Henry Corbett (or Corbit) Craft was the son of John Craft and Epanetes Willhite. He was born on May 4, 1895 in Hickman County, Tennessee. Most everyone called him CC throughout his life, but his second wife, Maudie, called him Corb.
In 1900 CC was living in Hickman County, Tennessee with his parents and siblings. The family’s last name was misspelled as Croft. An odd thing about the 1900 census is that it has his father, John, as “in school” and “farm laborer”. It also says that his mother, Epanetes, is “in school”. I think that the enumerator may have been mistaken (I mean, surely they weren’t in their 30s and in school, right?). His siblings listed (and I can’t say that these names are correct) are: Ivey A (age 16 years), James (age 14 years), Caha L (age 11 years), Alley (age 8 years), Katey P (age 6 years) and William (age 3 years). CC is listed as Henry C (age 4 years).
In 1910 the family was still living in Hickman County, Tennessee. His father is listed as John and his mother is listed as Epsey. This time the family’s last name is correct as Craft. The siblings he lived with at the time were (again, I don’t know which names are correct): Santford (age 23 years), Pearl (age 16 years), Willie (age 12 years) and Robert (age 9 years). The census does list his name as Henry, but the transcriber entered in as Hemroy (which makes me giggle very unprofessionally).
Henry Corbett Craft married Katie Clady Cathey on July 18, 1915 in Humphreys County, Tennessee.
In 1920 the family is living in Gibson County, Tennessee. The family’s last name, once again, is misspelled as Croft. On this census record Henry is listed quite clearly as Aubrey, though I cannot figure out why. Katie’s name is misspelled as Katty. They have two children: Nettie Sue (age 2 years 10 months) and Louise (age 1 month). CC was, at this time, a laborer in a cotton mill. Though the census record just has Katie as “at home” I think that she worked the cotton fields.
Over the course of the next 10 years CC and Katie had four more children, one, a daughter, which was stillborn.
On the 1930 census the family is living in Gibson County, Tennessee. The census transcriber had put Eraft as their last name, and I will admit it is kind of difficult to make it out. The children listed on this census are : Nettie S (age 13 years), Louise (age 10 years), Maggie N (age 8 years), Ruthie May (misspelled as Reathi, Rarthi-depending on whether you look at Family Search or Ancestry, age 4 years 7 months) and Jessie P (age 1 year and 1 month).
After 1930 CC and Katie had three more children: Mary Katherine (born 1931) and twins, John and Unnamed (born 1935). The Unnamed was a stillborn that had apparently quit developing long before John was born since it was small enough to have been buried in a kitchen matchbox. Katie passed away within a couple days of the twins’ birth in 1935.
In 1936 CC married Maudie Berkley. They did not have children together (that are known), but CC did get a stepson from Maudie’s previous marriage.
Henry Corbett Craft died on December 27, 1971 at Butler Nursing Home in Milan, Gibson County, Tennessee where he had been under care for about 3 months. He is buried in Double Springs Cemetery near Milan, Gibson County, Tennessee.
It was understood that he had been a sharecropper in his earlier years. Later in life CC owned a shop where he repaired shoes and made brooms and mops to sell. My mother said “he’d have a mouthful of tacks that he spit out onto the shoe (quite accurately, I might add) and then tap, tap, tap it into the shoe sole”.
CC was a religious man later in life. As a young man he had been a heavy drinker. One night after drinking quite a bit an angel appeared to him on his way home and grabbed the reigns of the horse (or mule, perhaps). This apparently changed his life. He had prophetic dreams throughout his life, including one concerning the death of his son John’s twin.
He said very long prayers at meals and would end the prayers with a long, drawn out “Aaaaameeeeeen” and look up with tears in his eyes.
At one point he was a member of a Church of God congregation that was further into the country and in an old house with creaking wood floors. Because the members of the church would dance around speaking in tongues, the state of the floors really concerned my mother (I guess she imagined the floors just giving way one day!).
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