Knee Deep in the Hooah!

I was not familiar with this story at all until I bought Allison Krauss’ album “A million miles” and heard the song “Jacob’s Dream.” She has such a way with haunting lyrics. Her pure and sweet tone draws you in and the words weave a story that is hard to get out of your mind.

Here’s Krauss’ rendition of the story (excerpted below).

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7jXxeQIjFE

Here’s a small excerpt from a page I found on the missing children and the young farmer whose dream brought the torturous search for them to an end.

It began on the morning of April 24, 1856, amidst the dense forests of Spruce Hollow.  Samuel Cox had returned to the little log cabin he had built for his wife, Susannah, and two small sons, Joseph, 5, and George, 6.  He was returning empty-handed from his hunt for small game.  As they sat down for dinner, their dog, “Sport,” was barking and Mr. Cox immediately trudged out with his gun.  Before Joseph left he told his wife, “Sport” had a squirrel treed, and he would go get the squirrel for meat for his family.

Samuel was gone about an hour and a half from the cabin and returned by a different route that he had left the cabin.  On entering the clearing where his cabin stood, he was met by his wife.  Susannah Cox was crying hysterically because the two boys were missing.  Susannah frantically told her husband how she had repeatedly called them and then searched the area.  She was sure that something had happened to them.  The woods in the area had many fast-flowing streams that two small boys could easily drown in.

Samuel Cox immediately began searching for his sons.  Again and again he desperately called their names and listened intently after his echo for the small voices of the boys’.  The only thing poor Mr. Cox heard was the birds high in the trees and the rustling of leaves by the wind through the forest.  Finally, Samuel went to his neighbors who lived a farther up the valley to ask their aid in the search.

Within hours, over 150 people were searching the Blue Knob area for the young boys.  They searched until nearly daybreak, rested briefly and renewed their search at the crack of dawn.  Nearly ten days went by and almost 1,000 people were trudging through the woods in every direction to aid in the search for the boys.  Some came from as far as 50 miles away.

By now the entire area was completely involved with the thoughts of what extreme misfortune the Cox family was experiencing.  Rumors flew wildly as neighbors told stories to one another.  They had drowned…they were killed by a man-eating beast seen prowling the forest…the parents had murdered them.  Several neighbors went as far as to tear up the floor of the Cox cabin to relieve those acquisitions.

It was then, at the height of all the rumors, that a young farmer named, Jacob Dibert, had a nightmare.  In his nightmare, Mr. Dibert was part of the search parties looking for the Cox boys.  He became separated from the other men.  He could not recognize the part of the forest he was in, but he came to a fallen tree.  Near the tree lay a dead deer.  Stepping over the deer, Mr. Dibert followed a deer trail and soon found a small boy’s shoe just beyond where he found the shoe there was a beech tree lying across a stream.  He went across the stream, up a steep ridge and into a ravine.  There, by the roots of a large birch tree, were the missing boys, dead from exposure. READ MORE —