De La Howe's Tomb

Image by Let Ideas Compete via Flickr

In the early 1800's Jean De La Howe a Huguenot Minister and physician left money and acreage in his will for the purpose of building and supporting a school for children who lost their parents. The pupils attended in residence and were taught how to do everything that they would need to know to live in the backwoods - blacksmithing, farming, veterinary medicine, cooking, spinning, weaving, sewing, etc. Dr. De La Howe left instructions that he be buried inside an open roofed building made of brick and with a steel door. He also left 3,000 acres of virgin pine forest with instructions that at least one thousand acres always be planted in pines.

The pine trees that I remember seeing as a youngster towered well over 100 feet in the air and there were thousands and thousands of them. I guess they have been cut now, but they really were something to see in those days. I remember the family visiting the tomb and Mamma telling everyone that De La Howe's Wife and Mistress were both buried in the enclosure. The story now is that he and "several members of his family" are buried there.

The virgin pine forest was a great place for bootleggers in the 1920's and 30's and probably hides many patches of hemp weed today. Daddy said that the bootleggers would have spotters in the tops of the tall trees all the way around the site. The spotters would signal the people at the still with a mirror if they saw revenuers coming. He also said that if they walked the trail to the still in the morning, they would check for cobwebs stretched across. If there were no cobwebs, they wouldn't go to the still because someone else had gone down the trail since the day before.

He told a tale that a certain Mr. Mariney owned a farm near the Savanna river. One day a revenuer came to his house and asked if he could look around the farm for stills. Mr. Mariney reportedly said, Mr. Fed, you can walk down that creek to the river, you can walk back into that big holler over there and you can go most anywhere you want except that little holler over there. There's probably a big bear in that holler!