In 1889, the Troy Messenger published a series titled ‘Some Old People.’ They interviewed several early pioneers in Pike County about their lives and the community’s early history.

Not more than one or two persons are now living here who were in Pike when Noah Hurley first came to this county. He was born in North Carolina in 1808 and came to Pike in 1831. The Silers, Townsend, and Talbots were among the families that were here when he came. The first wedding he attended in the county was in 1831, at the residence of Hale Talbot. Wm. Harris and Miss Rachael

Barnett were the contracting parties, the ceremony being performed by Andrew Townsend, J. P. He soon after attended another at Isaac Duncan’s, when Matthew Duncan was joined in marriage to Miss Shaver. The notorious Kin Mooney was a guest and witness at this wedding. Orion at that time was known as Prospect Ridge, and there was not a brick house in the city of Montgomery, and those that were there were small affairs. Mr. Hurley says that Messrs. Hale Talbot, Robert

Anderson and he are the only ones living in this section who were residents of what is now the Orion neighborhood before the Indian War.

He was married three times. His first wife was Miss Annie Civil Duncan. They were married in 1844. Elder Hillsman Hill, first pastor of Beulah Church, performed the ceremony, and Mr. Hurley is still living in the house that he built at that time, on land that he opened for himself upon his arrival in the county. He is now living with his third wife, and has raised seven children, one of his sons was a Confederate soldier in the late war and was severely wounded.

He was in the Indian War of 1836 and was associated with Wiley White, Harrell Hobdy, Wm. Davis, and others, and knew them intimately after the war. He was under Col. John Deason and Maj. William. McMahon and Andrew McDougald was his captain.

The Montgomery and Monticello road was the only public highway in the county when he first came here, and the people traveling from place to place had to follow trails through the woods. The Three Notch road was hardly thought of then, and Troy was in the dim future. He helped to open some of the prominent roads, of which that from Pugh’s Bridge to Montgomery was one.

He was often a guest at Granny Love’s tavern at Monticello, where he would go to attend court, not that he was involved in lawsuits, but because it was the custom for the pioneers to gather at the county village at court time to hear the news and see what was going on. No railroads were then in vogue, and mail was few and far between. Like others of the old pioneers, he loves to talk of the incidents of the old times generally, and especially about how he enjoyed the old-fashioned hospitality which was extended to all who stopped with Granny Love, when Andy and Bill used to pick chickens at night out under the shelter in the yard of the tavern at Monticello. He says that even now, it makes his mouth water when he thinks of the good and well-prepared provisions which were placed before her guests. It would take a volume to tell of the many incidents with which he is familiar, but one he especially delights in speaking of, and that is how, when a boy, he had to separate the lint cotton from the seed with his fingers and teeth. This work was done at night, as an after-supper task. Then, but a few hundred bales were raised in the whole country, and only a limited number found their way across the Atlantic. Then Whitney invented his gin—what a change in the short span of a lifetime, but we leave the reader to its contemplation.

He remembers well the debate that took place in the Conecuh River Association at old Liberty Church, at the time the Primitives and Missionaries separated, and was acquainted with many of the preachers of that day and time. Mr. Hurley himself is a member of the Missionary Baptist Church.

His son Frank, who has remained with his father since he was twenty-one, is very careful of his comfort. Uncle Noah’s many friends wish for him many ears of happiness yet, and that he may enjoy every comfort to which his declining years entitle him.

All of these articles can be found in previous editions of The Troy Messenger.  Stay tuned for more.  Dianne Smith is the President of the Pike County Historical, Genealogical, and Preservation Society.