pickens and Greene Counties, Alabama. I never did see him. As a matter of fact, I never did visit our relatives there. I often heard my mother and father speak of them, but it was a long trek to Pickens County in the early days without benefit of railroads or highways. On Cedar Creek in Franklin County we were a good hundred miles north of our Pickens and Greene kin as the crow flies.

So, most of the information I have about my grandfather William Bonds, and his family, comes from the Hezekiah Massey Family Bible which passed at his death into the hands of his youngest son, James Clark Massey, better known as Jim or Jimmy Massey, who was in his latter years universally and affectionately known as, and called "Uncle Jim" Massey. When James Clark Massey died in 1958, the bible passed into the hands of his daughter, Icie Massey.

William Bonds was born on March 21, 1801, and if still living would now be nearly 158 years old. When he was 18 he married Naomi Gray, who was then 15 years of age. In the next nine years William and Naomi had five children before she died on February 18, 1929, aged 24 years, 2 months, and 11 days. She died just six months after giving birth to twin daughters, Margaret and Lydia, of whom Margaret was my mother.

After Naomi's death Grandfather William Bonds remained single for three years and married Elizabeth Johnson, then 20 years of age, on February 23, 1832. They were the parents of ten children.

My father, Hezekiah Massey, had a brother named William. He married Caroline Glenn. They moved to Texas.

Another one of Hezekiah Massey's brothers was Bryant Massey. He married Letha Bolton.

Uncle Barton Massey was a brother of Bryant and Hezekiah. He married Letha (Bolton) Massey, who had been the wife of his brother Bryant Massey, in Bryant's lifetime.

Dianah (Jones) Bonds, a native of Pickens County, was the wife of my mother's oldest, and only full brother, Andrew T. Bonds. She lived a long time after her husband died and I remember her well. I remember seeing her baptized when she joined the Masonic Baptist Church at the Old Stand Church House in Franklin County. William Jesse "Will" Bonds, who married "Betty" Massey, was her grandson, and I recall that he lived with her for a while after Andrew Turner Bonds died. I also recall that when I was 14 years of age, in 1888, that Aunt Dianah and I weighed in the same notch.

Jimmy Massey, a brother of my father, was according to our family history the first one of the Masseys to move from Pickens County to Franklin County, Alabama. His brother Hezekiah soon followed and helped him make a crop in Franklin County in the year 1849. Hezekiah Massey returned to Pickens County in December, 1849, and married my mother, Margaret Bonds. Shortly after the first of the year 1850, my father and mother moved to Franklin County in a cart pulled by one steer. They also brought along a Negro slave named Joe that my father's grandfather, another Hezekiah Massey, had given him when Pa was a boy.

My mother, Margaret Bonds Massey, joined the Church of Christ in 1897, I believe. This was when my husband and I were living in Texas. It was when my oldest brother, Andrew Jackson Massey, lived on the Jess Amos Bolton Place. She joined at what was then know as the "New Church", near the Tom Cooper Place.

Margaret Bonds was born August 12, 1828, and died August 6, 1926.

My father and mother had twelve children, all born amidst Franklin County's hills. They were:

1. Lydia Katherine Massey, born January 3, 1851. She married Garrett Bourland. She died September 21, 1895.
2. Andrew Jackson Massey (twin) born June 22, 1852. He married Martha Ann Owen. He died September 25, 1921.
3. William Turner Massey (twin) born June 22, 1852. He married Laura McKinney. He died July 24, 1915.
4. David Baxter Massey was born August 25, 1854. He married Laura Cothrum. He died July 20, 1933.
5. Margaret Jane Massey was born November 1, 1856. She married Thomas Wesley Wren. She died March 7, 1934.
6. Matthew Thomas Massey was born September 29, 1858. He married Dona Daniels. He died October 16, 1900.
7. Hezekiah Houston Massey was born January 2, 1861. He died at the age of 11 years on September 19, 1872.
8. Sophronia Ann Massey was born May 2, 1863. She married W. M. "Bill" Waltrip. She died July 2, 1949.
9. Amanda Emeline Massey was born October 2, 1865. She died at the age of two, on September 30, 1867.
10. Benjamin Franklin Massey was born February 20, 1868. He married Lula Elliott. He died June 18, 1841.
11. James Clark Massey was born February 12, 1870. He married Mattie Osborne. He died in 1958.
12. Laura Bertha Massey, was born November 2, 1873. She married Joe King, son of Ep King.

See the "Annals of Northwest Alabama", article, Recollections of Olden Days by Bertha (Massey) King, pages 104 through 110, as told to Carl Elliott, Tuesday, February 10, 1959, and in the presence of her son-in-law and daughter, Ellis and Virdner (King) Thorn, and in the presence of her niece, and namesake, Bertha Ella Lenora (Massey) Elliott.