A Boy Soldier in the Berrien Minute Men (continued)

March 9, 2024 at 5:31 am (Berrien Minute Men, Civil War)
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Benjamin A. Pickren served in the Berrien Minute Men during the Battle of Atlanta, July 22, 1864
Benjamin A. Pickren served in the Berrien Minute Men during the Battle of Atlanta, July 22, 1864.

Forty years after the Civil War, Benjamin A. Pickren reflected upon his time in battle with the Berrien Minute Men. During Reconstruction Pickren obtained a position with the Southern Pacific Railway Company and became a locomotive engineer in Texas. He faced train robbers, gunfights, and railroad strikes. He survived two train wrecks, in the second of which he “was mangled and maimed, but never lost consciousness.” Recuperation brought him back to the area of his boyhood home in Georgia, where he reflected upon his Confederate military service. Pickren had mustered into the Berrien Minute Men at the age of 16. The previous post related Pickren’s experiences in the Battle of Atlanta.

Historian J. D. Ricci, described the situation leading up to the Fall of Atlanta:

“A nearly eighty-mile retreat through the late spring and early summer brought Sherman and Johnston’s armies within twelve miles of the south’s last major logistical center by July 10, 1864. The operational capability to conduct warfare throughout the Confederacy faced grave danger. To lose Atlanta meant that the flow of ammunition, food, and clothing, not only to Johnston’s army, but to departments in Alabama and the Carolinas, would grind to a halt.”

The Fall of Atlanta

Benjamin A. Pickren’s follow-up letter to the editor of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers’ Monthly Journal recalled the role of the Berrien Minute Men in the final defense of Atlanta.

Experience of a Confederate Soldier.
(Continued from Previous Post.)
SPOONER, GA., Aug. 31, 1905. EDITOR JOURNAL: Immediately after the great battle [Battle of Atlanta] of July 22, 1864, the siege of Atlanta commenced and lasted about two weeks. During the siege there was no fighting to amount to anything between the two infantries, but some of the greatest artillery duels known to occur up to that time. I have lain in the trenches or breastworks and have had the earth torn from beneath me. We were in such close lines or quarters to each other that it was impossible to raise our heads above the top of the breast works on either side. We were even close enough to hello to each other from the breast works, and without the consent being given from headquarters, the boys on both sides agreed to cease firing on each other and we had a few days’ armistice. The two armies looked like a lot of birds, both sitting on top of the breastworks joshing each other and hunting their clothes for intruders, commonly called greybacks.

We were comfortably quartered until the morning of the 31st of August, 41 years ago today, when to our dismay the long roll began to beat; the sound was too well known to all of us, and the officers began to holloa out, “Fall in, boys!” We were soon in ranks, and immediately after being organized a forced march began, we knew not where nor for what purpose until we arrived at Jonesborough, Ga., I thought clear away from the fighting line of Sherman, but as soon as we were in the little town which was all in a bluster, the women and children running and screaming in every direction, we learned that Sherman had made a flank move from Atlanta and his forces were within two miles of the little city, so we were formed into line of battle, and General Hardy’s corps began to march out to meet our enemy. They were formed in line in one of the finest cornfields I ever saw. The corn was so high that neither side had much warning of the approaching danger until the roar of musketry began. It was a short fight, but destructive to both sides. I also fell in the fight, wounded on the top of my head with a fragment of shell and in the left hand with a ball from a musket, and when taken to the rear to the Division Hospital, I there saw several wounded ladies. Though they were not participants in the fight, they were so close to it that they were wounded by stray balls that were fired perhaps one and a-half miles from them. One of the ladies wounded then is now a resident of San Antonio, Texas. I met her there several years ago.”

During the Battle of Jonesborough on August 31, U.S. Army forces blocked the Macon and Western Railroad which was the last uncut railroad leading into Atlanta. With Atlanta’s railroad lifeline severed, the Confederate Army evacuated the city on the evening of September 1, 1864. Atlanta was occupied by U.S. Army troops the following day.

Confederate Military Service Records show that by Sept 13, 1864, Pickren was at Lumpkin Hospital at Cuthbert, GA, about 160 miles south of Atlanta. The hospital had been relocated to Cuthbert after its former location at Covington, GA was destroyed by raiders from U.S. general William T. Sherman’s army on July 22, 1864 during the Battle of Atlanta. The trains brought carloads of sick and wounded Confederate soldiers to the hospitals in Cuthbert. Some were dead on arrival.

“I was one of the disabled for a long time, and returned to the ranks only a short time before the surrender of General Lee, … “, wrote Pickren.

Confederate POW Parole Slip signed by Sgt. Benjamin A. Pickren, 29th GA Infantry at Tallahassee, FL on May 16, 1865.

After the final surrender of the Confederates, Benjamin A. Pickren signed a Prisoner of War parole slip, foreswearing any further engagement in insurrection against the United States.

His reminiscences continued, “…and shortly after that I commenced my career on a railroad.”

I have thought and dreamed of the part I took in the war, and wondered how it is, and for what purpose I escaped death up to the present time. I passed through seventeen battles and came home, and I also passed through two disastrous wrecks and am still alive. My last wreck came near ending it all, but today I am enjoying the benefits of a beautiful home and farm.

My good old mother tells me it was her prayers that brought me safely through and begs me to be a better boy. I was at a good old-fashioned Baptist general meeting yesterday, and heard the minister tell my feelings as though I had told him. I cast a glance at mother and she was gazing at me, and I almost felt condemned. There were two brothers and two sisters of mine at the meeting and all present seemed to enjoy the sweet benefits of a Christian spirit, and I, the oldest of the five, said wondering to myself, “Am I the scapegoat of the family, or am I deceived in myself?” I have the belief they have; I put more confidence, it seems to me, in the protecting hand of a just Ruler than they have any right to, because I have experienced more disasters and come through. Why should I not place more confidence than they, after passing through what I have? I know it is through His kind and loving hands I was spared -not for anything towards keeping His commands that I merited His protection, but it seems as though I had aroused His vengeance to such an extent as to have let me fall through with the rest of the trash. I believe in Him as strongly as the strongest, and put all my confidence in Him, but I have proof of it only in my word. I am not a member of the church, because I am not fit to be. I wish I were, but to join any church without feeling my worthiness I could not do, as I have conscientious scruples against such acts. Instead of bettering my condition, I fear I make matters worse, and before I commit myself I had better close this narrative.

With best wishes to the B. of L. E.,

I remain Yours fraternally,
B. A. PICKREN.

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A Boy Soldier in the Berrien Minute Men

March 2, 2024 at 5:33 am (Berrien Minute Men, Civil War)
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When Georgia seceded from the United States on January 19, 1861, Benjamin A. Pickren was just a boy of 13 on his father’s farm in Muscogee County, GA. By the time of the 1864 Census for the Reorganization of the Georgia Militia, he was 16 years, 4 months of age, and for a desperate Confederacy that was old enough to fight. He was a big lad at 5′ 11″, blond-haired and blue-eyed. Within two months, he was married and was soon in service in the Confederate States Army. He was mustered in as a private the Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th Georgia Infantry Regiment. Casualties were so high that by the time he was 17, he was promoted to sergeant.

Benjamin A. Pickren, of Muscogee County, GA mustered into the Berrien Minute Men and fought in the Battle of Atlanta at the age of 16.

From the late spring into the summer of 1864, the Berrien Minutemen and the 29th Regiment were in northwest Georgia with General Johnston’s Army of Tennessee. The Confederates had been forced to retreat before the relentless advance of General Sherman’s U.S. Army toward Atlanta. July 4, 1864 found the Berrien Minute in the line of battle at Marietta, GA. After dark, the Confederate forces fell back to the the Chattahoochee River. In a letter to his wife, John William Hagan  wrote about the retreat and his confidence in the defensive earth works of General Joseph E. Johnston’s River Line. But again, the Confederates were forced to retreat to avoid encirclement. By mid-July with the loss of Atlanta imminent , General Johnston was relieved of command and General John Bell Hood took over. The Battle of Atlanta loomed.

The events of July 22, 1864 were still etched in Benjamin A. Pickren’s memory in 1905, even after four decades of work as a railroad engineer. In retirement, he wrote about his service in the Berrien Minute Men in a letter to the editor of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers’ Monthly Journal.

