(Much of the information in this section is the work of Jim Henry. Thanks for your help, Jim).
William was born on January 21, 1808, near Hartsville, Tennessee. We presume that the event occurred in what was then Smith County, but we cannot be perfectly sure because his parents were living very close to the Smith/Sumner line. He arrived about ten months after his parents were married. We really know nothing at all of William’s childhood. His parents returned from far northwestern Tennessee to the Smith County area when William was about four years old. William spent the rest of his days there. His father was a farmer, and that is the only way of life he ever knew.
Two days after Christmas of 1831, just about a month shy of his twenty-fourth birthday, he married a swarthy, raven-haired eighteen-year-old girl by the name of Matilda F. Holt. (No marriage bond for this couple has been found. Their wedding date was copied by Dorothy Kerley Keenan from an old day book of William and Matilda's that was once in the possession of Myrtle Kerley Roach. That book disappeared sometime before Myrtle's death circa 1971.) The wedding is said to have been in Hartsville, but it could have taken place somewhere at a rural church (or home) near Hartsville.
William and Matilda settled not far from his father in Smith County. Their farm was just on the east side of Goose Creek, about three miles northeast of the village of Hartsville (and just on the south edge of the little rural community of Beech Grove). William earned most of his income from farming and raising horses and mules. But somewhere along the line he got some informal training in medicine. To be sure, medical science in the 1830s and 1840s was rather primitive, and even the very best doctors could do little for the seriously ill. The practical difference between a medical school graduate and a layman with common sense and a good bedside manner was not as great as some might guess. We suppose that William may have been apprenticed to a doctor at one time, or perhaps he had the opportunity to study some medical books somewhere. (He certainly had no battlefield surgery experience, because he was never in a war.) It may be that he was actually what people often called an “herbalist” - an expert at potions, poultices, and enemas that are usually harmless and occasionally efficacious.
The one thing of which we can be absolutely sure is that William never had any formal medical school training at all. Nonetheless, in the 1850 census he was openly representing himself to be a physician. He liked to be addressed as "Doctor" William Kerley, and he listed his occupation on the census schedule as “M. D.” Looking back on his medical “career” after almost a century and a half, we have no way of knowing if he did more good than harm to his patients.
Immediately after getting married, William and Matilda became very busy creating a family. They had 13 children over the ensuing 24 years. (William spelled his name Kearley, but all of his sons - with the single exception of Pate - eventually dropped the a and began spelling it Kerley. On the old census records and courthouse documents, the family name is found spelled in every imaginable fashion: Kerly, Kirley, Kirly, etc.)
Elizabeth was born on November 11, 1832, ten and a half months after they married. But she died young.
Bailey Peyton (“Pate”) was born a year and a half later on May 3, 1834.
James H. was born on January 20, 1836.
Mary Matilda was born on January 7, 1838.
Martha Jane was born on 26 January 1840, but she died at birth or soon after.
The federal census taken in the summer of 1840 found William “Kerly” with his wife and three surviving children in Smith County, but it does not give us much other information about them. This particular census does tell us that William owned two slaves, a young male between 10 and 24 and a female between 20 and 50. Two persons in the household were tallied as being “engaged in agriculture,” presumably William and his male slave.
The 1840s brought more children.
William Giles was born on May 6, 1842.
Henrietta Clay arrived on September 11, 1844. She was apparently named in honor of Henry Clay who campaigned unsuccessfully for the Whig Party's presidential nomination that same year. This probably tells us something about William's politics.
Joseph C. was born on March 30, 1846.
Zachary Taylor was born on 9 February 1848. This son was obviously named for the military hero of the Mexican War. In 1848 General Taylor was campaigning (successfully, as it turned out) for the White House. In November of that year, he became the twelfth president of the United States. Like Henry Clay, he was a Whig.
Sarah Adriene was born on December 14, 1849.
Thomas Nelson was born on February 23, 1852.
Theopholis came along almost two years later, but he died in infancy.
Daniel Webster was born in March of 1856. This child was named for the prominent New England politician, a man who, like Senator Clay and General Taylor, was a Whig. By the time William and Matilda's last child was born, Mr. Webster's political career was over. (In these years just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Daniel Webster was widely known for his opposition to slavery and talk of disunion).
Ten of the children survived infancy, and Doctor William's family was complete.
In 1857 William's mother, by then a widow, filed a petition with the federal government for a land grant, and William acted as a witness for one of the documents involved. This is of interest to us because it gives us a good example of his handwriting, and it proves that he was a literate person.
