Page 2.

Johnnie Maude Campbell Dickens was born in the hills of Putnam County, TN in 1887. ‘Poppa’ William Jasper Dickens was born in the hills of Smith County, TN in 1878. Their homes were about ten miles apart as the crow flies but it was a considerable distance by horseback or on foot, travelling up, down and around those hills.

Mamma and poppa Dickens met and did their courting at church meetings. These gatherings were often in the form of Brush Arbor meetings, held outside on the grounds. There was singing, praying, preaching, eating dinner, visiting among the congregation and then doing it all over again.

The Brush Arbor Revival Meeting was not only a religious highlight of the time, it was also a major social event and a source of entertainment to the rural folk who lived far away from the developing big cities.

Page 1. Page numbers at paragraphs refer to my original hand-printed Manuscript pages.

Beginning in the Summer of 1986:
For several years I wanted to know more about the early Dickens family that settled in middle Tennessee. I had hoped to locate a Dickens history in some book or perhaps just a list of names and dates that would tell me how our family settled here. But no such easy access to the Dickens past was located.

I decided to make my own search. I began with bits of information that I remembered from my childhood; information that was passed down to me from my grandmother, Johnnie Maude Campbell Dickens; "mamma" Dickens, to our family.

I spent several years of my childhood living with mamma Dickens. This gave me an advantage of learning first hand about her generation. Her accounts of life in the hill country (Smith and Putnam Counties in TN) and stories of a period that began around 1880 gave me some insight that I wouldn’t have if I had been raised by someone born a generation later. From her beginnings to my present age spans more than 100 years (in this year that I’m typing my originally hand-printed manuscript it is a span of exactly 120 years).

Even with that help, many hours of study and research have been required to locate and document the information I have to this time.

                 Dickens of Hurricane Creek by Howard Douglas Dickens, Copyright © 1986 - 2007.  
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