RECOLLECTIONS OF THE FAMILY LIFE.
Our parents were married about 1816. Mother was Miss Matilda Smith Bryan and father Henry T. Crumpton. Both sprang from honorable, well-to-do people from revolutionary sires, who were soldiers of distinction under General Francis Marion. Our maternal grandfather was Rev. Richard Bryan, a Methodist preacher. Our parents started married life in Walterboro, Colleton District, S. C., where were born to them Mary, Richard Alexander, Maranda Ann, Henry Thomas, Hezekiah John, (myself, born Sept. 18, 1828), and William Zachariah; the balance of the ten children, afterwards born in Alabama were James Henderson, Martha Matilda, Jane Eliza, and Washington Bryan, yourself, the baby. All have now passed into the life beyond except you and me.
In Walterboro our father developed into something of a plunger in the financial world; made several successful deals, later formed a partnership—the other fellow furnishing experience, our progenitor the "dough." They invested in the purchase and driving of cattle to supply the Charleston beef market. They succeeded well, always re-investing original capital and profit in another and bigger lot, finally meeting a calamity by the drowning of the whole herd in attempting to cross a swollen stream, Broad River, perhaps at its mouth and perhaps from not knowing of the ebb and flow of the tide, though living within forty miles of the coast. With a feeling of disgust, following this financial collapse, our father sought new environment, and by the aid of kins folk loaded up family and household belongings in 1832 and struck out through the wilderness for Alabama, across Georgia through the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, before the removal of those and other friendly tribes was completed to the territory now forming part of the State of Oklahoma.