Thinking it might be interesting to my children and posterity, I here commence a diary of my life and a rem-iniscence of events and a family record .

My father (JAMES TRUSSELL)* was born in Frederick County, Virginia, the 11th day of May 1770, and was brought to Chester district, now county. South Carolina, and was baptised into the Baptist church the 3rd day of July 1803. He was a deacon of that church for many years, in good standing. He died the 18th of Oct. 1860, age 90 years 5 months and 7 days.

My mother (ELIZABETH LYLES/LYLE)* was born in Chester County, South Carolina, Jan. 1st 1781. Her maiden name was LYLES. She died in Green County, Ala. the 30th day of Sept. 1830. She was a devoted member of the Baptist church from early life. She said some months before she was taken sick that she would die that year. When I left on a journey on the 24th of Aug. just one month and seven days before she died, she hung to me in her feeling and went with me a short distance and begged me not to go, but I had business to attend to in S.C. and Georgia. She lamented that she could not see me before she died. Death found her ready to go. She never shouted in church but shouted and praised God to her last breath. And when death came she was smiling and rejoicing and singing that family hymn (and let this feeble body fail) then passed away. A true mother and my best friend passed from earth to heaven. Her name was ELIZABETH and my father always called her Betsy. My mother was of Irish parents who emigrated to South Carolina, perhaps at an early day of that colony. Her mother's maiden name was COCKREL. There was quite a large connection of the Lyles, Cockrel, Prices and others in the time of the Revolutionary war, and as far as I ever heard they were all true and fought for their country. There was some prominent men among my mother's people, such as Maj. Autenson, Martin and Col. William Lyles and his brothers, they all served in the war 1776. Gov. William Carroll of Tennesee, one of Gen. Jackson's prominent generals was a kinsman of my dear mother, and for whom she named her fifth son. She was true to her friends and country and as sentimental and brave as she was tender hearted and sympathetic. She was firm in the training of her children to industry truths and honesty, and when duty required her to correct or punish her children, she would often shed tears. She taught them to shun a tattler as worse than a thief. She was visited in her last sickness by some very prominent women and all good neighbors, who viewed her body with sadness. Fifty-five years has passed but her voice and features are very real to my mind yet. May her shining example be constantly pressed upon myself, my children and relatives and friends, so that like her we may sing at the last moment, (Oh may my last expiring breath, His loving kindness sing in death.)

My father had two uncles, WILLIAM and MATHEW TRUSSELL, who settled in South Carolina and raised families. His uncle JOHN TRUSSELL went with the Virginia blues under Washington in 1755 to the Indian war of Braddock's defeat and never returned to Virginia and was never heard of any more.

  * Names inserted by compiler.

Grandfather Trussell (JAMES TRUSSELL)* was probably of Italian descent ((incorrect - English, not Italian)) as I have never heard of but two families of foreign birth of that name, one in the state of Maine and one in North Carolina, both of Italy. My father's mother's maiden name was ASHER (SARAH ASHER) and of Virginia birth. I had two brothers and a sister born in South Carolina. My oldest brother, JOHN TRUSSELL, was a fine looking man about six feet two inches high, well proportioned and weighed about 175 Ibs. Soon after the war of 1812 when very young, he was elected captain of militia when a military office was a great honor. He served about six years and afterwards filled various offices with great honor and satisfaction to the people. He was a plain unassuming man of the strictest honest and sincerity and was loved and honored by his neighbors and all good people that knew him and was a kind husband and father and his servants all loved him. He died Dec. 30th 1852. He was about 54 years old. From the time I was 20 years old up to his death, we, as partners and administrators, transacted and settled $1500.00 or $1600 in business and we never disagreed or disputed over anything in conduct or business. No it was in everything a manifestation of the kindest feeling.

My next brother JOSEPH TRUSSELL, was taken to Kentucky, thence to Tennesee and Alabama where he was raised to manhood. He was a stout man, six feet four in. high. He didn't get very much of an education as he had a very limited opportunity in those unsettled states at that time He was like too many youngsters, he liked fun and frollick too well to study much. He went to the river and engaged in running a keel boat with hooks and poles before steam boats were put on the rivers, and afterwards piloted a steam boat one year, and then settled down and became a very steady man, and then married a widow by the name of Price. Her first husband was a very good citizen named Cuthbirth Price, a distant relative of our mother and her maiden name was Straight.

