PERRY “SIE” MCCOLLUM OF SOME HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE IN NORTH EAST FAYETTE COUNTY, AL

By
Fred McCaleb

Sie was born in mid 1850s at the McCollum plantation home where Hubbertsville now is. His mother was a black slave and dad was supposedly my ggg ancester James K McCollum. No proof except color. Sie was light brown and many of his children turned out to be nearly white. He was a young boy that did what James K told after the Civil war ended. James K was heavily in debt after the Civil war and decided that the way to clear it was for him and Sie to burn down the Fayette County AL Court house. They supposedly did but never proven. They were badly into it with the law for their meanness. They supposedly tried to get the truth out of Sie by hanging him with a rope around his neck tied to a limb of a tree. Sie said he felt like he was about ready to meet his master until they finally sympathized with him and let him down. He liked to tell about his hanging spell all the rest of his life. He told many other big tales which I have forgotten. He was finally grown and got married in the 1860s. Andrew McCaleb a gg grandpa of mine and married to one of James K’s girls gave Sie a sizeable track of land and told Sie never to let sorry whites beat him out of it. Sie never sold or willed the the land to anyone. He has hundreds of heirs and the place can never be sold. The original deed is still in the Fayette County Court house and will eventually belong to Fayette County if not now. Sie showed my dad and I a home-made coffin he had the local blacksmith Bill Ervin to make. He got it from under an old time bed that James K had. He showed my dad and I how he fit in it and said the master was about to call him home. He died about 10 years later and was the first buried in the McCollum Cemetery by a cedar tree. A good many of the white McCollum heirs tried to bargain for the old bed but I never knew if any succeeded. The cedar tree is just a stump now. Sie told my dad and I that his negroes (he didn’t call them blacks) were too sorry to bury him. I guess they were nice to him later on. They put him a fancier tomb stone up instead of the original. There are 150 or more graves of his heirs and wives buried there now. I guess that is all they will ever get of the Sie McCollum estate is a six foot hole in the ground for burial. I was told that the largest crowd of blacks and whites ever attended Sie’s funeral at White Chapel Church of Christ. I might have been about to get married in Virginia and Sie was up in 90s age when he died. What a man! When I was about 6 or 7 years old my dad worked with Sie’s son Dave McCollum cutting cross-ties for the railroad. They sold them at Tom Hollingsworth store in Bazemore. I still have the broad axe used to hew out the sides of ties. My dad never said much about Sie at that time until I was in my teen years and he took me by to see Sie’s coffin. I was interested in his story ever after and picked most of it up from kindred and genealogy. I hate to mention that Sie had trouble with other women during his marriage. One of Jacob Hollingsworth heirs, son of Felix Hollingsworth and Arla Killingsworth , had the trunk of Jacob that had passed through 3 lifetimes. Jacob was justice of the peace. He gave me the paper concerning Sie getting Fereby X Thornton pregnant. Sie gave 50lbs of bacon and 5 bushels of corn to satisfy her wants of feeding her baby. Some of Sie’s land was about ¼ miles north of Skimming Ridge a one teacher school where I went to school the first 3 years of my schooling. Some of the kids walked across Sie’s pasture and had to be careful about his bull getting them. I don’t know whether Sie or any of his children ever got a little learning or not. Blacks were denied schooling with whites back then. What a shame. There was a McCaleb school house nearby and that may have been a black school. Maybe some of his immediate family learned to read and write. That’s about all most whites could do back then. Some of Sie’s descendants are becoming nurses, big time foot ball players these times and succeeding in many other areas. Two or three of them I found out are working here at Morningside. My McCaleb-Hubbard nurse told me that Sie grew one of the biggest hogs weighing around 1000 lbs. ever grown in Fayette Co. A Montgomery black confirmed it and said Sie’s son Dave grew another about the same size. I met one at the genealogy society meeting in Winfield and gave her the McCollum ancestors on Sie’s dad. She seemed to be a very nice person. I guess they are facing hardships like most all families today. I am sorry I don’t know a whole lot about Sie. I remember him as a great story teller. I thought I would let others know what little I have found out. Story done by Fred McCaleb 93yrs old or young.