Experience of a Confederate Soldier.
SPOONER, GA., July 22, 1905. EDITOR JOURNAL: Today is the forty-first anniversary of the great battle fought between General Sherman, of the Federal army, and General Hood, of the Confederate army, near the city of Atlanta, Ga., in 1864, in which I was a participant in gray uniform. Perhaps this narrative may interest some and not others. However, I thought I would give you a small outline of my experience in war, as railroading has become a thing of the past with me, though I feel as deep interest, it seems to me, as I ever did.

Major Arthur Shaaff (1831-1874) 1st Battalion GA Sharp Shooters
Major Arthur Shaaff (1831-1874) 1st Battalion GA Sharp Shooters. Image source: Maryland Center for History and Culture

On the day of the battle I was detailed on picket duty, which was an advanced line of skirmishers under command of Major Shoaff of the Second Georgia Battalion of sharpshooters [actually Major Arthur Shaaf, 1st Battalion GA Sharp Shooters].

The line of skirmishers was deployed in advanced line with a guide center march of nearly two miles through one of the greatest blackberry fields I ever saw. We had marched so far in fighting position and found nothing to fight until we became careless and commenced to pick and eat the delicious black berries.

At last, to our surprise, a gun was fired within fifty yards of our front, and one of our non-commissioned officers, Roland Griffin, fell dead within six feet of myself. [Rowland H. Griffin was a substitute who had been hired to take the place of John F. Parrish.]

At the same instance up jumped the boys in blue that had fired the fatal shot, endeavoring to reach their main line about one-quarter of a mile in our front, but they never reached it, as there were too many good marksmen in close range of them. The picket line was commanded to halt, lie down and shoot to hold the enemy in check until reinforcements came up from our rear. We did so, repulsing two picket charges. At the close of the second charge, we, the picket line, were ordered to hold our positions and not allow anyone to cross our line, unless wounded or a staff officer. I was at a loss to know what it meant, but soon after the order was given, my comprehension was clear. Looking back over the field we had marched and fought over, I saw a full line of battle advancing towards our enemy, although Major Shoaff and his pickets were between them. As soon as the advancing line reached our line and passed over it, the command was given to Major-General Walker to charge, and the heat of battle began. The booming of artillery, the rattling of small arms, and the yells of the advancing or charging line so enthused Major Shoaff that he also commanded the picket line to charge and the command was obeyed. There was a mill pond directly in front of our line which had been recently drained, and the men undertook to charge through it, and were mired down to their waists, and I had to give up the undertaking. The charge was successful both to the right and left of the pond; but we were repulsed on the center on the pond’s account, but were soon reinforced and surrounded the pond and gained possession in front of the battery of artillery that was direct in front of the pond that had slain so many of our comrades with grape and canister, together with our much beloved Division Commander, General Walker. We held the field of battle until dark, and in the shadow of the darkness the battlefield was evacuated, and a new line established back towards Atlanta in the edge of the woods we had previously marched through.

Poor me was detailed on vidette duty, which is the advanced part in hostilities. I was stationed in the midst of the battlefield, among the dead, still lying where they had fallen. Imagine, for a moment, the ghastly and horrible position I was placed in. I took a position upon my knees, so I could jump and run if necessary, with gun in hand, ready to throw it down and run, with my head near the ground in order to keep the light of the sky close down, so if the enemy did approach I could see them before they were upon me.

While in this position I took it for granted that my rear was guarded by my comrades, and had no fear of any rear approach; but here was my mistake, when I was spoken to by some one behind me that had crept up to me, but not looking for me, he was as badly frightened as I was. The first I knew of his approach was his addressing me, “Who is that?” I jumped up, wheeling around; with my gun in his face I demanded who he was. Oh, how it sounded when he told me his name, Richardson, of some Indiana regiment. He gave the number, but I did not care for it as he was my prisoner of war. He told me that he was hunting the body of a dead brother that had fallen near where he and I were, and begged me to let him go and hunt his brother, but at that time and place the Rothschild fortune could not have bought him from me, as the capture of a prisoner was the only excuse justifiable to allow a picket to leave his post, and I was determined to go clear to Atlanta with him if I could get there. So he and I started from the deadly battlefield to the rear.

We had gone but a short distance when I heard the familiar walk of Lieutenant Holcomb of General Stephen’s [Clement H. Stevens] staff, who had established the picket post and placed me where I was. I hailed him. [Twenty-five-year-old Josiah Law Holcombe was a native of Savannah and an alumnus of the Georgia Military Institute]. I knew his walk by the large rowels in his spurs tinkling on the gravel. He informed me that there was immediate danger of an attack from General Sherman and he was closing in the picket post and was glad he had found me. I have always thought only for me leaving the post with my prisoner, I would have been captured or killed where he had placed me, as I don’t think he would have ventured out to relieve me; but my hopes were all dismantled when he relieved me of my prisoner and directed me to a new post that had been established in the woods between the battlefield and General Hardy’s corps. He also said that the men were so fatigued that they had doubled the picket post; hence, he gave me directions to go and when about three hundred yards from where we stood, I must whistle. I did so and was answered.

When I reached the post under a large squatty oak I was glad to find one of my own company, John Peoples. He at once proposed to me to take turn about and one sleep at a time, as he was worn out. I told him he could sleep if he chose to, but my adventures up to that time had so enthused me I could not sleep if I tried. He removed his accoutrements and was soon snoozing to such an extent I had to keep prodding him. This was about midnight. I sat on the root of the big tree with my gun and back against it, listening with all my ears. At intervals I could hear commands given in the brush in front of me and they seemed so distinct at times, and so close, I was afraid to wake up John for fear the commands were imaginations as he was one of the greatest teases on earth. So I sat and listened. I could still hear the well understood commands-“Battalion, halt!” Heard it repeated down the line-could hear the command, “Attention, Battalion, guide center, forward, march!” At last the command to halt was so distinct and so close that I made up my mind to wake up my comrade, joke or no joke.

I had reached around the tree to where he lay asleep and given him a severe jerk; at that instant the pickets at our right line commenced a rapid fire down the line to the first one to our right. I threw down my gun at an angle of about forty-five degrees and fired, as instructed. Directly in front of me, not more than forty or fifty feet, I saw from the blaze of my gun in the dark bushes, a stand of U. S. collars and at least fifteen or twenty men’s faces. My comrade and I made for the rifle pit where the picket line was established. We had to face a regular fire of arms from our own comrades in going to the pits. Poor John had his right arm shot off when he reached the pit, or shot so badly it had to be amputated.

The Federals commenced digging and putting up fortifications where they were when the pickets fired upon them. The next morning rations were issued for the 29th Georgia Regiment for upwards of four hundred men, and I think one hundred and twenty-nine men drew them.

My company, G, was the largest in the regiment and ranked among the smallest after that day. I hope my brother soldier Richardson still lives and may read this article and verify the correctness of it.

Fraternally yours, B. A. PICKREN.
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineer’s Monthly Journal, Volume 39

In the Battle of Atlanta, July 22, 1864, near Decatur, GA the 29th Georgia Regiment was decimated. In the Berrien Minute Men Company G, Captain Edwin B. Carroll, Sgt William Anderson, 2nd Lieutenant Simeon A. Griffin, 2nd Lieutenant John L. Hall, Captain Jonathan D. Knight were among those captured. James A. Crawford was mortally wounded. Levi J. Knight, Jr. was wounded through the right lung but would survive. Robert H. Goodman was killed.  In the Berrien Minute Men Company K, Wyley F. Carroll, James M. Davis, James D. Pounds, William S. Sirmans, and Jonas Tomlinson were captured.  John W. Hagan was reported dead, but was captured and sent to Camp Chase. Among many other soldiers captured from the 29th Georgia regiment were Captain John D. Knight, 2nd Lieutenant John L. Hall, Jonas Tomlinson.

(To be continued).

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Berrien Minute Men, Whisky & Harlots

September 2, 2023 at 1:20 am (Berrien Minute Men)
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Two companies of men sent forth in the Civil War from Berrien County, Georgia were known as the Berrien Minute Men. For the most part, both companies of Berrien Minute Men traveled with the 29th Georgia Regiment and kept the same campfires, although occasionally they had different stations. The campfires of the Berrien Minute Men were made for most of 1862 at coastal defenses around Savannah, GA.

In February 1862, Berrien Minute Men Company D, and other companies of the 29th GA Regiment were ordered to Camp Tattnall, near Savannah, GA. The Captain of Company D was John C. Lamb, he having been elected to that position October 14, 1861.  The camp was south of Savannah and east of the White Bluff Shell Road. It was named in honor of old Commodore Tattnall, who was ‘the hero of the age”  and the senior officer of the Navy of Georgia.