In August of 1860, the census taker came around to interview William Kerley and his brood in Smith County, and William gave his occupation as “Physician.” The value of his real estate had risen to $5000 (from only $800 ten years earlier), and he estimated the value of his personal property at $10,000. In all likelihood, this $10,000 consisted mostly of horses and mules. William is said to have also been a tobacco farmer, SEE “Kerley (Kearley)-Brown Family” by Dorothy Kerley Keeran in The History of Frisco 1902-1976, Izetta Sparks, editor, (Dallas, Taylor Publishing Co., 1976), and part of his personal property consisted of slaves. The 1860 slave schedules show that he held seven people in bondage: two mulatto women (aged 38 and 24), a young black man (19), two mulatto children (3 and 2), and two black children (4 and 2). Clearly, William and his family were doing alright by the standards of the times.
However, the Civil War began the following year and times changed. William, at fifty-three, was too old to take an active part in the war, but his three oldest sons were not, and they fought for the South. Despite the fact that free-soil Union territory (Kentucky) was just a morning's buggy ride to the north, all of the Kearleys (that we know anything about) seem to have been staunch Confederates. Horses and mules were in great demand all through the war, and it was inevitable that Doctor William was going to lose virtually all of his to one side or the other. If the Yankees came and got his animals, he probably got no remuneration for them. If the Southern army requisitioned them, he was probably “compensated” with Confederate money (which was little better than having them stolen). By the time the war was finally over four years later, William and Matilda were almost ruined. They still had their land, and none of their sons had been lost in the fighting, but most of what they had worked for was gone. There were no animals left to help put their crops in the ground, and all of their slaves were gone except for an old woman named Louise who stayed with the family the rest of her life. Ibid., p. 131. It is unclear where this Louise came from or when she joined the family. The eldest of William's slaves in 1860 would only have been 43 when the Civil War ended five years later
In 1870 the census taker recorded the value of Doctor William's real property at only $1500; his personal property had dropped to that same figure. And for the first time, he listed his occupation as a farmer instead of a doctor. Joseph, Zachary, Adriene, and Daniel were still living at home. Old Louise did not appear on that census schedule, so we presume that she was deceased by then. But in her place appeared the name of “Jennie [Kerley],” a thirteen-year-old Negro girl who was listed as a “Domestic servant.” Jennie may have been the same person as the three-year-old black girl who appeared with the family on the 1860 slave schedule, or she might have been the four-year-old mulatto girl.
Not long thereafter, William and Matilda's children began to drift away from the area. Joseph was probably the first; he headed for Texas. By 1874 Thomas had followed him, and most of the other children did likewise in the next few years. The only one who may have stayed near William and Matilda was Mary Matilda. Zachary went to Texas, but he is said to have returned to Tennessee after a few years.
Less than a year after the 1870 census Doctor William found himself and his property in the newly created county of Trousdale. Hartsville, the only town of any size, was selected to be the county seat. Trousdale County is today, as it was then, considered to be one of the most ideal locations for growing tobacco in the entire United States.
The census in 1880 was the last one that Doctor William lived to see. Though he was seventy-two years old, he and Matilda were still living under their own roof near Beech Grove, and he still claimed to be farming his land. (And as in 1870, he was no longer representing himself to be a physician.) The Negro girl, Jennie, was gone, but in her place they had an older Negro couple living with them; Aron (sic) Densho was a seventy-five-year-old laborer, and he had a forty-year-old wife named Hannah.
Death came to the old farmer/physician on the first of October in 1889. He had attained the age of eighty-one years and nine months. We do not know the circumstances of his demise, but it almost certainly occurred in Trousdale County. He was buried in the same private cemetery as his parents. The title of “Dr.” was engraved before his name on his tombstone. If he ever made a will, it has not survived. (The Trousdale County courthouse burned about 1905, and all the records were lost.) His widow, Matilda, lived on for several more years. She may have spent some of that time with Zachary Taylor, the only one of her children who returned from Texas, or possibly with Mary Matilda Faust, the only one who never went to Texas at all. Sometime near the end of her life, possibly in August of 1894, her son Tom sent her a train ticket so she could come to Texas and help with the household while his wife recuperated from the birth of one of their last children (possibly Oma). It was the only time that Matilda ever saw that faraway place that drew most of her children away from the hills of Tennessee. For some reason, Matilda did not get along very well with her son and some of her grandchildren.
Myrtle Kerley Roach remembered that her grandmother was sharp-tongued and critical of Tom's children. After only a few days, Matilda moved on to stay with another of her children in Texas. Tom and Susan are said to have been quite irritated with the old woman, because they had paid for her train ticket and were expecting some help from her while she was there. This episode was reported to me by Dorothy Kerley Keeran, who interviewed Myrtle late in her life.
After a while Matilda returned to Tennessee and never visited Texas again. She died on April 13, 1895 and was buried beside her husband of almost fifty-eight years.