This whole family has really grabbed my attention, especially the women.

James REASONS was shot to death while selling cattle, (his or someone else's,) leaving two sons, George and John REASONS. No wife or mother has been found so far for James and his sons. George REASONS drowns in the Forked Deer River it is told while celebrating one of his children's marriage. George has two son-in laws, one who shots and kills the other, now leaving three widows on the frontier to clear their forestland into farm land and raised their children alone.

William CHERRY's Deed to Betsy REASONS CHERRY, and Neil McMillan's will leaving everything he owns to Susan “Azalee” Combs McMillan read like love letters to me. It seems to me their courage and fortitude, and their ablity to hold the love of their men, steam right from Dicey Rhodes REASONS whose mother was Edna FLOWERS, Daughter of John FLOWERS born in Dobbs County NC ABT 1755 and died Aug. 5, 1812 in Wayne Co. NC and whose ancestry is traced back to Christopher FLOWERS b. ABT 1542, died 1622, married Elizabeth Lancaster Oct. 10, 1565 at ST Dusten Parish Church, East London, England. There is also a long line of Rhodes, and Harrells. Between Edna FLOWERS and Elizabeth LANCASTER, the women who married their men to create the woman called Dicey Rhodes REASONS, Includes Clarrissa HARRELL, Jane UNDERWOOD, Ann BRADLEY, a Sarah, a Mary, another Elizabeth, an unknown HARDY, and a Katherine. They all intrigue me and I wish I knew them, Then there is the quiet one of the whole bunch, Sarah Elizabeth BAKER who married William Combs. I know nothing of her or her family, but in one 13 year period her husband, William Jefferson Combs bought, cleared, planted, sold, and deeded land 57 times. He gave the equivalent of three farms to each of his sons and son in laws plus a town lot. In the end, He and Sarah were living alone until she died in 1919. William's stone says he died in 1929, but I have yet to find him in the 1920 census. Mary Ann REASONS Combs lived to 1899 but also disappeared after the 1880 Census. Alfred Combs was said to have been born in Wake Co, NC by one researcher. Both Alfred Combs and William CHERRY farmed in Madison County. Did they know each other before their wives tie to Gibson County? Makes me look forward to heaven where all our questions will be answered. From the war of 1812 in NC through the Civil War in Western Tennessee, the influenza Epidemic in 1917-1919 and the failure of the banks in 1929, this story would make a great movie.