Many happenings at Camp Tattnall were recorded in a wartime diary kept by Washington F. Stark (1829-1897), Assistant Commissary of Subsistence for the 29th Georgia Regiment.

Washington Franklin Stark, Assistant Commissary of Subsistence for the 29th Georgia Regiment.

Stark had initially joined the 29th Regiment as a private in the Thomas County Volunteers, but as Assistant Commissary of Subsistence he held the rank of Captain. The Commissary Department was in charge of all food or subsistence supplies at a military post. Subsistence supplies were divided into two parts: subsistence stores, consisting of rations, such as meat, flour, coffee, candles, etc., and commissary property, which was the necessary means of issuing and preserving these stores, such as stationary, forms, scales, measures, tools, etc.

Stark’s diary frequently included his observations on men whose service was lost to illness and occasionally on those lost to vice. In the spring of 1862, he briefly ruminated on the fate of an unnamed soldier of Captain John Carroll Lamb’s company of Berrien Minute Men.

[Camp Tattnall] April 15th [1862]
…One of Capt. Lamb[‘s] men got on a spree the other day, Visited some house of ill fame, got the venereal disease and was carried to the Hospital where he jumped out at the window and broke his leg which has to be amputated. There is not much chance for him to recover. He was one of the stoutest men that he [Captain Lamb] had. So much for Whisky & harlots.

Diary of Washington F. Stark, Assistant Commissary of Subsistence, 29th Georgia Regiment

Another soldier of the 29th GA Regiment from Captain Turner’s company, Berry Infantry, was sick in the hospital with Gonorrhea, first at Hospital No. 1 in Savannah, then transferred on April 7 to Guyton Hospital at Whitesville, GA.

Prostitution in Savannah

Historian Tim Lockley observes in his study of Savannah, “The large numbers of Confederate soldiers in the city…no doubt increased demand for the services of prostitutes,” while the disruptions of families and economic distress caused by the war forced more women to prostitute themselves for survival.

“Prostitute” was listed as the occupation of some Savannah, GA women in the Census of 1860. Enumerators were more apt, at least in some cases, to list known prostitutes under the guise of residents of “ladies’ boarding houses.”

Prostitution [was] a profession that was well established in Savannah. In 1808 the local Grand Jury abhorred “the various houses of ill fame in our city from which issue many of the mischiefs that interrupt our peace. it is here our youth are corrupted. It is here that the sacred ties of marriage are forgotten, and the foundation of diseases laid, which shall continue to be felt to the third and fourth generations.”
As in many other port cities Savannah’s prostitutes found a ready clientele in the crowds of visiting sailors who spent their wages while on shore for a few days in the bars and brothels of Bay Street and Yamacraw.” The city authorities seem to have been fairly phlegmatic about prostitution. In 1855 the chief of police noted in his annual report that the easternmost wards of the city were home to “five large houses of ill fame, besides numerous small ones” while the western part of the city contained “four noted houses of ill fame.” Nothing in his report suggested that the chief of police intended to take action against these establishments. The following year the mayor replied to a request for information on prostitution in Savannah from New York physician William Sanger. He reported that ” In this city there are fifteen houses of prostitution, three assignation-houses, ninety-three white, and one hundred and five colored prostitutes.”

“Survival Strategies of Poor White Women in Savannah, 1800—1860.”

In July 1861, George Webb and other citizens of Savannah petitioned the City Council of Savannah to take action to remove brothels from the town.

Clipping from the Savannah Daily Republican July 17, 1861 regarding a petition to the city council requesting removal of a brothel.
Clipping from the Savannah Daily Republican July 17, 1861 regarding a petition to the city council requesting removal of a brothel.

Petition
Of George S. Webb and others, stating to [Savannah City] Council that the occupants of the house of ill fame in State Street, between Drayton and Abercorn streets, have not been removed, and asking Council to take action in the matter. On motion, the above was referred to the Marshall for action in the premises.

Savannah Daily Republican, July 17, 1861

…It seems clear that brothels often masqueraded as ladies’ boarding houses. Mary Thorpe and Fannie Fall, for instance, were both indicted for “keeping and maintaining a lewd house” by the Superior Court in 1860, yet the census listed them as operating ladies’ boarding houses…The Grand Jury complained in 1864 about “the intrusion into the more public and respectable streets of the city, of houses of ill fame…subjecting our families to sights and scenes which disgrace their presence and outrage their feelings.”

“Survival Strategies of Poor White Women in Savannah, 1800—1860.”

Over the course of the Civil War, sexually transmitted infections reduced the effectiveness of fighting units in the US Army and the Confederate States Army.

Syphilis and gonorrhea, infections spread through sexual contact, were almost as dangerous to Civil War soldiers as combat. At least 8.2 percent of Union troops would be infected with one or the other before war’s end—nearly half the battle-injury rate of 17.5 percent, even without accounting for those who contracted a disease and didn’t know it or didn’t mention it—and the treatments (most involved mercury), when they worked, could sideline a man for weeks.

THE CIVIL WAR, A Smithsonian magazine special report

The incidence of sexually transmitted disease among Confederate soldiers is not known.

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Isaac Strickland, Confederate School Teacher

April 10, 2021 at 12:53 am (Civil War, Uncategorized)
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Isaac Newton Strickland (1835-1912)

On October 31, 1864 during the Civil War, 25  citizens in Lowndes County, GA petitioned Governor Joseph E. Brown for Isaac Newton Strickland to be detailed from Confederate military duty in order to teach in the local school in the 662 Georgia Militia District of Lowndes County. Most of the signers of the petition had husbands, sons, or brothers who were serving or had died in the war; many were “slave owners.”

The petition appears to be written by William Wisenbaker, at least he is the first to sign. It claimed several reasons for excusing Isaac Strickland from military duty. Isaac’s father, Henry Strickland (b. 1794) was over 70 years old and farming in the 658 GMD of Lowndes County.  Two of Isaac’s five brothers had been confirmed killed in the war: Robert M. Strickland (1832-1862) killed May 8, 1862 at the Battle of McDowell; Henry L. Strickland (1825-1862) enlisted Sept 21, 1861 26th Georgia Infantry; killed June 27, 1862 at the Battle of Cold Harbor. Another was thought dead.   William W. Strickland (1841-?) enlisted Jan 13, 1864 at Thomasville, GA and mustered into Company A, 20th Battalion, Georgia Cavalry, later consolidated into Company D, 8th Regiment Georgia Cavalry; He appeared in the 1864 census for reorganizing the Georgia Militia and swore the Oath of Allegiance in Lowndes County, GA in 1867.  James M. Strickland (1829-1877) and Thomas B. Strickland (1839-1893) also survived the war.

The Petition (transcribed below with notes on the petitioners)
Correspondence of Governor Joseph E. Brown

Lowndes County citizens petition to have Isaac Strickland detailed as a teacher in the 662 Georgia Militia District, October 31, 1864.

Lowndes County citizens petition to have Isaac Strickland detailed as a teacher in the 662 Georgia Militia District, October 31, 1864.

Lowndes County citizens petition to have Isaac Strickland detailed as a teacher in the 662 Georgia Militia District, October 31, 1864.

Lowndes County citizens petition to have Isaac Strickland detailed as a teacher in the 662 Georgia Militia District, October 31, 1864.

Mr. Wisenbaker & Others
Valdosta
Oct 31, 1864
Petition for detail of Isaac Strickland as School Teacher

Georgia
Lowndes County

The undersigned citizens of said county and supporters of the school in the 662 GM District respectfully petition that Isaac Strickland of said county be detailed to continue our school on the following grounds
1st The school numbers forty scholars and he has heretofore and is now the, if detailed, teacher and it is impractical to supply his place
2nd His constitution is delicate and health feeble by reason of weak health he was not able to render material service at Atlanta and returned home prostrate in strength and health.
3d He makes no charge for indigent children
4th His father is over seventy years old and has lost three sons in the military service and has two now in the army and it would be an aid to him in managing and conducting his farm that his only remaining son Isaac live with him while and carry in the said school
5th The granting of this application will confer a public benefit for if our schools are closed our children will grow up in ignorance
Respectfully Submitted

Wm. Wisenbaker
Thomas Harp
William Peterson
Wm Stanfield
M N B Outlaw MD
Edward Outlaw
Mrs. G. E. Golding
Micager Amerson
Mrs. Winy Howel
Mary Zeigler
Ana D. Clayton
Martha Clayton
Rama Howell
Mrs. E—-
Mrs. C. Carter
L. R. Clower
Virginia Brasseton?
A.C. & D. I. Jones
Elizabeth Jones
Martha Creach
Sarah Creach
Nancy Creach
Robert ?
Fredrick Hinley

During Reconstruction and afterwards, Isaac N. Strickland remained in Lowndes County. He signed the Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America on June 22, 1867.  In 1870, he was employing Isom Jordon, a “freedman” in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County, GA. In 1872,  Isaac Strickland was listed as a witness to support a claim by Abraham Leffler against the US government for property confiscated during the Civil War; Abraham Leffler was a former resident of the Ray’s Mill District of Berrien County.   Strickland’s enumeration in the 1880 Census of Lowndes County includes Mariah Jordon, a formerly enslaved African-American woman with whom he was living, and their children.

