Uncle Gus

Uncle Gus, as my father called him, was an interesting, rather unpredictable person, most likely due to war injuries, it couldn't have been heredity! One time he took a scythe and cut off the head of one of the fine blooded bulls that belonged to his father, perhaps in anger. (In 1946, when we were trying to find the grave yard where many of the family were buried, a man we ask directions of said, "Die you know old Gus Dyer?" When my father said, "Yes, he was my uncle", the man said, "Well, don't step on his grave or he'll raise up and beat the hell out of you!!) Uncle Gus had a bald spot on the back of his head which was caused by a strange accident. It's said that he drank too much moonshine one night and Aunt Lucinda had to go after him. She pulled him up on a sled and tied his feet to the single tree. When she got home, she found that his head had slipped off the back of the sled and dragged on the ground, wearing all the hair and hide off the spot. It never grew back.

Gus was a farmer in what is now called the Tarpine Valley, but which was originally called the Valley of the Terrapins. Augustus died the 8th of Sept. 1907 and is buried in the Dyer graveyard on a little hill overlooking the valley.

Taken from a typewritten manuscript written by Nancy Mildred Beals DeWitt.