Hopper Chair

The Hopper Chair

The following came from the book "Rutherford Revisited". This article was written by Mr. Joe Bone of Rutherford, one of the editors of the book.

"In our home when I was growing up was a low, straight-backed wooden chair that the family referred to as the "Hopper Chair". I assumed that some Mr. Hopper handcrafted the old chair, but my father explained the name from the following piece of history":

POND HILL, TENNESSEE, Sept 1851----

Dr. Hugh Bone, age 38, was postmaster, but his wife, Martha Jane 31, kept
the post office while he was seeing patients or making house calls. Their
home and post office was in the Old Bethlehem neighborhood two miles
southwest of present day Rutherford, on the Hickman, KY to Jackson, TN stage route.
Mr. Ab Hopper, who owned and lived on an adjacent farm and was a lodge
brother of Hugh Bone made the following request: "If a stranger should stop and ask where I live, I would appreciate it if you would get word of it to
me immediately."
Not many days passed until a traveler stopped and asked directions to the
Hopper home. As the stranger climbed onto his horse to ride south and east
toward his objective, Uncle Pleas Robb was dispatched through the fields and woods on an east-bound short cut to warn Mr. Hopper. The next morning, near noon, Dr. Bone decided to visit his neighbor, Ab Hopper. He carried his medical bag and was seated in his wagon on a chair which had the legs sawn short to lower the center of gravity of chair and driver.
One account, by Martin Edwards, cousin of Mr. Hopper, says that Bone saw the stranger camped in the woods and told Hopper of the sighting. Edwards said that Hopper took his gun from its rack and walked down the trail toward the campsite. While Dr. Bone and Edwards talked, they heard shots, and rushed to the scene of the shooting. There they found the stranger dead and Ab Hopper badly wounded. They got the chair from the wagon, set Hopper on it and carried him between them to his house, where he died several hours later at about 9p.m.
Now the story came out ----The stranger was Mr. Hopper's outlaw brother, Gulliam Hopper, alias Dock Brown from Grayson Co. KY. He had been suspected of robbing and killing several people in Kentucky, including his own father and brother. This had not been proven, and he had managed to get out of jail. The court had ordered his slaves to be hired out to pay court costs, but when Dock persisted in repeatedly stealing and selling a couple of the
slaves, the court ordered that the others be sold. Ab Hopper had journeyed to Lietchfield, KY and purchased Sam, Lucy and Lucy's children and brought them to his farm near Pond Hill. (Later on, the old Dyer-Rutherford Road)
Gulliam Hopper, alias Dock Brown, came to get his slaves back, or, according to Edwards, to persuade Lucy to run away with him. Instead he ended up buried in an obscure corner of the family graveyard, several yards away from
his brother's resting place with its Masonic emblem on the gravestone. Gibson County Court records contain the inventory of "Gilliam Hopper's alias Gilliam Brown's" personal possessions which were sold to pay for his burial.
Among the eighteen items listed were 1 bay horse, $86.75; 1 bay mare, $59.50; 1 R gun, $10.15; 1 pistol, $13.30; Saddlebags, $3.35; Saddle, $11.00; and l handkerchief, $1.80.
My great-grandfather Bone died (at the age of forty) less than two years after this tragic event. I wonder if he ever thought, "If I had not warned Ab Hopper of the stranger, would he still be alive today?" --Who knows?-----

Sources: Gibson County Court records; Oct. and Nov. 1851; Dock Brown, Kentucky Outlaw, by Col. William R. Haynes, 1876; Family history as recalled by Terrence V. Bone, Bill Baird, Wade Baird.

Click on the Cowboy to see how the notorious Gulliam Hopper's (alias "Dock Brown") story is still alive today.

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