In April, 2002, I went to see my maternal grandmother, Lillian McBee at her home in Florida. I asked her to tell me stories of her family and where she grew up, since there appears to be no written genealogical record of her side of the family.

From the notes I have taken in listening to grandma, I have been able to piece together some written history at last:

Lillian was born in Verda, Kentucky on March 10, 1923.
She was one of six children, her other siblings being Charles, Earl, Jessie, Nola and Thelma.

Lillian was a small child when her family moved to Closplint, Kentucky, within the same county as Verda, that being Harlan County. The move was approximately 12 miles to the North East in a mountainous region, which is on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains. Both Verda and Closplint are situated along the Cumberland River.
Grandma recalls the town name as Clover's Splint, and that may very well have been at the time, as "Closplint" obviously seems like a shortening of the name Clover's Splint.

See also Closplint, KY, which says:

Closplint, KY 

Region:  Mountains

On the Clover Fork of the Cumberland River 

Named for the Clover Splint Coal Company, which began operating here in 1926 

According to grandma Lillian, her mother, Rebecca, was Scottish. Lillian's father, Floyd, was Irish.

The river incident

In 1928 or 1929, when Lillian was about five or six years old, it was during storm season and the river was up. Lillian got on a log with a bunch of kids. Well, the kids got off the log and left Lillian on it. The log began to turn in the swift-moving water, and Lillian hollered for her neighbor Clyde White to save her.
Clyde pulled Lillian from the water, and her sister Nola helped.

Lillian has been afraid of water ever since!

Trouble with the neighbors

Lillian was standing in the kitchen with her mom and dad, and she saw out the door of the kitchen, a fireball roll down the hill and roll under their neighbor's house. When Lillian's parents also saw this, Lillian's father closed the kitchen door. Lillian's sister Jessie told Lillian that the neighbor, Mrs. Miller, was a witch. So when they all saw the fireball, Jessie and Lillian thought that the fireball was Mrs. Miller rolling down the hill into her house.

More about the Millers

The Millers (as read about above) had orchards full of apple and peach trees, as did Lillian's family. The Millers had children; Lottie, Gladys, Anna Mae, Margaret and their crippled brother, Prince, and one other boy whose name Lillian now forgets.

Lillian's sister Nola played with Anna Mae Miller. Lillian, however, didn't like to go to the Miller's house, and was very afraid of Mrs. Miller. Lillian reports that "when you entered their house with Nola to see the other kids, you felt eyes watchin' you - like bad spirits."

Lillian's mother Rebecca watched Mrs. Miller have a baby. "Each foot on that baby had six toes," reports Lillian.

Lillian's dad and Mr. Miller were coal miners in Clover Splint, Kentucky (at the Clover Splint Coal Company).

Lillian's schooling

According to grandma Lillian, she walked to school in Clover Splint. She said that grades five through eight shared one room, while the Primer through fourth grades shared another room together in the two-room school house.
Back in those days, grandma said, "you got the switch on the legs in the hallway if you were bad."

Grandma Lillian said that the two-room school house was all white kids, and that the black kids went to school across the river.

Lillian's first-hand experience of the South's ugly past

One night, Lillian heard screaming across the river and up the hill. She looked out of her bedroom window and saw 2 - 3 shacks on fire up on what everyone called "Nigger Hill".
The Ku Klux Klan were known to burn the shacks and hang free black men in the woods, says grandma, who shivers even now to talk about it.
The fear in her eyes as she recounted the story to me, as well as her acknowledged guilt in even witnessing such horror, explains to me why when living in Detroit in the late 1970's to early 1980's, Grandma always scolded my brother and I and our cousins to stay in the back yard ONLY and never loiter about on the front steps without a parent, because "you never know, you could be kidnapped and sold into white slavery."
See, grandma's guilt from the horrors she saw on the hills as a child has haunted her all of her life, and has turned into fear that one may retailiate for injustices she felt she was a part of, should one recognize her or see her guilt through her sorry eyes.
And so when the neighborhood grandma lived in started seeing more and more black families moving into it, grandma may have thought payback was just around the corner for her. I am only speculating on grandma's psychology, mind you.

As a child, one trusts adults implicitly, and therefore when grandma gave us warnings of possible abductions by blacks to sell us white kids into slavery, this bred racism into us. By third grade however when I began attending summertime daycare in Detroit, I got to befriend black children my age and before long I was shaking my head and rolling my eyes at my grandma whenever she warned us not to go into the front yard alone in her now black-majority neighborhood.

Here's some more history on what Kentucky was like in the 1920's, and some scary info on what it's like today.

Lillian's family moves again

Lillian was about 13 years old when her family moved from Clover's Splint to Knox County. This was all Lillian said to me; I do not have any further details as to why the family moved.

However, I'd been told by my mom that her mom Lillian had lived in "Corbin County, Kentucky".
I did some research and found that Corbin is not a county, but a town:

"Corbin, the largest town in Whitley county, is on Lynn Camp Creek 
on the northeastern edge of the county, extending into Knox county." 

Known Health Conditions

Several of Lillian's female children and grandchildren have conditions known as Dysmenorrhea and/or Endometriosis.

Grandma had a cousin who had Tuberculosis.

Family Deaths

Lillian's brother Earl died of Hodgkin's Disease in 1950. I do not know any more than this at this time, but my mother Dollie has told me that her Uncle Earl had been a very good fiddler.

A tragic end befell Lillian's mother Rebecca.
One day in 1957, Rebecca's grandson was driving her somewhere, when for some reason, the car went off the bridge. There aren't many details as to the height of the bridge or why the car went off the road, except that the doctor had told Rebecca's family that the massive trauma to her head had killed her before the car hit the water, and that no water was found in her lungs, so, as per the doctor, it was safe to say she died instantly and did not drown.

This was Rebecca's daughter Jesse's kid who was driving, and he lived.

That story was told to me by my mother, Dollie.

Rebecca was 69 years old.