Notes on the Petitioners

William Wisenbaker (1816-1883) was a farmer and prominent citizen of Lowndes County. The 1860 census shows he was the “owner” of two enslaved people. His son, William H. Wisenbaker, served in the Valdosta Guards, Company D, 50th Georgia Infantry and died of typhoid fever in 1863.

Thomas Harp (1808-1892), a farmer in the 662 Georgia Militia District and husband of Mary McLeod, appeared on the 1864 Census for reorganization of the Georgia Militia. They had children of school age who might have attended the school taught by Isaac Strickland.

William R. Peterson (1812-1885), of Lowndes County, GA. Image source: Phil Ray

William R. Peterson (1812-1885), of Lowndes County, GA. Image source: Phil Ray

William Peterson – William R. Peterson (1812-1885) a farmer and “slave owner” in the 662 GMD and husband of Catherine McLeod, appeared on the 1864 Census for reorganization of the Georgia Militia. Their children were school age. The 1870 tax digest lists  two “Freedmen,” Abe Lamb and Lovless Peterson, employed by W.R. Peterson that year in the 662 GMD.

Dr. Meshack Napoleon Bonaparte Outlaw (1820-1895) was a “Physician Farmer” and “slave owner” with a young family in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County, GA.  Dr. Outlaw enslaved 17 African-American men, women and children who resided in three “slave houses” on his property.

Edward Outlaw (1825-) was a “Master Carriage maker,” unmarried, living in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County, GA. He was a brother of Dr. MNB Outlaw. In 1870, he was employing freedmen Harrison Flint, Anthy Jones, Samuel Shelton and Edgar Williams in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County, GA.

Colemna Outlaw Colding , wife of Captain John Badger Colding. Image source: Outlaw Geneaology

Colemna E. Colding (1835-1905), sister of Dr. MNB Outlaw and Edward Outlaw, and widow of  John B. Colding. He was a Captain of Company G, 60th Georgia Regiment, killed June 13, 1863 on the battlefield at the Second Battle of Winchester, VA; before the war, he was an attorney in Dooly County, GA, a Democrat and a strong supporter of Governor Joe Brown.  Colemna Colding never remarried and is buried at the Outlaw Family Cemetery, Vienna, GA

Micager Amerson – Micajah Amerson (1825- ), Wheelwright, living in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County, GA with his young family.

Mrs. Winy Howel – This may be Winnaford Howell (1835-), wife of George W. Howell, who in 1860 was residing in Tallokas, Brooks County, GA. Her husband was a blacksmith in the Valdosta Guards, Company D, 50th Georgia Regiment. In 1863 he was in Chimborazo military hospital with gonorrhea. He was detailed to Richmond as a blacksmith. He was hit in the right leg by a minnie ball at Sailors Creek on April 6, 1865. He was captured and sent to Lincoln Hospital, Washington, DC and released on Oath of Allegiance July 18, 1865.

Mary Zeigler, appears to be Mary A. B. Zeigler (1829-1904) or possibly her 16-year-old daughter Mary A. E. Zeigler (1848-1927). Mary A. B. Zeigler was the widow of Jacob Jefferson Zeigler (1831-1864), a planter and “slave owner” in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County.  Jacob J. Zeigler enslaved 28 African-American men, women and children who resided in five “slave houses” on his plantation. He enlisted August 15, 1863  in Company A, 20th Battalion Georgia Cavalry and served as a corporal. He was killed May 28, 1864 at the Battle of Haw’s Shop  leaving Mary with eight young children to raise. Mary A. B. Zeigler and Jacob J. Zeigler were grandparents of Jacob Fredrick Hinely who operated the Ray’s Mill Hotel in the early 1900’s. In 1870, Mary A. B. Zeigler was employing freedmen Fed Zeigler, Manuel Boston and Peter Boston in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County, GA.

Ana D. Clayton, appears to be Annah Zeigler Clayton (1838-1904), wife of Duncan Clayton (1829-1897). Confederate military service records confirm her husband served in Company G, 26th Georgia Infantry Regiment in late 1861 and early 1862. Albert Douglass, a colorful deserter from the Berrien Minute Men also joined the 26th Georgia Regiment, but it is not clear if their service overlapped. Duncan Clayton before the war was employed as an overseer of enslaved people. Annah Zeigler Clayton is buried at Old Lake Park Cemetery.

Martha Clayton (1827-), Martha Kennedy Clayton, wife of Jackson J. Clayton and sister-in-law of Duncan Clayton. Jackson J. Clayton served with the 10th Florida Regiment. Before the war he was occupied as a laborer in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County. Their children would have been of school age.

Joseph Lott Howell, Civil War photo

Joseph Lott Howell, Civil War photo

Rama Howell, or Remmie Farmer Howell (1847-1925), wife of Joseph Lott Howell (1835-1906) and sister of James M. Stanfill (1846-1864). Her husband, Joseph Lott Howell, and brother James both enlisted January 26, 1864 in Company A, 20th Battalion Georgia Cavalry where they were company mates of Jacob J. Zeigler. In the Battle of Haw’s Shop. May 28, 1864 Ziegler was killed and James M. Stanfill mortally wounded. Stanfill was sent to a Virginia hospital where his right leg was amputated; he died in the hospital June 29, 1864.  Joseph Lott Howell, however, spent most of his enlistment detailed on recruiting missions according to Confederate military service records.

Mrs. C. Carter

L. V. Clower  was Louisa Virginia Jones Clower (1842-1912).  She was a daughter of Berrien M. Jones and his first wife, SStan Jones. Prior to marriage, the 1860 census lists Louisa Virginia Jones as “slave owner” of 12 enslaved people ranging in age from 3 months to 60 years old; Her father’s estate in 1860 included 37 enslaved people. In 1862, She was married  to Dr. William P. Clower in Thomas County, GA.  Her husband was  appointed on January 18, 1862 as Regimental Surgeon for the 29th Georgia Regiment, which included the Berrien Minute Men. Surgeon Clower’s brother,  John T. Clower, would  serve as the doctor in Ray’s Mill (now Ray City, GA) from 1870 to 1887.

Virginia Brasseton?

A C & D I Jones.  Aaron L. C. Jones (1840-1917) and Daniel Inman Jones (1836-1891). Aaron L. C. Jones was a son of John Jones of Carroll County, GA. He enlisted in May of 1861 in Company F, 7th GA Infantry and went to Richmond with his unit. But after extended illness he was “discharged by reason of Surgeon’s certificate of disability” on September 12, 1861. He enlisted again May 5, 1862 in Company B, 56th Georgia Infantry. He was taken prisoner July 4, 1863 at the surrender of Vicksburg, MS. He swore an oath not to serve again in the Confederate States military and was released on July 8, 1863.  However, he broke that oath and returned to his unit. He was captured again on Dec 16, 1864 near Nashville TN and sent as a POW to Camp Douglas, Chicago, IL.  Daniel Inman Jones was a son of Berrien M. Jones and his first wife, Sophrona Inman Jones, pioneer settlers of Lowndes County, GA. By 1860 Daniel Inman Jones had his own farm in the 661 Georgia Militia District of Lowndes County where he was enumerated as a “slave owner” of 19 enslaved people. He enlisted March 4, 1862 in the Valdosta Guards, Company D, 50th Georgia Regiment. Confederate Military Service Records note that he was discharged June 12, 1862 by furnishing a substitute, George Plankinhorn, to serve in his place. The 1870 tax digest lists  31 “Freedmen” employed by D. I. Jones that year in the 662 GMD.