My brother owned a good farm in a good community, but sold it with a view of moving to Mississippi where brother John and myself lived. His wife owned a negro woman and four children, so when my brother sold out he bought a negro man that had lately been brought in, and soon after my brother had bought the negro, a Mr. Butler paid over five hundred dollars to my brother that he (Butler) owed me. This the negro saw just at the time of the noted cold Friday and Sat. Feb. 5th and 6th, 1835. In rebuilding my brother had not had time to put a floor in the negro house, so he told the negroes to come in his house and sleep by the fire while it was so cold, and at a late hour in the night the negro went out and brought in an ax, then went to the bed a and sunk the ax up to the handle in my brother's head, and then had his wife so as to cut her skull in several places. Then hit the negro woman with the pole of the ax and she ran into the yard and died. He then struck at the 16 year old boy but did not prevent him from making his escape. He then robbed the house and set the curtains on fire an left. My brother's wife was able to drag him out in the yard with hi clothes burning, but forgot her babe and it and a little negro girl was burned in the house. My brother's wife lived 2 or 3 days. The largest negro girl was living from home at the time. The negro boy gave the alarm and my brother MATHEW and all the neighbors around was soon in pursuit of him. The murder was commited on Saturday night but all efforts failed till Monday night, when my brother and two faithful friends, after riding till a late hour over ice and frozen ground came on him where Mr. Everitt and his negro man had captured him. When they got him to my brother he was badly frostbit and he had lost one

shoe and they made him wade Trussell creek, where the water was two feet deep and the ford slanted up the creek about 40 yards. Early Tuesday morning the people was coming together to continue to hunt for him, when they saw the negro, they began to prepare to burn him, but my brother MATHEW, being a sworn magistrate, could not allow it without perjuring himself, and some of the friends taken Mathew away, but before they got ready to burn him the other magistrate came among them and he had to be tried and condemned by the county Judge, which was done in the shortest time possible, but the affect of freezing and hot irons did not let him live to be hung. My brother, JOSEPH TRUSSELL, was 34 years old at his death.

My oldest sister was born in South Carolina and was married in Green County, Ala. to Martin Johnson. She was named MOURNING TRUSSELL and lived to have six children, and died Sept. 30th 1837 on the same day of the same month 7 years after mother's death. Her husband was a descendant of the same stock of Dick Johnson, vice president and the great Joseph E. Johnson.

The next was my brother MATHEW, born in Kentucky the 6th of March 1806 and died in Green county, Ala. where he was mostly raised. He died the 6th of April 1839, aged 33 years, one month and ten days. He was a man of great firmness and a member of the Baptist Church in good standing, had great influence on Dock Lyttle and other great men of wealth. He was bailiff in the beat where he was mostly raised, and had made good use of the limited opportunity he had for an education, and through industry and economy he was able to get married and settle himself on a good place he had bought and paid for while he was young. He married Mary Saunders, a niece of a good family connection, to wit, William Bissel of Green county, Aa. and Phil Gully long sheriff of Kemper Co. Miss. He was elected Esqr. soon after he was married, and held the office as long as he would accept it in a beat where there was many talented and wealthy men. He was a successful farmer and gained property very fast, and with a view to moving, he had bought a tract of land with a saw and griss mill and some cattle, in Lauderdale county, Miss. before he sold out in Ala. He came to my house about the first of April and spent a short time with me and left for home and on his way he was taken sick but got home but gradually grew worse till he died on the 16th of April 1838 and was buried near his beloved mother, thus passed from earth to heaven another good man, lamented by all. All good men that knew him, rich or poor, high or low. Much of his character in private or public life could be traced to his mother's training, and by his death a link in the chain of a mother's influence had been severed and his poor fatherless children was robbed of that great blessing a good mother's influence.

The next in course of Birth was myself (JAMES M. TRUSSELL) the fourth son. I was born in Franklin Co. (now Coffee Co.) ((Tennessee)) not very far from Winchester, Tennessee on the head of Elk river on the 26th of Dec. 1808. After two or three more, father moved from Trussell cave, as it was then called, to Lincoln Co. ((Tennessee)) and settled ten miles from Fayettville on the head of Midberry creek when the whole country was covered with long cane and wild pea vine and the timber was very large on the hills and the valleys were the same. I can well remember the canes. Poplars, lynns and the black and white walnuts, the large pappa's, beach, cherry trees, three kinds of hickory trees, honey locus, buckeyes 2 or 3 feet through, the ash and above all the sugar tree orchard where I had to watch the camp in the woods while my father and mother and older children were going around to the trees

they had tapped to get the water and bring it back to the camp fire and boil it in large pots and kettles into the best sugar that I have ever saw. It was there I first saw my dear old mother sitting and spining flax on the flax wheel and singing. And I also recolect seeing hemp growing in fields and I think she spun some hemp there. I first heard my uncles tell about the battles they had been in under Jackson and Carroll in the Indian war and the great battle of New Orleans. Many incidents and anecdotes of these wars here present themselves to my mind but I have not space here to recite them.

