Back To Living in High Shoals and Cliffside
In the fall of 1924, the Ed Atkinson family had given up their farm tenancy on Champion Ferry Road in the Cherokee Creek Community to move onto the Hazelhurst Farm, a few miles north, near what is now the Chase Community in North Carolina. The Hazelhurst Farm was a new kind of farm in which management was reputed to keep up with the latest advances in agriculture and to apply the most efficient, up-to-date methods of raising crops and livestock However, a problem arose which delayed their move. Vic Fortune, the tenant of the house and land that had been assigned to the Atkinson family, had failed to find a new place to live. He had not yet moved when the Atkinsons were to vacate the house they were currently occupying. This left Ed with no recourse but to temporarily rent a house until Mr. Fortune found a place to go.
Ferrell and Malleree were not present.
They rented a house in Henrietta for about two months. Neither 12-year-old Ferrell nor 9-year-old Malleree, his younger children, started to school that fall. They expected to move to the Hazelhurst farm and start to Prospect School at the same time. Nell, his 19-year-old daughter, was already out of school. She applied for and was given a job in Henrietta Mill. She worked there for only a day and a half before deciding that mill work was too hard and not for her. She sent word for her father to come and get her.
Early in 1925, after moving onto the Hazelhurst farm at last, the two younger children started to school. Nell took a job in Cliffside Mill, which was apparently more to her liking than the Henrietta Mill job, since she remained there for the rest of her working years.
A few years later, Ed moved his family back to the Cherokee Creek Community. After his wife, Louise, died in 1933, he continued to live in that community and, with the help of some of his sons, farmed until he was in his 80s.
To Cliffside For Good
Ed Atkinson then returned to Cliffside to live with Nell and Roy Hill. From his “added-on” room, he welcomed many visitors during the years he lived there.
