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My mother grew to maturity in Dallas County, Alabama. It was there she met my father.
After the war, my grandfather, Col. Holcombe, went back to Louisiana but found everything he had there in a wreck, gone or worthless. He then went back to Alabama where the family had some holdings, and lived there until his death in 1900.
My grandfather McIver was captured and held in Yankee prison until the close of the war. When he got home he was broken down physically and financially, and died soon after the war was over.
My father was a boy when the war broke out, but he belonged to the Home Guard along with other young boys and old men. The duty of the Home Guard was to protect the women and children against renegade Negroes, sorry white people, thieves and marauders. They did a good job of it. After the war the carpetbaggers, Negroes and some Yankee soldiers who remained down south, organized the Negroes into the Republican party. Before the ex-Confederate soldiers were allowed to vote, they were required to go before bureaus set over the country and take an oath. Very few would do that, consequently they were disfranchised. The carpetbagger and Negro ticket was, of course, elected.
After the war the Home Guard continued to function, and when a stray Yankee, carpetbagger or bad Negro strayed too far a field, it was just too bad for him. Therefore after the Republicans had elected their ticket, the new officers and the Federal marshals took out after the Home Guard members. The young boys of yesterday were now grown men, and many of them, including my father, decided to "go west and grow up with the country."
- Major Williamson, a former Confederate officer and a friend and neighbor
of the McIver family, had gone to Texas and was in charge of the Texas
Rangers, and was later made captain of the Ranger Company. He remained
in the service on the Indian frontier for six or seven years, and finally
resigned.
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