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48
Shoffner History.
Colonel Shol?ner, in his latter years, would often talk to the .school children at Butler?s Creek; and his remarks were always listened to with eagerness, impressing them with truths that will last a lifetime. His favorite theme was ? Temperance.? He would relate to his young audience how that in the memorable I'olk-.Jones contests of 1841 and 1843 he would sit and listen to the forceful eloquence of ?Lean Jimmy Jones? until he would feel like shouting. Then he would relate that Lean Jimmy became intemperate, which was finally his ruin. This, he said, should be a lesson and a warning to the rising generations; and he hoped and trusted that those under the sound of his voice would ever shun this great evil and, when they grew to be
men and women, would do all in their uower to remove ' i.
this curse from the land.
Before the Civil War, Colonel Shofner was a Whig. In 1810 he supported William Henry Harrison; in 1848, Zachary Taylor. After the war, he affiliated with the Democratic party; but for several years before his death he voted the Prohibition ticket, and often made the remark that one thing could be truly said of him after he was gone, and that was that be fought liquor until his labors were ended.
Colonel Shofner died in 1899 at the advanced age of eighty-six years, and was interred in the family burying ground at Jenkins? Chapel.
Three years before Colonel Shofner?s death, and at his dictation, Mr. John W. Ruth wrote an article on the history of the Shoffner family that was printed in the Bedford County Times in April, 1896. The article is here reproduced because of its historical worth.