How my Cousin Henry's wife saved their little boy

The Chronicle Columbiana, Alabama Thursday, April 4, 1895 Sketches of the History of Shelby County. BY REV. E.B. TEAGUE No. 2. Before the name Columbiana was adopted, the burgh was designated by a number of names, more commonly called “Coonsboro,” as some say from a coon story; but I well remember the name was older at least than one of the stories (for I have heard a second), I give the real facts of one of them, as a matter of personal knowledge. Mr. Henry Brasher lived on the place the long‐time home of Jefferson Elliott, on Four Mile creek. There was a large pond at the foot of the hill east of the first house built upon the place by the original owner, Levi Weaver, then occupied by Mr. Brasher. Ms. B. had been washing, and leaving her little boy, two or three years old, at the house, descended the hill to rinse the clothes in the clear pond. Presently she heard the child screaming, ran up the hill, and found a coon biting and scratching him in the face. With a mother's heroism, she seized the coon by the throat and choked it to death! But her sleeves being rolled up to the elbow, the coon scratched her arms severely. I saw the child and mother a week or two after on a visit to my mother, and looked at the scratches on both mother and child then cicatrizing. The other story is that something similar occurred at the spring in town, that part being then a wood. Of this I know nothing personally, but probably both occurrences may have taken place, are the real one been mislocated.