Appendix Article 4 a most unforgettable character     … one I never met ….. Gidd's Family Line: Hall     William (1)     John (2)     Mathew (3)     John & Malinda (4) +     Andrew J. (5)     Thos. Gideon (6) Thomas Gideon Hall 1853 - 1937 His contemporaries called him 'Gidd' Hall; he was an 'orphan' of the Civil War: he lived out his life in Bedford county, Virginia - a beautiful rural area at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains bounded by the Staunton River. He came to life for the writer as he studied his family's early history, 'Gidd' was a distant 'Southern Cousin.' Gidd was the kind of a guy that went squirrel hunting with his old muzzle-loader on a Sunday morning when the good folks were gettin' ready for church. Yet, there was a large 'turn out' for his funeral; folks liked him. He had lived a year after his 'Millie' had passed away. Gidd's father, Andrew J. Hall, had been killed by a minnie-ball at the Battle of Seven Pines in the War; his mother died early. Gidd with his brother and sisters were raised by their grandfolks. John and Malinda Hall, who lived on the Hall property on Rockcastle Creek. Gidd spent his lifetime on land that had been his forebearers' since before the American Revolution. For his time and place, Gidd lived well. He lived off the bounty of the land around him, his small crops and an odd job now and then. His schooling had been woefully neglected, but from life he had learned many lessons and had his own unique way of expressing them. He had time for the boys of the neighborhood. They sought him out and his was patient with them and was in his way, their most important tutor. They never forgot his gems of wisdom and ways of putting things. As they sat around his stump university, they discussed inheritances and how people were fooled about the estates of people. Gidd summed it up for them by grunting, "Har dang, you can't measure a snake until he is dead!" 'Har dang," was his swear word, a clever subterfuge for profanity. Some folks thought Gidd was profane, but not his young listeners. They would pose some other question, to see what Gidd would come up with. The old roads of the county were so crooked and some went up and down hill badly. When asked how they laid out the first roads, Gidd said: "Dang, they caught a bull calf. Then took it by the tail. Turned it's head loose and held on to its tail. Whichever way the calf went, they made the road!" This answer wouldn't die - it would be told and re-told. Gidd liked to eat, as did his wife, and his larder was always full. If it wasn't game, it was fish from the streams, it could be the best beef available in the neighborhood and, of the berries from the hills and the apples from his orchard, except those that went into making the best brandy in the neighborhood. He kept three cows and liked his hog meat fat. He used apple wood to smoke his hams. For the long winter months he bought a keg of salt fish. Oh yes, he and his wife made vinegar from their apples to sell the neighbors. 'Gidd Hall ate so much that he had trouble with his stomach. Baking soda was his remedy, he ate it by the handful and had trouble with his kidneys - but lived to be eighty-four years of age! He rode eighteen miles to see a doctor and to be told not to eat so much. 'He still had his teeth when he passed away, although some were loosening; they were perfect when he was sixty-five. He possibly never used toothpaste in his life, or bought a tooth brush. He did not use tobacco in any form, and said 'that had as soon drink after a danged horse as a man that had a mustache, and chewed tobacco." He and Milly - there were no children - lived in a four-room house, two rooms below and two up, with an old house to the side for the kitchen and storing things. When Gidd and his wife got to the point they couldn't climb up to the bedrooms, the junk was cleared out of the way, and a bedroom made on the first level. Now about that junk, this is the best Gidd Hall story of all! 'Gidd was a gatherer of junk. At an auction sale the auctioneer would say "come here Uncle Gidd, ' here is one of your piles." he would bid five, ten and maybe as much as twenty-five cents and get it Much of it was small pieces. Such stuff as pepper mills, cherry seeders, coffee mills, churns, stone jugs and jars. There would be split baskets, pots and pans and things so old that it took several people to decide what use they had ever had.' After Gidd and Milly were gone, there was an auction sale (April, 1973) ---and what a sale! 'They started selling those small, rusty things one at a time and when they stuck them up, they would bring from two to six dollars apiece. They were pretty well along when a Civil War bayonet that had a cuff to fit a rifle was held up to the crowd. It was bid up to eight dollars and some in the crowd said, "Why that's a Civil War bayonet" and the bidding spurred - it sold for twenty-nine dollars! A spinning wheel brought $365.' All that practically useless old stuff brought about what Gidd's farm would have brought back in 1937 the year he died. Said one of his oldest friends: "Gidd was never a church member, but he wasn't a hypocrite. His language wasn't what it should have been, although today many so-called Christians speak more foully. In all his tales he told he did not tell us, as boys, a thing that would be a bad influence on us." ++ +'His grand parents were first cousins, their fathers were brothers, sons of John Hall, d. 1794. ++The writer is indebted to D. Claytor Brooks, Huddleston, Va., who as a neighbor boy would race over the hills to sit at the feet of Gidd Hall - to savour the wisdom of this country sage and to carry his memory with him forever.