I was born there...my Mother was born there...(Bessie Naomi Nowlin Hurley) my maternal grandfather (Sherman Nowlin) was born there and his father (Silas Nowlin) I heard was born there...I know Silas and Sherman lived on this land where our home is because I have the branding iron which was used by them to brand cattle right here where our house stands...at least that's what my Mother told me...I was also told this land was donated to Silas Nowlin from the goverenment...I'm 88 so I don't feel like looking up all that history ...right now our Grandson Ryan Smith..Our oldest son Scotts son lives there....Scott raised five sons there...Scott died in that house June 19, 2012..He moved there after Mother couldn't live there any longer and had to go to the Nursing Home where she died singing "let me call you Sweetheart" with her favorite nurse at Shady Nook. Our son Mark and his wife Debbie built threir home behind our house over on the hill in the edge of the woods where our kids played every day with some of the neighbor kids...Mark always said when he was little that when he grew up that he was going to live in Grandma Hurleys woods. He also lost his wife Debbie about five years ago. They raised their two children there...The land on this side of the road has never
been out of the family and hopefully it will continue to be that way for many more generations... daddy ( Guy Hurley) farmed the land as long as he and Mother lived there but when he got ready to retire he didn't think they had enough money to live on so he sold all the land on the other side of the road to a man from Cincinnati (Mr. Swafford) and he bought it for his son who was still fighting in VietNamwar. He got killed before he ever got home to see what his Dad had bought for him. Mr Swafford continued to have cattle on the place and came three or four times a week to piddle around with working on the barn, corn crib, chicken house (all show in this picture). One day he never came back to the barn for lunch and our son Scott called and asked if I had seen Mr Swafford and I said no.. He hasn't been around all day..we ended up with a search group of several hundred people on four wheelers, horseback, walking and searching all those
Acreas from about four o'clock in the afternoon until daylight and then they started to break up and go home but Jesse and our sons continued and in less than a half an hour they found him over on someone else's land laying on his back with his hand acrossed his chest. He had died of a hear attack. He loved the land so I would say he died happy doing what he loved to do best, wander around over those hills. The land now belongs to his daughter, their only child, and she tells us to just use it like we always have which is so nice and I am so greatfull because not only or sons loved being over there hunting and camping out but now our grandchildren have joined in on the fun. Mother and Daddy would be so happy to see how God brought this all about so it was best used by a few more generations. It makes me happy.!! That's for sure. I could write a book about this land and the things that happened here..I did write a book but it wasn't about our land. Thanks for doing all this...I'm so glad that the information will be there for our future Generations that may continue to live here. Thank you and God Bless.

This is the way the generations fall in line...Silas Nowlin...
Sherman Nowlin....my mother.. Bessie Naomi Nowlin Hurley..our son...Scott Alton Smith...now...his son..Ryan Smith....
Have no idea how many more generations will live in that old house...originally the whole front of the house was log...in the stairway and upstairs still has the logs showing through...Mother hated that so she started tacking old sheets up over thee logs and after so many layers of that she then started wallpapering over that...when you would be going down the steps if you happened to bump into the wall, it would make a hole in all those layers of wallpaper...I think Scott tore all that down...so many memories...both of my grandfathers (maternal and paternal) died young long before I was born so I never got to experience having a grandpa!!
Always made me sad!!!