In the fall of 1815 my father moved to the head of the Cahawba river in St. Clair Co Ala. where I saw the first Indian which scared me very bad, and in the spring he sold his improvements and moved to Tuscaloosa eight miles below the falls of the Black Warrier, where there was some Indian camps, made of pine bark but he said there would be a town there and he did want to live in town. He went to work on the most beautiful place he settled as there was no settler before him. He had to depend on corn hauled there from Tennessee, and sold at $4.00 per 50 Ibs. but necessity is called the mother of inventions. He had heard of the old Spanish town of Mobile, so he went to work and made a batteau of two cypress logs dugout and doweled together and sent brother JOHN with Martin Adams and Johnathin Coon's to Mobile. This was the first boat that had ever been carried from Tuscaloosa to Mobile by white men. They brought us 1 barrell of flour at $20.00 a barrell in Mobile, and some rice at high price and the first sweet potatoes I ever saw, with directions from an old negro how to plant and cultivate them. But the year 1816 has been called the year without summer and I know it was the year without rain from May till white frost. And but for a field father cleaned in the cane brake on the river and cultivated without plow or fence, he would still have been without corn, but being made from the rich red soil and limestone sediment it proved in years of rain to be the best corn land I ever saw. 100 bu. to an acre was not impossible. In 1817 my father made a fine crop of corn and a small crop of cotton the first I ever saw growing and there was no gins so we had to pick the seed out with our fingers to make the cloth we used.

A wealthy man came along and bought my father's improvements for $500 and he moved about one mile and built a house and in 1818 cultivated river land two miles from home and at this time the country was settling up very fast. There was a school made for three months and after learning my a, b, c's at home I got to go two months and one week and began to read and spell in the class with the other scholars while my father was gone on a trip to hunt a place to move to. My mother gave me a dollar and sent me to the mill to get coffee. I gave it to the merchant and he gave me 2 1/2Ibs. of coffee for it. There had been very little if any coffee used in our county before this, as sasafras and other teas would be used and no sugar.

After we left Tennessee in Jan. 1819 my father with his family forded Warrior river on his way to settle near the Tombigbee river, near a large creek that is still called Trussell creek after him, and near where brother JOHN and myself afterwards established a ferry known by our name. After helping my father improve his place the settlement soon got strong enough to have a three months school, in a little log house with a dirt floor and no plank about it. They employed a very sorry teacher three months and then another for three months. I got to go some to each one, and afterwards they employed a good teacher

for six months, but it was my misfortune to lose two months of that time by having the old fashioned shaking ague which was then very common, but in the four months that I went I became the best speller as I ever afterwards was, just in nine other months of school. I went just a little to one and but a little to all, and here I learned to make progress in learning, and how to manage and teach a school successfully. To my teacher William D. Orear I give credit for my great success afterwards as a teacher. After I was near twenty years old I went four and a half months to a country school three miles from home. I studied arithmetic and got ahead of my teacher in Murray's grammar. I then went a distance of sixteen miles from my father's and got a school of 17 scholars and that was all I could manage at that time. Before six months of my school was gone it run up to forty-five and for three months my school would have went up to fifty but I could not do justice by more than forty-five. After that nine months of my school they would not employ any one else until I refused to take the school any longer.

I then went to Tuscaloosa and went into a city college for three months I studied arithmetic and Herkam's grammar, each one half the time for three months. The professor said he had taught hundreds of young men in the last sixteen years, but I had excelled in rapid learning of any he had ever taught. Before the three months was out I was offered $50.00 per month to keep bar in a large hotel. The old head teacher offered to turn off his assistant and take me in his place if I would take the class in english for four hours in each day, and he would give me my board and all the balance of each day for the use of any of his books in every branch of literature while there.

