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| Hathaway Coat of Arms |
| John Hathaway was born to Simon W. and Sarah Elizabeth Hathaway in Dale County, AL 3-10-1844. He died Holmes County, FL 8-11-1925. John served in the Union Army. On his pension papers it stated that he was in the Union outfit that overran the Confederate stronghold on Fort Barrrancas on Santa Rosa Island- Pensacola. He helped to lay brick. The brick is still there today. He fell off his horse and broke his leg. John had big blue eyes. He enjoyed his grandsons chauffering him around in his Model-T Ford. He and his first wife, my biological greatgrandmother- Salaney Slyvester Burch Hathaway- gave the land for the Bethlehem Methodist Episcopal Church (down the hill from the log cabin he had built after he came home from the civil war....) the document is in courthouse dated 1893. I saw the church book where my daddy and grandma Alice D. Hathaway had joined the church in 1914. John did some farming and also was county commissioner Dist. #10 Holmes County 1887. Old book in courthouse. One of his distant nieces told me in 1980 that he was sitting up the hill on his porch when two blacks at a turpentine still got to fighting and shooting at each other. A bullet flew up the hill and hit great granddaddy on the leg. It bled but was not all that bad...just shaved it. His daughter- Alice Dean Hathaway - my grandmother- B. 6-14-1870 D, 6-19-1936. She married Thomas Henry Watson. (b.8-13-1865; died 6-10-1929.) Tom was a farmer also gave land for the Watson School to be built inwhich they named the school after him. In 1980 I met many of the students and we started having a Watson School Reunion of which they were all so delighted. Granddaddy was also the trustee of the school board. The students said they could hear the superintendent Mack Dade coming and he would be on horse and buggy. They could hear him popping the whip at the horses pulling the hill. They all were extra nice when he came! It was a one room school with a big heater to keep warm. Several grades were together. Some of the kids would bring mutton to school in an old syrup bucket and if they could talk a kid into swapping their other kind of meat for it they would! Vera Vanlandingham- a distant cousin at the school reunion told me Aunt Alice, daddy's sister was really smart in her books! The students have all died by now but they kept having the school reunions even the years that I could not make it down to attend. The Holmes County Advertiser should have a copy of the paper with the Watson School reunion story. It was in their paper 1980. ****************** |
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