One of the most highly regarded American Contemporary Folk artists began life as the son of a sharecropper and farm overseer on the Rittenour farm in Pike Road, Alabama. Known as "Mose T" as he signed his paintings, he was the youngest of seven sons born into the Ike Tolliver family of twelve children. He attended Mt. Olive school briefly through the third grade. "I didn't like school. I remember I wanted to be outdoors working with my older brothers or even stacking wood....One thing I remember about our farm house --it was just a shack, but my Mama had pictures all over the walls."

Mose met and married Willie Mae Thomas in the early 1940's and fathered eleven children, seven sons and four daughters. Two other children died in infancy. Mose worked "on and off for years" with McLendon Furniture Company in the shipping and delivery area. There in the late 1960's a crate of marble fell from a fork-lift and crushed Mose's left ankle and damaged leg tendons and muscles which left him unable to walk without assistance...(continue reading)