Per the family stories told by Fred Hamlin and Jackie Hamlin Liford:
Ensley was a gambler, drinker and womanizer. He loved color, music, laughter and women. He was from Irish stock, with red hair and blue eyes. He was also slight in stature. Ensley always planted flowers of all colors mixed together, and kept a flock of chickens of all breeds so there would be lots of feather colors. He was a farmer and trapper, and sold hides he stretched during the winters. He worked in the coal mines later on. He loved to play his violin, and would sing and play his favorite song, 'Silver Threads Among the Gold,' all the time. He always had gambling debts, so sometimes he would go the mines to draw his scrip only to find one of his gambling buddies had already got it. It was hard to get by without that scrip to use at the company store. Margaret Ellen, the oldest daughter, quit school in the 5th grade to help out. She took in laundry, doing the work on the wash board, and pressing the clothes with a flat iron. Ensley knew quite a bit about herbal remedies and he passed that along to daughter Margaret Ellen. She swore by yellowroot for the stomach, arrowroot for the heart, sugar mixed in turpentine for a cold, or made into a paste for a wound.
Mary Catherine gave birth to eleven children, but only five survived childhood. She probably suffered from glaucoma, because her granddaughter Jackie Hamlin Liford remembers that her eyes were very cloudy and she was almost completely blind. She and husband Ensley lived near the Rockholds High School. Their son Jim, wife Gladys and children lived with them, probably to help with her blindness.
She was sick several days before she died, and her daughter Margaret and granddaughter Jackie came to care for her. Jackie remembers spending Christmas there that year, and Mary Catherine died on New Years Day. Jackie recalled that like all houses then, each room was heated with coal grates, and coal stoves in the main rooms. Ice was delivered in blocks from the Corbin Ice House. They never owned a vehicle.
Ensley and Mary Catherine did not celebrate Christmas with a tree, but they did hang stockings. They made a bigger deal of Easter. Ensley would poke holes in eggs with a needle, blow out the contents, dry and color them and hang them outside in the trees.
The McNeil Cemetery is located off McNeil-Corn Creek Rd, which turns off Old Corbin Rd (hwy 26) south of Faber. GPS Coordinates: 36.8619, -84.1119
