A. A. and Susanna Head Homestead

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the A. A. and Susanna Head Homestead, right here in Johnson County. Now, some places earn their names from a deed of arms, or a flood, or a famous quarrel.

But this particular patch of Johnson County earth, well, it earned its place in history the slow way. The patient way. The terracing-three-hundred-acres way.

Alanson Asbury Head, A. A. to the record books, but Uncle Ben to just about everybody who knew him, was born in 1843. His wife, Susanna Alabama Bethany, came into this world that same year, 1843.

Two people, same year, different names, and somehow they wound up building a two-story residence right here, around 1877. You get the sense they were the kind of folks who showed up and got to work. And work they did.

Over the years, A. A. and Susanna, she went by Aunt Sukie to the neighbors, terraced about three hundred acres on this land. Three hundred acres, terraced.

That's not a weekend project. That's a life's ambition written in the dirt. On those terraces they cultivated orchards, vineyards, and berry patches.

The farm prospered. Now here's where the story takes a turn that says everything about who these two people were. In 1903, when the farm was doing well enough that they could have kept right on accumulating, A.

A. and Susanna donated two acres, across the road from their own home, for the building of the Head Chapel Methodist Church. They gave the land. Just gave it.

And then, five years later in 1908, they weren't done yet. The Heads donated an adjoining two acres to establish the Bethany Rest Cemetery. Susanna Alabama Bethany Head passed in 1924.

Alanson Asbury Head followed her in 1925. And when it came time, they were buried side by side in that very cemetery they had given to the community two decades before. Uncle Ben and Aunt Sukie.

They terraced the land, they grew the orchards, they built the church, they laid out the cemetery. And then they rested there together. Some folks, it turns out, plan ahead in the most meaningful way possible.

What the marker says

Alanson Asbury (A. A.) Head (1843-1925) and his wife, Susanna Alabama Bethany (1843-1924) built a two-story residence here about 1877. Over the years A. A. and Susanna, known as Uncle Ben and Aunt Sukie, terraced about 300 acres here on which they cultivated various orchards, vineyards, and berry patches. Their farm prospered and in 1903 they donated two acres across the road from their home for the building of the Head Chapel Methodist Church. In 1908 the Heads donated an adjoining 2 acres to establish the Bethany Rest Cemetery, where they were later buried side by side. (1993)