My older brothers had left father and he and my sisters were lonesome and needed me for company and to help him run his mill, so I went home and run his mill for two years, and settled up all his outstanding business, and then I offered to rebuild his mill, but he declined having any farther trouble with them and he then sold them with one of the best places in Ala. I then joined my oldest and best brother in running a pole boat from Gainesville on the Tombigbee (as it was then called) up the Oaknozubee (now called Noxubee). I carried corn, meat, groceries and dry goods for the new settlers in that part of the Choctaw for two winters and springs and made some money in the summer of 1833, while the river was too low for boating, I kept a school in Noxubee Co. near my first wife's father. She went to school to me. When my school closed they offered to double my wages if I would continue but I declined and went to running my boat. About the first of April 1834 I quit boating and on the eighth of May 1834 I married SUSANNAH SLAUGHTER PARKS, and we sold our ferry and boat and brother JOHN and I moved into Kemper Co. Miss. My next move was to Lauderdale Co. Miss where I lived and farmed for 28 years.

Soon after I got to Kemper Co. I was elected captain of a militia Co. by fifty-eight votes to my opponent's two. In a year it was reported in the county that I was a candidate for representative in the next legislature. I declined to run and said I had not consented to run

but my old friend Judge Marshall and Dr Hundly and others that had known me from twelve years old up to that time still kept me before the people and would not let me off. So I consented to run and I received the highest vote cast in the county for any office, state or county. At that election at one of the polls near me, I received all the votes, and all but two at the next nearest box. There were four candidates, two of us was democrats and two whigs (now called republican). I taken my seat in the legislature in January 1838. I helped fight the great union bank charter, but for the corrupting influence of money the bank was chartered, pledging the fourth of the state for fifteen and a half million dollars which yet stands u paid against the state. I was elected for two years but I resigned in the fall of 1838 and moved to Lauderdale Co. Miss. in November 1838 and there I resisted all solicitations to run for office for eleven years, when I again consented and run with three others all democrats. I was elected again by a large majority. I beat two ol members of the legislature, one of them a fine lawyer of the county. I then served two sessions in the legislature, and was among many distinguished men. I taken dinner or supper with Governor A. G. McNutt, Joe Mathews, A. G. Brown, T. M. Tucker, John A. Quitman, J.J, McRea, John J. Pettus and J. L. Alcorn. After the war this last man named was a radical governor. Most of those that I have here named and many others went to congress and now nine-tenths of them have probably gone to their reward in that never ending home.

Now in the meantime my business seemed to prosper in everything I undertook, until the blackest of all crimes. The war waged against the southern states by the northern states to subjugate and rob and corrupt and demoralize them by passing odious bankrupt law (or rather act) and by sending vast numbers of their artfull scoundrels among us to rule and rob us and rouse all our bad men to unite with them and the negroes. (They had taken from us contrary to the word of God and the laws of man) to commit crimes too black for any but the lowest heathens. But it proves what the sacred word says that "That the lo» of money is the root of all evil". Until this school of vice and evi war was forced upon us by the north, I was managing much business as a farmer and administrator on various estates, two of my brothers in Ala. and one in Miss. and others near my home.

I made some money in entering and sell ing public lands, besides my commission as agent for several other land holders. During my residing in Lauderdale and Newton counties I became the owner of about twelve thousand acres of land and twenty-three negroes, but only sixteen of them were able to go to the field and work. I had ten plow mules, two jacks, two jennies, ten or twelve brood mares and other horses, besides plenty of cows, oxen, sheep, goats and hogs with a fine outlet unsurpassed in grass and water.

I lived in a $4000.00 home with good outbuildings and a farm of about six hundred acres and a woods pasture of about two hundred acres and 40 acres in need of a winter pasture. I had a good gin house and two gin stands with a thrasher and fan, about thirty bales of cotton un" ginned when the yankees came there and burned my gin. A neighbor named Thompson, living not far off, helped them to rob my house and burned it Feb. 19th 1864, just ten years, four months and ten days after I moved in it. It was built of choice rich grained pine lumbe and covered with rich pine shingles and as good as new when burned.

each room above and below with two rooms 12 by 18 feet, two closets, one cellar, two stairways, thirty-three windows with good folding blinds. I had two large folding leaf tables, one of them of cherry and the other of walnut with most of my furniture and a fine book case with many valuable books burned. The form of my home was very good and was closed at night by eleven doors and presented a front and three sides. My wife could sit in a four foot hall and see in her bedroom and dining room and see the kitchen room and see the smoke-house door. But the Lord chastineth whom he will and we can only say with the Irishman, "when fortune smiles we ride in chaise, but when fortune frowns we walk bijose."

Here my wife lived ten years four months and ten days. She had no enemies among her neighbors and she seemed to know how to talk and who to talk to.