Elizabeth Jones (1848-1873) appears to be a daughter of Rebecca Perrill Cooper Jones (1810-1887) and Berrien M. Jones (1799-1854), pioneer settlers of Lowndes County, GA. She was a niece of William Brauner Cooper and of Francis Jones. The 1860 census shows Elizabeth in her widowed mother’s household; Her mother’s net worth being valued at $20,000 in real estate and $34,577 in personal estate. Her mother was then enumerated as “slave owner” of 37 enslaved people. Some time between 1864 and about 1868, Elizabeth Jones married William Lang Thomas. Her husband was a Confederate veteran, having served for about 8 months in 1864 before being furloughed sick; he served as a private in Company D, 4th Georgia Cavalry Regiment, along with regimental mates George Harris, James Harris, and Josiah Wood.

Martha Creach – Martha Creech (1810- after 1870), widow of Charles Pinckney Creech, was farming and raising her large family in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County, GA. Her son, James Bryan Creech (1832-1890) was serving in Company C, Hood’s Battalion (29th Georgia Cavalry). He later was a member of the Georgia Constitutional Convention of 1877, along with Ray’s Mill (now Ray City) resident Jonathan David Knight and Judge Augustin H. Hansell. Before the war, he was a merchant of Tallokas, Brooks County, GA.

Sarah Creach (1840-), daughter of Martha Creech, appeared in her parents’ household in the Census of 1850.

Nancy Creach, was probably Nancy Creech (1838-), daughter of Martha Creech, who in 1860 was still living in her widowed mother’s household. But possibly could have been Nancy J. Newsome Creech (1835-1919), daughter-in-law of Martha Creech and wife of James Bryan Creech.

Robert ?

Frederick Hinley – Frederick Hinely (1815-1886), a farmer and “slave owner” in the 662 GMD of Lowndes County, GA; enslaved 11 people. He was the husband of Ann Elizabeth Wisenbaker (1817-1888).  The 1870 tax digest records that  “Freedman” Monday Morell was employed by Frederick Hinely after the war. Ann Elzabeth and Frederick Hinley were grandparents of Jacob Fredrick Hinely who operated the Ray’s Mill Hotel in the early 1900’s.

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Seaborn Lastinger Shot for Desertion

March 20, 2021 at 12:18 am (Civil War, Uncategorized)
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A sad Berrien County scene was the execution of Seaborn Lastinger for desertion from the Confederate States Army.

Civil War deserter executed by firing squad.

Civil War deserter executed by firing squad.

Seaborn Lastinger was one of the early settlers of Old Berrien, arriving before 1830, before Berrien even was a county. He was  enumerated in the 1830 Census as a head of  household Lowndes County, GA. He was a brother of William Lastinger, who owned the Stoney Hill plantation and the Lastinger Mill at Milltown (now Lakeland), GA and who before the Civil War “was the largest landholder, the largest slaveholder, and the largest taxpayer in Berrien and Lowndes counties.“

Seaborn Lastinger was the husband of Elender Driggers Lastinger, and father of Nancy Lastinger, Mary Lastinger, Ellen Lastinger, Sarah Lastinger, William Lastinger, and Susan Lastinger. According to the history of the John Lastinger Family of America, he was a soldier in the Confederate States Army. During the Civil War, he left his unit without permission and came home to Berrien County.

Taking “French leave,” or going absent without leave, was not uncommon among Confederate soldiers (see J. D. Evans was Skulking and Hiding Out, Elbert J. Chapman Was A Victim of Military Discipline, Albert Douglass: Soldier Grey and Sailor Blue) Rewards were offered for deserters. Companies sent men to hunt them down. Throughout the war, the penalty for being absent without leave ranged widely. The penalty might be as lenient as amnesty, a stern lecture, extra duty, confinement to tent, or loss of rank. But some men were executed. Widows of men executed for desertion would later be denied a pension.

The execution of Seaborn Lastinger made an indelible impression on his  six-year-old niece, Nebraska Lastinger, daughter of William Lastinger.  In a letter written from Nashville, GA seventy years after the event she described the scene.  Her narrative suggests the family and perhaps she herself witnessed the execution.

Nebraska Lastinger wrote about the execution of her uncle Seaborn Lastinger during the Civil War.

Nebraska Lastinger wrote about the execution of her uncle Seaborn Lastinger during the Civil War.

“I will try to explain what Detail meant.  During the Civil War the soldiers would come home without furlow; they were called deserters.  The Details were a Company of men too old to serve in the army.  Their duty was to find deserters and send them back to the army.  For a deserter’s third offence he was to be shot by a squad of the details appointed by the higher officers.

Uncle Seaborn was shot at sunrise.  He was blindfolded standing on his knees by a large pine tree.  My father took it hard, and recorded it in his record this way: (Shot by those damned men called Details).”

The execution apparently occurred about 1863, but no official record of Seaborn’s military unit or service has been forthcoming.  What became of his family is not known.

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Captain Edwin B. Carroll and the Atlanta Campaign

September 7, 2020 at 12:09 am (Berrien Minute Men, Civil War, Uncategorized)
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Edwin B. Carroll, Captain of the Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th Georgia Regiment.

Edwin B. Carroll, Captain of the Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th Georgia Regiment.

Edwin B. Carroll

In the Civil War, E. B. Carroll served in the leadership of the Berrien Minute Men, one of four companies of Confederate infantry sent forth from Berrien County, GA.

After serving  on Confederate coastal artillery at Battery Lawton on the Savannah River the Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th Georgia Regiment,  finally ended their long detached duty in Savannah and went to rejoin the 29th Georgia Regiment at Dalton, GA. The 29th Regiment was to be part of the Confederate forces arrayed northwest of Atlanta in the futile attempt to block Sherman’s advance on the city.  By this time the ranks of the 29th Georgia regiment had been decimated by casualties and disease.   The 29th Regiment “in September, 1863, had been consolidated with the 30th Regiment. The unit participated in the difficult campaigns of the Army of Tennessee at Chickamauga, endured Hood’s winter operations in Tennessee, and fought at Bentonville. In December, 1863, the  combined 29th/30th totaled only 341 men and 195 arms,” according to battle unit details provided by the National Park Service.

The Berrien Minute Men departed Savannah April 26, 1864 by train at the depot of the Central of Georgia Rail Road. (The building now serves as the Savannah Visitors Center). Col. Anderson saw the men off

Tuesday, 26th April… at 4 1/2 repaired to the CRR Depot to see the Lawton Batty Co’s go off – They parted with me with every demonstration of regard – Many of the men coming up & shaking hands with me.”

Four days later, the 54th GA Regiment was dispatched to Dalton GA to join the Confederate defensive positions against Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign.  Anderson noted in his Journal:

Saturday, April 30, 1864
The 54th Regt, Col Way left this morning en route for Dalton. I understand they left many stragglers behind.

Apparently by June of 1864  Captain Carroll was present for at least part of the Battle of Marietta.  By this time it seems an exaggeration to call the 29th Georgia a regiment.  The unit was assigned to General Claudius Wilson’s, C.H. Stevens’, and Henry Rootes Jackson‘s Brigade in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, led at that time by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Henry R. Jackson in 1860 had attended the arrival of the first train to reach Valdosta, GA.

Sherman first found Johnston’s army entrenched in the Marietta area on June 9, 1864. The Confederate’s had established defensive lines along Brushy, Pine, and Lost Mountains. Sherman extended his forces beyond the Confederate lines, causing a partial Rebel withdrawal to another line of positions.

Harpers Weekly illustration - Sherman's view of Kennesaw Mountain from Pine Mountain, from a sketch drawn about June 15, 1864. In the distance is a view of Marietta. Between the two mountains the smoke ascends from three Federal encampments, belonging to the armies of the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the Tennessee. The Confederates under General Johnston hold a strong position on Kennesaw Mountain.

Harpers Weekly illustration – Sherman’s view of Kennesaw Mountain from Pine Mountain, from a sketch drawn about June 15, 1864. In the distance is a view of Marietta. Between the two mountains the smoke ascends from three Federal encampments, belonging to the armies of the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the Tennessee. The Confederates under General Johnston hold a strong position on Kennesaw Mountain.

By June 15 1864, Sherman’s army was occupying the heights on Pine Mountain, Lost Mountain and Brushy Mountain. On that day H.L.G. Whitaker, Thomas County Volunteers, Company I, 29th GA Regiment wrote home telling of the death of his friend Chesley A. Payne. Payne was a private in Company B, Ochlockonee Light Infantry, 29th GA Regiment.

“Dear beloved ones, I will say to you that my dear friend C. A. P. [Chesley A. Payne] was cild [killed] on the 15 of June. Robert Reid was standing rite by him syd of a tree. Dear friends it is a mistake about his giting cild [killed] chargin of a battry, nothing more than a line of battle. So I cant tell you eny thing more about him.”

