THE PIEDMONT PRESS

Challenge Those who Berate Progressive North Carolina of To-Day

Hickory, NC Saturday, May 28, 1881

No 22
 
 

Article Title: SAW HIS FATHER.
 
 

In the year 1839 Mr. John L. Kent and family lived quietly at their home near Paint Rock Tenn. That same year, forty-two summers ago, Mr. Kent, in company with a man named Shepherd, left his home for California, taking with him one son, John and two daughters, Abigail and Phoebe. Year after year rolled on and no tidings were had from the party until at last it was learned that Mr. Shepherd had been shipwrecked. This being the only news that could be had the general supposition and conclusion was that Mr. Kent had also perished in a like manner. The younger members of the family grew to be men and women, and twenty years from the above date the gray hairs of the mother sank quietly into the grave. One son, William, went to Louisville, Kentucky, and there died in 1865, while Benjamin sought a home in Arkansas, and there died in 1872. Samuel J. Kent, another son, married a Miss Roberts in 1862, and nine years ago left the old homestead and moved to Marshall, Madison County, N.C. where he still lives. Willis M., the youngest son, also lives near Marshall. Two daughters died; another, Sarah Ann, married a Mr. Davis, and is now living in Tennessee. After all the vicissitudes of the Kent family and all their efforts to solve the mystery that shrouded their parental head, no tidings came of the missing one for 41 long years.

One bright day during last year, Samuel J. Kent was purchasing some leather in a tan yard near Asheville, when in the course of conversation with Mr. Wm. S. Ramsour, who once lived in Hickory, but now employed in that yard, he learned to his utter astonishment that his father was not dead, as supposed but living near Hickory. Mr. Ramsour having met the old gentleman here in Catawba county. It was very hard for the son to realize that his father was yet living. This news was communicated from one member of the family to another until all that are living heard it and have come here to visit him. The first to learn of his whereabouts, however, by some means was the last to get here to see him. Samuel came to Hickory this week with a car load of tobacco to sell on this market, and last Tuesday he celebrated his 46th birthday by visiting his father ? it being 42 years since he saw him.

As to the other side of this peculiar circumstance we know but little. Anyway, the old gentleman did not go to California, but came to Catawba county, and lived on the place now known as the W. P. Reinhardt mills tract, four miles from Hickory. Not long after he settled in this county he married a widow lady of considerable wealth in South Carolina, and soon after this he suddenly disappeared, leaving behind the three brought here from Tennessee and the new wife. The latter, however, soon found it better to be at her old home in the Palmetto State. Year after year again rolled around and the children here were at as much loss to know his lodging place as the first family in Tennessee, who had long since numbered him with those who silently rest in the tomb. One of the daughters, Phoebe, married Mr. Abel Herman, a very estimable citizen of the county, who was killed during the late war. The other daughter married Mr. Wallace Propst, who now lives on the same place Mr. Kent left behind. The son, Mr. John Kent, Jr., became a very useful citizen, and was deputy sheriff when he left the county to enter the Confederate service, where he went as lieutenant in Capt Thos Lowe's company, 28th regiment. He died in camp near Richmond. Year after year passed, and in March 1879, his sudden presence after such a continual absence made those in this section feel that the grave had refused to keep one that had long been in its possession. Since his return his home as been with his daughter, Mrs. Propst. He will be ninety years old the 4th of next July, and is entirely blind, but is unusually active and lively for his age. He went home with his son, leaving here on Thursday night's train. Thus endeth the second chapter of this mysterious biography.

- Researched by Dale Hays; transcribed by Ann Kent