CaldwellGenealogy.com Discussion ForumCaldwell>VA>GA>AL
By:Carolyn Riddle Chapin
Date: 13:22 7/22/04 I am g-g-g-granddaughter of Rebecca Caldwell. She married Gideon Riddle, born 1802, Oglethorpe, GA. Gideon was a former businessman and large landowner (owned land valued at $3,000 in the 1800s in Talladega, Randolph, and Clay Counties. After Rebecca died, Gideon married Mary Walker and migrated to Cleburne County, AL. Rebecca's and Gideon's son, John W. (G.) Riddle, born 1848 in Alabama, shows up in the late 1800s on the Calhoun County, AL census. John W. was married to Sara Elizabeth Heifner, descendant of Peter Heifner (Havner) descendant of the wealthy German Havner family. John's son Jason owned 1,000 acres, including over 600 acres of Appalachian foothills, part of which was located in Cleburne County, AL, and over 300 acres of adjoining prime farmland and bottomland in Calhoun County between Choccolocco Creek and Highway 78 East. John and Sara Elizabeth's (I think she was called "Liza") children were Mary B., Gussie, and Jason Riddle. Mary B. Riddle was an Alabama school teacher. Gussie Riddle Baker was the principal and teacher of the one-room Choccolocco School House. According to relatives, Sara Elizabeth and John W. (G) Riddle had two hired servants, one of whom was an ancestor of the Hawkins family. John's son Jason was married to Sara Launa Rusk, daughter of the Cleburne County Rusks. According to relatives, Launa's father owned a hardware store in Cleburne County. Launa and Jason Riddle's children were Gordon, J.W., and Howard G. Riddle. I am the granddaughter of Howard G. Riddle. I grew up on the family estate near Choccolocco and DeArmanville, AL. I taught elementary school for five years and was a tenured teacher at DeArmanville Junior High School, where both my dad and I attended school. When I was a child, John W.'s son Gordon Riddle owned and ran a sawmill and lumberyard just off Highway 78 East, where my dad worked, until I was eight-years-old, across from the homeplace. They milled lumber from trees cut on the Riddle mountain land. John's daughter-in-law Annie Lois Riddle, widow of J. W. Riddle, lived on the homeplace with Gordon Riddle. The Echols (? spelling), a family who lived on the Riddle farm, assisted Aunt Annie Lois with the gardening, farming, canning, greenhouses and housekeeping. The flat Calhoun County land between Choccolocco Creek and the foothills was and still is known as "Riddle Farm" even though Aunt Annie Lois Riddle left the land to her two nephews Bobby and Ed Land, Jr., who paid the surviving Riddle generation, Howard G.'s family, for a child's part. Ed and Bobby are/were serious farmers. I doubt that anyone in our family would have been interested in farming the land, thus, Aunt Annie Lois probably made a wise decision. Some of the Riddle descendants now reside on their portion of the Riddle estate. I have been unable to locate the grave of John W. (G.) Riddle, although his wife Sara Heifner Riddle is buried at Harmony Baptist Church cemetery in Choccolocco, AL. Any info about his place of death and grave site would be greatly appreciated. Thank you ... Carolyn Riddle-Chapin. |