On the Federal line Pvt Charles T. Develling, 17th Ohio Regiment recorded the day’s of skirmishing.

June 17th, we moved to front line. Companies D. and H. skirmished all night. We built breastworks, and rebels attacked us but were repulsed. June 18th, Companies C. and F. charged rebel pickets capturing 4 and driving the rest into their breastworks, fighting nearly 2 hours without support, when our brigade came up and fought till dark. Company C had 1 killed and 2 wounded. J

On Saturday, June 18, 1864 the Confederate newspaper dispatches reported:

Three Miles West of Marietta, June 18 – The enemy has moved a large number of his forces on our left. Cannonading and musketry are constant, amounting almost to an engagement. The rains continue to render the roads unfit for military operations. The indications are that our left and centre will be attacked. The army is in splendid spirits and ready for the attack. A deserter came in this morning drunk. But few casualties yesterday on our side…

June 19. Rain has been falling heavily and incessantly the greater part of last night and all this morning. – Columbus Times, 6/20/1864

Pvt Charles T. Develling, 17th Ohio Regiment continued in his journal:

June 19th, daylight revealed the fact that the rebels had retreated [Johnston had withdrawn the Confederate forces to an arc-shaped position centered on Kennesaw Mountain.] We pursued them, day spent in skirmishing; very heavy artillery firing from our batteries. Night found us in front of Kenesaw Mountain fronting east, skirmishing with the rebels, and fortifying with dispatch. We advanced to within about 700 yards of the rebel’s works, and kept their artillery silent with musketry. Threw up a temporary fort at night for our artillery.

June 20th, our skirmish line, is within 15 or 20 yards of the rebels. We have three lines of works. Heavy skirmishing all along the line. Our artillery gave the rebels a terrific shelling this evening.

June 21st, the rebels got their artillery in position or the mountain and began shelling our camps, immediately our batteries opened and there was one of the grandest artillery duels of the war. Heavy skirmishing in our front just before night; our men held their ground.

"Kennesaw's Bombardment, 64", sketch of Union artillery in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, by Alfred Waud,

“Kennesaw’s Bombardment, 64”, sketch of Union artillery in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, by Alfred Waud,

On the Confederate side of the line, on June 21st and 22nd John W. Hagan, of the Berrien Minute Men, wrote battlefield letters to his wife, Amanda Roberts Hagan, in which he refers to Captain Edwin B. Carroll.

Letters of John W. Hagan:

In Line of Battle near Marietta, Ga
June 21st 1864

My Dear Wife I will drop you a few lines which leaves Ezekiel & myself in good health. James was wounded & sent to Hospital yesterday. He wounded in the left thygh. It was a spent ball & made only a flesh wound after the ball was cut out and he was all right. He stood it allright. I think he will get a furlough & he will also write to you when he gets to Hospital. We had a fight day before yesterday & yesterday on the 19th we had a close time & lost a grate many in killed & wounded & missing. The 29th [GA Regiment] charged the Yankees & drove them back near 1/2 mile or further. I cannot give a list of the killed & wounded in the fight. In Capt Carrells [Edwin B. Carroll] there was only one killed dead & several wounded. Lt J. M. Roberts [Jasper M. Roberts] was killed dead in the charge & Sergt. J. L. Roberts [James W. Roberts] of our company was killed dead & Corpl Lindsey wounded. Capt Knight is in command of the Regt. Capt. Knight & Capt Carrell is all there is in the Regt. The companies is all in commanded by Lieuts & Sergts. I have been in command of our company 3 days. Lieut Tomlinson [Jonas Tomlinson] stays along but pretends to be sick so he can not go in a fight but so long as I keep the right side up Co. “K” will be all right. The most of the boys have lost confidence in Lt Tomlinson. As a genearl thing our Regt have behaved well. If the casualties of the Regt is got up before I send this off I will give you the number but I will not have time to give the names. You must not be uneasey about James for he is all right now. Ezekiel stands up well & have killed one Yankee. I do not know as I have killed a Yankee but I have been shooting among them. You must not be uneasy about me and Ezekiel for we have our chances to take the same as others & if we fall remember we fell in a noble cause & be content that we was so lotted to die, but we hope to come out all right. Ezekiel hasent bin hit atal & I have bin hit twice but it was with spent balls & did not hurt me much. I was sory to hear of Thomas Cliffords getting killed for he was a gallant soldier & a noble man. I havent time to write much but if we can find out how many we lost in the 19th & 20th I will give a statement below. Ezekiel has just received yours of the 15th & this must do for and answer as we havent time to write now & we do not know when we will have a quiet time. You speak of rain. I never was in so much rain. it rains incisently. Our clothing & blankets havent been dry in Sevearl days & the roads is all most so we can not travel atal. I will closw & write again when I can get a chance. You must write often. Ezekiel sends his love to you all. Tel Mr. and Mrs. Giddins that Isbin is all right. Nothing more. I am as ever yours
affectsionatly
J. W. H.

P.S. as to Co. G being naked that is not so. All have got there cloths that would carry them. Some threw away there cloths but all have cloths & shoes yet. E.W. & Is doesn’t threw thayen away & have plenty. P.S. since writing the above another man of Co. G. is wounded.

♦

In Line of Battle near Marietta, Ga 

June 22, 1864

My Dear Wife, As I have and opportertunity of writing I will write you a few lines this morning. I wrote to you yeserday but I was in a grate hurry & could not give you the casualities of the Regt. & I can not yet give you the names but I will give you the number killed wounded & missing in the Regt. up to yesterday 6 oclock P.M. we had 83 men killed wounded & missing & only 7 but what was killed or wounded. This is only the causalties since the 14th of this month & what it was in May I do not know. I do not beleave any of Co. “G” have writen to Jaspers [Jasper M. Roberts] mother about his death & if you get this before She hears the correct reports you can tell her he was in the fight of the 19th & was killed dead in a charge he was gallantly leading & chering his men on to battle and was successfull in driving back the Yankees. He was taken off the battle field & was burried as well as the nature of the case would permit. Our Regt suffered a grate deal on the 19th & some on the 20th. I was in the hotest of this fight & it seemes that thousand of balls whisled near my head, but I was protected. Heavy fighting is now & have been going on for some time on our right & left & I beleave the bloodiest battle of the war will come off in a short time & I feel confident that when the yankees pick in to us right we will give them a whiping, but Gen Johnston dos not intend to make the attack on them.
Amanda, I want you to go & see John C. Clements & find out when he is coming to camps & I want you to sen me some butter by John in a bucket or gord or jar. You can not send much for John can not get much from the R. Road to our camps. You must not send me the book I wrote for some time ago. I can not take care of anything in camps now. You must be shure to go & see cosin Sarah Roberts & tel her about Jasper. I would write to her but I have a bad chance to write on my knee. This leaves Ezekiel & myself in good health & hope you and family are the same
I am as ever your aff husband
J. W. Hagan

P. S. if any of the old citizens from that settlement comes out here, you can send me some butter and a bottle or two of syrup by them. Parson Homer came out some time ago & brought Co. G a nice lot of provissions &c.

In the evening of the 22nd, on the Federal side of the line, Pvt Charles T. Develling, 17th Ohio Regiment wrote in his journal.

June 22nd, the rebels gave us a severe shelling this afternoon, from five different points. Our artillery replied promptly and with effect. Shortly after dark we moved to the right and into front line, already fortified, in an open field, in the hottest hole we have yet found, as regards both the sun and fire from the rebels.

General Sherman's Campaign - The Rebel Charge on the Right, Near Marietta, GA, June 22, 1864. Harpers Weekly illustration of the Battle of Kolb's Farm, four miles west of Marietta, June 22, 1864. On the Federal line, General Schofield held the extreme right; on his left, General Hooker commanded the Marietta Road; General Howard held the center; and Palmer and McPherson extended the Federal line to Brush Mountain, on the railroad. Nearly all day the rebels engaged Howard, to divert attention from the right, where they were massing troops on the Marietta Road against Hooker. A furious attack was made by the Rebels at this point at five P.M.

General Sherman’s Campaign – The Rebel Charge on the Right, Near Marietta, GA, June 22, 1864. Harpers Weekly illustration of the Battle of Kolb’s Farm, four miles west of Marietta, June 22, 1864. On the Federal line, General Schofield held the extreme right; on his left, General Hooker commanded the Marietta Road; General Howard held the center; and Palmer and McPherson extended the Federal line to Brush Mountain, on the railroad. Nearly all day the rebels engaged Howard, to divert attention from the right, where they were massing troops on the Marietta Road against Hooker. A furious attack was made by the Rebels at this point at five P.M.

