Thurman was the first child of Robert Wesley & Leona Knight Kinnaird. He learned the farming way of life at an early age and always worked hard.
He was a sharecropper for the majority of his life, also working at J.P. Hawkins Mill, which was located at the corner of Dodson Branch Road and Cummins Mill Road in Jackson County, Tennessee. He worked there for 50 cents a day or 4 pounds of lard, whichever was more needed that day. For a time, like many of his area, he travelled to Dayton, Ohio and worked at the Wonder Bread Factory. He also worked in Detroit, Michigan at U. S. Rubber. During the extra lean depression years he worked wherever he could find it, including building outhouses at schools for the WPA.
He was the father of eleven children and adored babies. He had a special gift or energy that could calm a crying baby. He was known around his community for being a good barber and people would come to him to get a haircut. He cut most of the family's hair for many years, including some of his grandchildren.
The main crop Thurman and his family raised was tobacco, although they raised nearly everything they ate except flour and coffee.
He was mechanically minded and good at tinkering and repairing things, most likely out of necessity for a poor sharecropper. He was very knowledgeable about plants & trees and their uses, knowledge probably passed down from other family members. He knew medicinal uses for plants and how to prepare them.
He always taught his children to be honest and to honor their word.
The song by Larry Sparks "Sharecropper's Son" always reminds me of my grandpa Thurman, especially this line
"We moved here from somewhere when I was fourteen
Worked this poor ground for bacon and beans
Landlord told me, hard times is near
Didn't mean a thing 'cause they're already here".

Hard times were all he knew most of his life, but he did his best.




Thurman dropped the extra "i" in his name, as several in the family and extended family have done. So even in the same branch of the family you will find that spelling variation.