b. October 5, 1853m. ca. 1878, Eula Avenant Daniel
(b. September 19, 1861, d. July 13, 1903)
d. October 9, 1937
pb. Big Springs Cemetery, Madison Co., Tenn.
Michael Roberts was the eldest child and only son born to Fredonia Parchman and Michael C. Watlington, who lived at the time on a part of the George W. Watlington farm in the 17th Civil District of Madison County which George had sold to Michael C. on January 9, 1851. About the same time his father George had sold him a Negro woman named Silvy, which sale was recorded along with the deed for the property. Michael and Fredonia Parchman (b. ca. 1831), daughter of another pioneer settler of the region, James Parchman, were married about 1851. Though Mack Rob was probably born in Madison County, Michael C. and Fredonia were in Henderson County in the 1860 census, and in later years lived in that part of Henderson County which became a part of the new county of Chester in 1882.
As Mack Rob came of school age it was necessary for his parents to leave him with his grandparents and ``Uncle Billie'' Watlington in order to attend school. Uncle Billie, (William Tabler W.) was the oldest son of George and Catherine and lived on the home place in Madison County, 17th Civil District. Schools had been available there for many years even at this early time. One of Uncle Billie's ten children was Mack Harvey, who was only three years older than Mack Rob, and the two became great friends and buddies, a relationship which lasted until their death. But school days were limited as Mack Rob was only eight-and-a-half years of age as the Civil War reached the region with the bloody battle of Shiloh (Pittsburgh Landing) in April 1862. Schools were sporadic, if held at all, after this time for the next three years.
Mack Rob remembered hearing the big guns at Shiloh, which was only about twenty miles away to the southeast. Neighbors, and possibly one uncle, John H. Parchman, were quite surely engaged in battle there and the stories of the battle would have been told and retold during the ensuing years. From that time forward West Tennessee became a virtual battleground, with both Federal and Confederate troops ranging over it intermittently, searching for stragglers, deserters, food for man and beast, and supplies for the war machines on both sides. Michael C. was drafted for service with the Confederates although his sympathies were with the Union. So far as we know he never served effectively with either the Confederates or the Federals but spent time in jail for refusal to do so. Family life, and plantation life was disrupted, horses and slaves were lost, and Mack Rob grew up amid the violence of war and talk of war with its very real privations.
The Yankees had come through the country and conscripted all the able-bodied horses for their service. Of course some horses were hidden and escaped so they were constantly on the lookout for another good horse. As Mack Rob was returning from the grist mill on an old blind mare one afternoon, some Yankee troopers spotted him and speeded up to catch him. He knew they wouldn't take his blind mare, but he gave them a chase anyway. When they caught up with him they were so mad at him for trying to escape that one of them took his new straw hat. Unauthorized agents also molested the population during this time and many were the stories of violence which Mack Rob could tell of this period in his young life. Later in the War, his Uncle Sterling Watlington and his cousin Billie Houston joined the Confederates and fought under General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Tennessee and Mississippi.
With the end of the War years the end of the struggle did not come to West Tennessee. Many barns, houses, horses, men and other signs of a prosperous economy had been destroyed. Horses were not available in sufficient quantity to do the necessary amount of plowing. Mack Rob was a horse dealer in later years, and always appreciated horses. For him one of the great tragedies of the War was the loss of the fine horses of the region, both riding stock and work stock. It is no wonder that horse thieving rings soon developed after the war ended because horses represented a great source of wealth and were desperately needed, and horse thieves were dealt with promptly and drastically. One man was hung for horse thieving in that section, and one of Mack Rob's cousins who was thought to have aided the thieves had to leave the community for his health.
After the family was united following the Civil War, Michael C. and Fredonia still had property and some funds. Before the war they had many horses and slaves and were very well established, as Census records for 1860 reveal. Since things were not going well in West Tennessee with its partisan animosities still very evident, Michael C. got his property in shape and started with his young family to Texas in two covered wagons, with one hired hand accompanying them. The young hired hand stayed with them during the entire trip and two years later returned to the community with them. This trip was made during the Fall or Winter of 1867-68, and they were in Dallas County, Texas, for the crop year 1868. Their crop that year was a failure, and being discouraged with the prospects they returned to Prairie County, Arkansas, the next winter, and made a crop there with Jake Parchman, a brother of Fredonia, during 1869. Their lands there were in the White River Valley, and according to reports this crop year was also a bad one.
The family had traded for a lot of Indian ponies in Texas, and were bringing them back to Tennessee where horses were in great demand. Mack Rob had an especially pretty and fine riding horse, which was mistakenly shot for a deer. This was a great disappointment to the young (sixteen years old) horseman, as well as another financial loss to the family. As Winter came on, the family returned to West Tennessee as they had left it, in a two wagon caravan, accompanied this time by extra horses.
This trip to Texas with its adventure and its possibilities was very influential on Mack Rob. His father had helped his own brother John Roberts Watlington to further his studies and become a physician, and had hopes for Mack Rob following this profession. The financial possibilities were still there, but Mack Rob had tasted too much freedom from the classroom by 1870 to want to return to any studies. Horses, riding, trading, and farming had become his way of life and he found enough freedom and meaning there to stay with it. A cousin, Obediah F. (Obe), the son of Dr. John, did continue his studies and became a community physician following the death of Dr. John Watlington.