Southern newspapers claimed the fighting on June 27th as a victory for the South,  reporting that Cleburne’s Division and Cheatham’s division had killed 750 federal troops along the front and inflicted another 750 casualties in the Federal lines. General Hardee’s Corps and General Loring’s corps were credited with inflicting nearly 8,000 casualties. “Five hundred ambulances were counted from the summit of Kennesaw Mountain to Big Shanty.” – Daily Chattanooga Rebel, June 30,1864

On June 28th, John W. Hagan wrote  Amanda of more casualties in the Berrien Minute Men

I haven’t any news to write you that would interest you much. There hasent been much fighting neather on the right or left today & we beleave the Yankees are trying to flank us again. We have had a hard time & have lost about 100 killed wounded & missing. We had our Lieut of Co. “B” killed yesterday. Liut. Ballard of Co. “C” wounded and R. Bradford [Richard Bradford] of Co. “G” wounded & one leg cut off. I hope times will change soon &c. I hear today James had got a furlough for 30 days & was gone home. I hope it is true & I want you to send me a box of something the first chance you get. Send me some butter & a bottle of syrup & some bisket if you see a chance to get them direct through. Also send us some apples if you can get any in the settlement. John Clemants or James Matthis might bring it. Express it to Atlanta & then ship it to Marietta in care of the Thomas County Releaf Society. I think old Lowndes & Berrien is not very patriotic or they would dispach some man from that section with something for the soldiers who are fighting for them daley. Many things might be sent us & some one sent with it. Thomas County has its society out here & do a great deal for the sick & wounded & many boxes are shiped through them to fighting troops…

From the Front
Further Particulars of Monday’s Fight
Marietta, [Wednesday], June 29th [1864] –Unusual quiet prevails along the lines to-day, the enemy being permitted to bury his fast putrifying dead…

Following the retreat from Kennesaw Mountain, the Berrien Minute Men were in the line of battle at Marietta, GA on July 4, 1864. After dark, the Confederate forces withdrew to take up a new defensive line on the the Chattahoochee River. In a letter to his wife, John William Hagan  wrote about the Confederate retreat to the Chattahoochee and his confidence in the defensive works of General Joseph E. Johnston’s River Line and the Shoupades.   These earthwork fortifications along the north bank of the Chattahoochee, some of the most elaborate field fortifications of the Civil War, were constructed under the direction of Artillery Commander, Brig. General Francis A. Shoup.

In the Battle of Atlanta, Edwin B. Carroll was captured July 22, 1864 near Decatur, GA along with Captain John D. Knight, 2nd Lieutenant John L. Hall, Jonas Tomlinson and others of the 29th Georgia Regiment.

In the Berrien Minute Men Company G, Sgt William Anderson, 2nd Lieutenant Simeon A. Griffin, 2nd Lieutenant John L. Hall, Captain Jonathan D. Knight were captured. James A. Crawford was mortally wounded. Levi J. Knight, Jr. was wounded through the right lung but recovered. Robert H. Goodman was killed.  In the Berrien Minute Men Company K, Wyley F. Carroll, James M. Davis, James D. Pounds, William S. Sirmans, and Jonas Tomlinson were captured.  John W. Hagan was reported dead, but was captured and sent to Camp Chase.

In the Berrien Light Infantry, Company E, 54th Georgia James M. Baskin was wounded in the hip; he spent the rest of the war as a POW in a U.S. Army hospital.

In a letter written from camp near Atlanta, H.L.G. Whitaker reported Robert Reid, Ocklocknee Light Infantry, Company B, 29th GA Regiment was among those killed on July 22.  In the Ocklocknee Light Infantry David W. Alderman, John L. Jordan, Thomas J. McKinnon, P. T. Moore were wounded; Mathew P. Braswell and Joseph Newman were captured.

Among the Thomasville Guards, Company F, 29th GA Infantry the wounded were Stephen T. Carroll, Marshall S. Cummings, Thomas S. Dekle, Walter L. Joiner. Private Green W. Stansell and Sgt D. W. McIntosh were killed; Ordinance Sgt R. A. Hayes was mortally wounded. John R. Collins was missing in action,

In the Alapaha Guards, Company H, 29th GA Infantry, Joseph Jerger was wounded and captured. In the Georgia Foresters, Company A, 29th GA, H. W. Brown and 1st Corporal Furnifull George were captured. Richard F. Wesberry shot in the leg, was sent to Ocmulgee hospital where his leg was amputated. In the Thomas County Volunteers, Company I, M. Collins, Alexander Peacock were wounded; Captain Robert Thomas Johnson and Ransom C. Wheeler wounded and captured. Thomas Mitchell Willbanks was wounded in the leg, necessitating amputation.

For Captain E. B. Carroll the fighting was over. A prisoner of war, he was put on the long journey to a northern prison camp.

On September 17, 1864 Captain E. B. Carroll was being held prisoner near Jonesboro, GA.  A few days later  on August 31 – September 1, 1864 remnants of the 29th Georgia Regiment were engaged  in the Battle of Jonesboro.  Apparently Captain Carroll’s kid brother, David Thompson Carroll, had joined the Berrien Minute Men by this time. Seventeen-year-old David T. Carroll had left school in the spring of 1862 and traveled to St. Marks, FL to enlist with the 5th Florida Infantry, but after 2 1/2 months of service had been discharged with a hernia and “epileptic convulsions.” Although the official service records of the Confederate States Army do not document that he re-enlisted,  both Edwin B. Carroll and William H. Lastinger later reported that David T. Carroll was a soldier of the Berrien Minute Men and that he was among the  men killed in the Battle of Jonesboro.  Hundreds of Confederate dead, including men from the Berrien Minute Men and probably David T. Carroll,  were buried in unmarked graves at  Jonesboro in the yard of the train depot which is now Patrick Cleburne Cemetery.

In 1890 Edwin B. Carroll would return to the Battlefield at Jonesboro where he found rusting weapons still lying about the abandoned earthworks.

After his capture, Edwin B. Carroll and other Confederate prisoners were transported to the Louisville Military Prison at Louisville, KY then to the U. S. Military Prison at Johnson’s Island.

Prisoners were transported to Sandusky, OH and were conveyed by steam tugs across an arm of Lake Erie three miles to Johnson’s Island. Johnson’s Island contains about one hundred acres, twenty of which were enclosed in a stockade…Within this enclosure were fifteen buildings – one hospital, two mess halls, and twelve barracks for the prisoners. The stockade was rectangular, and there was a block-house in each corner and in front of the principal street…The guards… had five block houses with several upper stories pierced for rifles and the ground floors filled with artillery. Moreover, outside the pen there were enclosed earth-works mounting many heavy guns. and the gunboat Michigan with sixteen guns lay within a quarter of a mile.”

Despite the presence of the prison fortress, Johnson’s Island continued to be the destination of organized boat excursions from nearby towns, which brought picnickers to the island and a brass band for entertainment.

Sixty-two of the Confederates captured at Atlanta on July 22nd entered the Johnson’s Island prison population on August 1, 1864.  The indignant prisoners were searched before being taken into the prison.

 

Sketch of U. S. Military Prison at Johnson's Island, Lake Erie.

Sketch of U. S. Military Prison at Johnson’s Island, Lake Erie.

Arriving in the heat of summer, the men had the unfortunate experience of dealing with the bedbugs that infested the camp.

Any description of Johnson’s Island which contains no mention of bedbugs would be very incomplete. The barracks were cieled, and were several years old. During the cool weather the bugs did not trouble us much, but towards the latter part of May they became terrible. My bunk was papered with Harper’s Weekly, and if at at any time I struck the walls with any object, a red spot would appear as large as the part of the object striking the wall. We left the barracks and slept in the streets…When I get my logarithmic tables and try to calculate coolly and dispassionately the quantity of them, I am disposed to put them at one hundred bushels, but when I think of those terrible night attacks, I can’t see how there could have been less than eighty millions of bushels.

Men of the 29th Georgia Infantry Regiment already at Johnson’s Island included Lieut. Thomas F. Hooper, Berry Infantry.

Hooper had been captured June 19, 1864 at Marietta, GA. Details of Hooper’s capture were documented when a letter addressed to him reached the Berry Infantry days after he became a prisoner of war.  The letter, addressed to Lieut Thomas F. Hooper, 29th Reg Ga Vol, Stevens Brigade, Walkers Division, Dalton, Georgia, was initially marked to be forwarded to the Army of Tennessee Hospital in Griffin, Georgia. But when it was discovered that the addressee had been captured, it was forwarded a second time back to Okolona, MS with ‘for’d 10’ added on the envelope for the forwarding fee. Lieutenant  Thomas J. Perry, added a lengthy notation on the back of the envelope.

