Interview with Warren S. Hancock

Interview with Warren S. Hancock

Warren S. Hancock was interviewed by Shelley Zorn and Gail Walls.

The envelope the tape was found in mentions the Evans Murder and the Miles Cribbs hanging. However, the tape is degraded within 4 minutes of the interview.

Turner County Art Council/Ashburn Historic Preservation Commission Oral History Project.

December 5, 2002

Shelley Zorn; Gail Walls

Warren Hancock

Shelley: Thursday, December the fifth at 1:30 in the afternoon Shelley Zorn and Gail Walls interviewing Mr. Warren Hancock.

Warren: So let me give you some background before you start recording. Okay I want you to understand where I'm coming from when I start talking. To you about the Mr. Cribs hanging. I'm going to give you the background on my family. The Hancock family. They came to Turner County in 1860 and settled on Alapaha River on what's now Hill Young's farm. And there's still a two-story house over there that I think my great grandfather built. He was a primitive Baptist preacher. Redheaded man. And he pastor in Bushwick Creek Church in Irwin County.mAnd he spoke several times in the church just south of Abbeville. But he had this huge family of boys and two or three girls. I don't remember how many. My grandfather built a house next to his house on Hill Young Farm field now. And he had eleven, ten or eleven people. Which our father was in the crowd.

Shelley: He was one of the crowds.

Gail: So your great great great grandfather was originally came here.

Warren: No, great grandfather. My father, my grandfather, and his father were all about forty years old when the ones in my family were born. My father was, his daddy was about forty when he was born. My daddy was about forty. And your grandfather was about forty. fSo we go back five generations fast. Real easy. Because this great grandfather died in 1879.

Shelley: And they all had you think eleven or twelve kids.

Warren: Yeah.

Shelley: That's a bunch. Yeah, they did that.

Warren: In the 1800s, they did. All this- J.J. Hancock was his initial. It came in 1860.
His children all turned out, the majority of them, to be politicians. One of them was clerk of the court in Wilcox County. One of them was the sheriff in Irwin County. My grandfather was what we call ordinary. I don't know if you know how the county works here or not. He was the ordinary Turner County.

Shelley: Oh, okay. Probate.

Warren: And my father was the justice of the peace. A deputy sheriff. Justice of the peace used to be a big thing. And he married a lot of people. They got him as minister of the gospel in the history of Turner County one time and he always got a kick out of there. But anyway, he was a politician from his toes. And all of the boys that my grandfather had worked at one time with other ordinary office over the deputy ordinary. And my father did.

Shelley: So it was the preacher that raised all the politicians, is that correct?

Warren: Yeah. He was the preacher. That would be my grandfather's great uncle's name. And I found a way to know those office. (audio quality and tape fades out)...

Tape

4 minutes, 32 seconds