Chances are, if you’re from western Limestone County, you know some Tylers. The old Tyler homestead on Gray Ridge Road is an icon in the area.

Robert and Mae Ella Tyler bought the old log cabin and 123 acres of land, way back when, for the steep price of $2,000. They raised four children, Jeannette Swanner, Douglas Tyler, Billy W. Tyler, and Dwight Tyler, there.

Dwight’s son, Kevin Tyler, who inherited the house and land from his father, recently sold the cabin to Burt Nelson. The old logs are still strong and are being used to rebuild Nelson’s log cabin on Copeland Road, which burned.

“Of course we know it’s got to go,” said Swanner. “ He’s building a big building there now.”

She said when she first came to see the first stages of the dismantling of the cabin she wasn’t sure how to feel.

“I said ‘This is my house you’re tearing down,’ then I started bawling,” she said, adding it pleases her to know that at least part of the house will carry on.

“I’m happy. I told him I’m coming over there to see it when it’s finished,” she said.

Making it together

Swanner, who will be 70 on Aug. 16, is the oldest of the four children. She married Ray Swanner in 1955 and moved to Athens. She is a two-time survivor of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. She’s lost two of her brothers, Billy at 55 to a heart attack and Dwight at 57 to a brain tumor.

However, Swanner’s demeanor shows she’s knows hard work and overcoming adversity are parts of life.

“Dwight had his first birthday there,” said Swanner.

She’s got plenty of stories to tell about her and “them boys,” growing up there at Gray Ridge Road.

She said it’s a wonder the old house survived as long as it did, telling of the time “them boys” caught the house on fire playing in the kitchen. They knocked something off of the stove, she said.

“It was on the 26th right around Christmas and them boys were playing basketball around the stove,” she said.

She recalls a second incident the house barely escaped catching fire. The family was sitting on the front porch during a lightening storm and got a big shock.

“There was this big ball of fire come and it kindly shocked us all,” said Swanner.

She explains because the log cabin was made entirely out of wood that they had lightening rods around the house in case of storms.

“They say that’s all that saved this house,” she said.

There was a lot of work to be done on the 123-acre farm.

“We used to work those hills,” said Swanner. “We picked a bale of cotton a day.”

The children had the responsibility of milking the cows and they would take milk to the Ardmore Creamery to get lunch money and groceries.

“We all had to milk,” said Swanner. “I had to milk one at night and the boys milked two at night and one in the morning. “

The taste of milk was ruined for her.

“I didn’t drink the milk, because I had to milk ’em,” said Swanner. “I still don’t.”

She said the farm also included mules to plow with and honey beehives.

“Daddy would go in and rob the bees every so often,” she said.



Living country



Fun times at the Tyler farm consisted of porch sitting and kids playing in the yard.

“We were out here in the middle of nowhere and we sat out here until it got dark,” Swanner said.

The boys would play with rims from truck tires and push them around the yard with a paddle.

Swanner said that they took money from the cotton bales they picked and finally bought a bicycle they shared between them.

The family saved up from the sale of their cotton and eventually bought a Ford tractor and a 1952 Chevrolet car. They rode to church on a trailer pulled by the tractor.

She said she and her brothers would get their schoolwork by lamplight.

“We didn’t have electricity until 1948. We used a lamp,” said Swanner. “When we got a refrigerator, Mother made Kool-Aid and we thought we had something.”

Country living also meant drawing water from a well.

The family drank, washed clothes, and bathed in the water they drew from the well.

“We didn’t have towels and things,” said Swanner. “We had fertilizer and feed sacks.”

Their mother made their curtains, sheets, shirts, and dresses out of the used sacks.

“If there was a flowery one, I got a dress,” she said.

The kids slept on hot straw mattresses on little cots.

“I used to lay my head out the window near my bed at night to cool off,” she said.



Thinking ahead



During the dismantling of the old home, Kevin Tyler found several antiques he plans to keep and possibly restore, including an old stove and washing machine.

“Things like that, Kevin wants to keep,” said Swanner.

She said old habits are hard to break and still has the urge to pick a little cotton now and then, even though her health probably would not let her.

“I would love to do it now,” said Swanner, explaining that Dickey Hobbs has a cotton-picking contest. “I’ve thought about doing it.”

She said she still keeps a garden.

She has muscadines, cucumbers, rattlesnake green beans, and flowers.

“I still plant a little of that old hickory king corn that they used to grow in the field,” she said.