Following the pattern of his father and of the hard times in which he lived, Mack Rob did not marry until he was about twenty-five years of age (ca. 1879). He chose Eula Avenant Daniel, who lived at the time on a farm adjoining Dr. John Watlington at the line of Madison and Chester counties. Eula Daniel was the daughter of a shoemaker and farmer, Ralph Whitfield (Rafe) Daniel and America Tabitha Anderson. They were living very near the home and relatives of America T., whose Chappell and Anderson parentage had come as pioneers into this section from a rich heritage in Tidewater Virginia. They had hundreds of acres of land between Big Springs and the Forked Deer River in what is now Chester County. Rafe's parents had come from Rowan County, North Carolina, into the Bear Creek Community in the 1820's, and later the Daniel family scattered to Hardeman, Crockett, and Lauderdale counties in Tennessee and westward into Arkansas and Texas.
Mack and Eula married about 1878, their first child, Mable, being born in 1879. Mack Rob did not settle down and buy land so far as we know. He worked as a hired hand or sharecropper among relatives and friends of the Pinson-Big Springs community where he and Eula had many relatives. In the 1880 Census he was in District #1 of Madison County which lay mostly to the southwest of Pinson near John H. Parchman, his mother's brother. Ulrich Armstrong later recalled that Mack Rob had worked the lands of his cousin Billie Houston to the west of Pinson for many years. However, his early memories of the family indicated that they lived more to the south of Big Springs where the Andersons had land and where the Ralph Daniel farm was located.
In the Fall and Winter of 1889-90, Mack Rob gathered his young family and possessions for his venture into the great West, to Texas again. Eula Daniel had at least one sister living there (Wynona Daniel Rodgers) and plans were made by them for Mack Rob and Eula to come work on their place while they returned to Tennessee for a year. The couple, with their young children ages one to ten years, went by wagon to Jackson and from there to Memphis, then to Clarksville, Red River County, Texas, where Wynona and Dudley Rodgers met them. Their Texas experience was a happier one than that of the former generation, and they made two good crops there in successive years. But during this time, on February 4, 1891, Rafe Daniel died and Eula grew too homesick for her dear relatives to remain in Texas. The return trip was made by train also, and the family settled again on lands of Mack Rob's cousin, Billie Houston, west of Pinson, for the next two years.
The next years in Tennessee as a sharecropper must have been years of frustration and trial for the young family. Ulrich A., the older son, states that he never went to school for more than a few weeks at a time and even that for not more than three years. The girls may have done better, for all learned to read and write. But Ulrich was behind the plow as soon as he could reach the handles and didn't learn to read well until after he married. They lived on a succession of farms west of Pinson from 1892 until 1906, the succession being remembered as the following by Ulrich years later:
Mack Rob probably accepted the invitation to farm the Pacaud place with courtship and marriage in the prospect, for he needed to re-reestablish his home and fortunes. He had to have some good reasons for leaving the relatively friendly neighborhood of Pinson, Bear Creek and Big Springs to take his family into a new community where he had no relatives nearby. Albert was the youngest, only eight years of age at the time of the move. Mable would have been twenty-seven, and had a home of her own and Ulrich took Miss Jennie S. Hammond for a bride during their second year on the Pacaud place, in August, 1907.
James William Pacaud had lived several years as neighbor to the O. W. Hammonds and was among the leaders in the founding of the Lester's Chapel Methodist Church nearby. Participating in the same church and sharing the same faith brought the families closer than physical proximity might indicate. Mr. Pacaud died in February, 1899, and the widow and children went it alone for the next several years until Mack Rob appeared on the scene. Mack Rob had only two minor children in 1907, John L. and Albert; but Mrs. Pacaud had five children living at home: Florence, who later married A. V. Patton; Bess, who married Walter Bell; Howard, who married LaRie Smith, and lived in Texas; Joe Albert, who died in an auto accident; Rosa Lee, who married (1) Billy Cheatham, (2) ______ Jordan.
Mack Rob and Ellen were married at the Pacaud home in early 1907 by Brother J. B. Pearson, the Methodist pastor at Malesus. Jennie S. and Emma Mai Hammond were guests at the home wedding.
The difficulties of blending these families into one home can be imagined, but the trial was made and the marriage weathered the storms from 1907 until the Autumn of 1912. During this time the family continued on the farm for one year, then moved to Jackson where they operated a store for a time. Ulrich remembers this store as being in East Jackson, perhaps on Chester Street. Mack Rob had a team of horses and worked out with them also. Later he had a delivery hack and helped in deliveries to the homes of customers. Though it was a family business, Mrs. Pacaud and her children largely cared for the store. The children were getting older and more independent, and soon John L. was on his own, and Albert had gone to live with his sister Mable and her husband, Will A. Stephens, who had grown up just north of Pinson.
In the Autumn of 1912 Mack Rob went from Jackson to Sorrell's Chapel, near Dyersburg, in Dyer County, where Ulrich A. was living and helped him gather his crop. At that time he indicated that he was giving up on his marriage to Ella Swink Pacaud. They seemed to get along very well but the near grown, yet dependent, children that each had, made the union very difficult. From that time until his death in 1937 Mack Rob made his home with Ulrich and Jennie, except for weeks spent in ``off seasons'' with his other children.