| Notes |
- MHR note:
from Clara (Enix) Gearhart, 11 October 1950.
Clara got this story from her grandmother Eneix. Gr.-grandfather Hamm had put a beef to fatten near the house up on Tygart Creek, in Carter Co. Ky. One morning he went out and his beef had been killed in the nite. No one knew why the dogs didn’t give warming of the beast’s presence. He called the dogs and got on his horse, and they found the trail of the animal in the woods not far away, and found it – a panther, stretched out full length in a tree. He got off his horse and took off his coat and tied it around the tree, so the panther wouldn’t come down, and went back for his gun. He shot the beast, which measured 9 ft. from end of its nose to tip of tail. Even the old-timers stopped to look at it, as it was larger than any they’d seen. This was about 1820. People cut off claws to show how large it was. Some of the people who passed were going thru to the Big Sandy River for salt. They would put salt in one side of the bag they brot for the purpose, and put a stone in the other side, to balance it across the horse’s back. (Clara doesn’t know why they didn’t divide the salt and put some in each end instead of using a stone._ Grandmother had one claw, which I saw, and it was as long as my little finger. Someone finally threw that claw away.
They had a sugar camp over on Big Perry. People would go over and take a side of meat and sack of meal and stay for a week or two, and make big sugar cakes in a mold as big as a big kettle lid, and four or five inches thick. The mold was a hollowed-out piece of cedar. They’d take home what they needed and leave the rest at the camp for months. No one ever tampered with it but once when someone had taken a knife and cut off a little slice. That was all the sugar they had in those days.
[3]
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1792 - 1875 (83 years)
[1, 2] 
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