Here my youngest brother, A.J. TRUSSELL died, and a very old man, my uncle MOSES PAYNE, a revolutionary soldier, died here too. He was a good man. Next my father that had lived with me twenty-three years died. Then the war came on and my oldest child, a son, fell at Vicksburg with his sword on. He was said to be a very popular officer and had no enemies in his regiment and was rising to distinction very fast in that war. I lost nearly all of my best nephews and many of my best friends, also my son by my second wife named JOSEPH E. JOHNSON, died at home aged three years one month and twenty-seven days. He was firm, mild, self-possessed and intelligent, with all the gestures that of a natural orator, but the time of tribulation had come and I had to bear my share in the loss of children, relatives and friends with much property, but God does all things for the best to them that love him.

The next in course is my sister NANCY HICKS. She had six boys and two daughters. Five of her sons are dead. Her other son and her daughters are living in south Texas. She was living not long ago over seventy-four years of age, a mild quiet good woman and I think a good Christian.

The next was my sister SUSAN USSERY. She died some 17 or 18 months ago in east Miss. Both of these sisters have lived widows for more than thirty years. The next is brother WILLIAM CARROLL TRUSSELL. He will be sixty-nine years old the 17th of next April. He married a good woman who became the mother of several daughters and three sons. He was a poor manager and I had to help him a great deal in raising his children. His oldest son VAN (TRUSSELL) died in the war. His other sons seem to be doing well. His wife died a few years ago and he has married again and living near where he first married in east Miss.

The next is my brother ANDREW JACKSON TRUSSELL. He was born the 15th of March about 1822. He was left without a mother at a little over eight years of age. He had good natural sense but father being old and childish, my brother got to traveling and went to Texas, and like most all other boys he liked to travel and what he needed them days to travel with was a horse and a blanket. He could get plenty of dried beef and buttermilk free of cost and there was plenty of grass for his mustang pony. After he had engaged in some business he returned to Miss. and him and John Carson built a tavern in Old Marion Southey Fisher. He made a good run for tax assessor but got beat by a very popular man. He remained In Newton and Lauderdale Co. for some time. He went as a private to the war with Mexico, but a vacancy

soon occurred and he was elected Lieutenant and served through that war, and then he came home and remained about two years. He then sold merchandise in Leak County, and was elected colonel of militia but soon left for Texas where he carried hss sword as a ranger, travelng up and down in Texas hunting Indians from gulf to the head of the Brazos and Colorado rivers, but soon afterwards he quit the rangers and went into a small stock business near San Antonio, but colonel French wanted a bunch of men to go to Nicaragua on what was called filabustering and he went with them.

They went by water and when they got there they went up a little river called San Juan on an old steamboat, but before they landed the boiler burst and killed some and threw a good many into the river. They now being destitute and helpless, my brother with many others determined to return and found an old flatboat on the river, they got on it and floated down the river without guns, and just as they got to the mouth of the river they saw the Nicaraugians pursuing them to capture or kill them. But fortunately there was a British man of war lying there and they hoisted a flag of distress and the British captain warned the Nicaragians not to fire on 'them and they submitted to his orders and he taken our folks on his ship and carried them to New Orleans at his own expense. Several of our men was sick with chronic diarhea and some died on the way and was buried in the ocean. My brother had been sick sometime when he got to New Orleans without a cent of money, but by some means he got to Marion Station and I got word and went after him. I found him very low. I sent for my old friend Dr. Kieth, but he had heard all about his case and sent me word that he could not help him and did not come. I then, as I had done twice before in other very bad cases with others, taken the case in charge myself. I taken two ounces of flour of charcoal and a pint of sweet milk and put it in a boiler and brought it to a boiling heat. I then cooled it and gave him two tablespoons at a dose and in two weeks he was well. I loaned him a horse and gave him $25.00 and told him to travel around among friends and relatives fol some time, but he soon became impatient and went to the railroad and commenced keeping a little retail business. Winter soon came and I was in Mobile on business. When I got home I found him relapsed in the same diarrhea and he died about the 15th of Feb. He was a very fine, portly looking man and a friend to all he met.

My youngest sister and mother's last child was named for her mother, ELIZABETH (TRUSSELL). She was quite a child when her mother died and she lived with her brother JOHN (TRUSSELL) after father quit keeping house. She married Wash Head and went to Louisiana and he soon died. She was then brought back to brother and lived there until she married again. She raised five or six children, and one of her sons was a Baptist preacher.