"BUTHEAD" WILSON
(I do not yet find this story in the file and lost it is lost will tell
as I recall the story Mr. Williams told him. Sheriff Wilson was not one of
the popular sheriffs. He was a Union veteran, not calculated to make him a
popular in the Reconstruction days, and he wore a big Union woolen blue
Army overcoat. There was an Irishman who worked for Grandma
Pierson on her ranch on the river. On a Saturday afternoon he came to Jonesboro,
a much more important town then than Hamilton and went to a saloon and got
loaded. When Sheriff Buthead Wilson came in, the Irishman drew his pistol,
and in the old time way shot at the sheriff’s feet and made him dance on
the saloon floor. Next morning the Irishman was found shot to death, in a
nearby thicket. There was a stream of blue woolen thread hanging on a
briar Nothing done a drunken Irishman more or less.
[The list of Hamilton County Sheriffs to
which I have access does not incude a sheriff whose surname was Wilson.
The list may not include all of he sheriffs appointed during the
Reconstruction Period. --Elreeta Weathers.]
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
CHESLEY'S HAMILTON COUNTY INTERVIEWS
BY
HERVEY EDGAR CHESLEY, JR.
Born: 21 November, 1894
Died: 17 July, 1979