“Marietta, Ga June 22, 1864 The Lt was captured on the 19th inst out on skirmish. He mistook the enemy for our folks and walked right up to them and did not discover the mistake until it was too late. As soon as they saw him, they motioned him to come to them and professed to be our men. I suppose Capt [John D.] Cameron has written you and sent Andrus on home. The Lt was well when captured. Thos J. Perry.”

Thomas F. Hooper, Berry Infantry, 29th Georgia Infantry Regiment

Thomas F. Hooper, Berry Infantry, 29th Georgia Infantry Regiment

 

Thomas J. Perry writes about capture of Thomas F. Hooper near Marietta, GA on June 19, 1964

Thomas J. Perry writes about capture of Thomas F. Hooper near Marietta, GA on June 19, 1964

On the night of September 24, 1864 a tornado struck the Johnson’s Island prison, destroying half the buildings, ripping roofs off three of the barracks and one wing of the hospital, and flattening a third of the fence.  But in the midst of the gale the Federal guards maintained a picket to prevent any escape. One of the mess halls was wracked and four large trees were blown down in the prison yard. Ten prisoners were injured, only one severely.  The stockade fence was repaired by September 29; it was weeks before the camp was sound again.

As the war dragged on, outrage grew both sides over the treatment of prisoners of war.  Following newspaper reports of the mistreatment of U.S. Army soldiers in Confederate prisons, the U.S. Commissary General of Prisons ordered that Confederate prisoners of war held at Johnson’s Island and other prisons “be strictly limited to the rations of the Confederate army.” Furthermore, the previous practice of allowing prisoners to purchase food from vendors on the prison grounds was disallowed. “On October 10, Hoffman ordered that the sutlers should be limited to the sale of paper, tobacco, stamps, pipes, matches,
combs, soap, tooth brushes, hair brushes, scissors, thread, needles, towels, and pocket mirrors.”

A prisoner at Johnson’s Island wrote,

“Our rations were six ounces of pork, thirteen of loaf bread and a small allowance of beans or hominy – about one-half the rations issued to the Federal troops. The pork rarely had enough grease in it to fry itself, and the bread was often watered to give it the requisite weight. Such rations would keep soul and body together, but when they were not supplemented with something else, life was a slow torture. …the prisoners were not to buy anything [to eat]. The suffering was very great. Men watched rat holes during those long, cold winter nights in hopes of securing a rat for breakfast. Some made it a regular practice to fish in slop barrels for small crumbs of bread, and I have had one man to point out to me the barrel in which he generally found his “bonanza” crumb. If a dog ever came into the pen he was sure to be killed and eaten immediately.” 

The prisoners provided all kinds of services for themselves; There were cooks, tailors, shoe-makers, chair-makers, washer-men, bankers and bill-brokers, preachers, jewelers, and fiddle-makers.

We had schools of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Theology, Mathematics, English, Instrumental Music, Vocal Music, and a dancing school. The old “stag-dance” began every day except Sunday at 9 a.m., and the shuffling of the feet would be heard all day long till 9 p.m.”

“Tailoring was well done at reasonable rates. Our shoe-makers, strange to say were reliable and charged very moderate prices for their mending. The chair-makers made very neat and comfortable chairs, and bottomed them with leather strings cut out of old shoes and boots. Our washer-man charged only three cents a piece for ordinary garments, and five cents for linen-bosomed shirts, starched and ironed. Our bankers and bill-brokers were always ready to exchange gold and silver for green-backs, and even for Confederate money till Lee’s surrender.”

We had also a “blockade” distillery which made and sold an inferior article of corn whiskey at five dollars, in green-backs, per quart. It was a very easy matter to get the corn meal; but I never could imagine how they could conceal the mash-tubs and the still, so as to escape detection on the part of the Federal officers who inspected the prison very thoroughly two or three times each week.

John Lafayette Girardeau, a slave owner and proponent of white supremacist theology, was famous for his ministry to enslaved people.

John Lafayette Girardeau, a slave owner and proponent of white supremacist theology, was famous for his ministry to enslaved people.

We had many preachers, too. Dr. Girardeau, of South Carolina, one of the ablest preachers in the South preached for us nearly every day. Our little Yankee chaplain was so far surpassed by the Rebs that he rarely showed his face.

Major George McKnight, under the nom de plume of “Asa Hartz,” wrote:

There are representatives here of every orthodox branch of Christianity, and religious services are held daily.

The prisoners on Johnson’s Island sent to the American Bible Society $20, as a token of their appreciation for the supply of the Scriptures to the prison.

We have a first-class theater in full blast, a minstrel band, and a debating society. The outdoor exercises consist of leap-frog, bull-pen, town-ball, base-ball, foot-ball, snow-ball, bat-ball, and ball. The indoor games comprise chess, backgammon, draughts, and every game of cards known to Hoyle, or to his illustrious predecessor, “the gentleman in black.”

There was a Masonic Prison Association, Capt. Joseph J. Davis, President, which sought to provide fresh fruit and other food items to sick prisoners in the prison hospital. The hospital was staffed by one surgeon, one hospital steward, three cooks, and seven prisoner nurses. Medical and surgical treatment was principally provided by Confederate surgeons.

On November 9, 1864, Sandusky bay froze over. In early December the prison got a blanket of snow.  Monday, the 12th of December was the coldest day of the year, and perhaps one of the strangest at Johnson’s Island Prison. That day one of the POW officers gave birth to a “bouncing boy”; the woman and child were paroled from the prison. That night a group of prisoners rushed the fence, perhaps thinking they could make their escape over the ice. The guards managed to push them back; the next day four corpses were placed in the prison dead-house. Ohio newspapers reported Lt. John B. Bowles, son of the President of the Louisville Bank, was among the dead.

The cemetery at Johnson’s Island was at the extreme northern tip of the island, about a half mile from the prison.

Digging graves in the island’s soft loam soil was not difficult. However, between 4 feet and 5 feet down was solid bedrock. It was officially reported that the graves were “dug as deep as the stone will admit; not as deep as desirable under the circumstances, but sufficient for all sanitary reasons.” The graves were marked with wooden headboards. – Federal Stewardship of Confederate Dead

 

Major McKnight described funerals at the prison:

Well! it is a simple ceremony. God help us! The “exchanged” is placed on a small wagon drawn by one horse, his friends form a line in the rear, and the procession moves; passing through the gate, it winds slowly round the prison walls to a little grove north of the inclosure; “exchanged” is taken out of the wagon and lowered into the earth – a prayer, and exhortation, a spade, a head-board, a mound of fresh sod, and the friends return to prison again, and that’s all of it. Our friend is “exchanged,” a grave attests the fact to mortal eyes, and one of God’s angels has recorded the “exchange in the book above. Time and the elements will soon smooth down the little hillock which marks his lonely bed, but invisible friends will hover round it till the dawn of the great day, when all the armies shall be marshaled into line again, when the wars of time shall cease, and the great eternity of peace shall commence.

Two prisoners of Johnson’s Island were released  by order of President Abraham Lincoln, issued on December 10, 1864. The Tennessee men were released after their wives appealed to the President, one pleading her husband’s case on the basis that he was a religious man.

When the President ordered the release of the prisoners, he said to this lady: “You say your husband is a religious man; tell him when you meet him that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, but that, in my opinion, the religion that sets men to rebel and fight against their Government because, as they think, that Government does not sufficiently help some men to eat their bread in the sweat of other men’s faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven.”

Berrien Minute Men Second Lieutenants James A. Knight and Levi J. Knight, Jr. arrived at the prison on December 20, 1864; They were captured at Franklin, TN on December 16.

Col. William D. Mitchell, 29th Georgia Regiment. Image Source: Tim Burgess

Col. William D. Mitchell, 29th Georgia Regiment. Image Source: Tim Burgess https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26944690/william-dickey-mitchell

December 22, 1864 was snowy, windy and bitter cold at Johnson’s Island. New arrivals at the prison on that day included Col. William D. Mitchell, 29th, GA Regiment; Lacy E. Lastinger; 1st Lieutenant Thomas W. Ballard; Captain Robert Thomas Johnson, Company I, 29th Regiment,  arrived at the prison.  Lastinger, 1st Lieutenant from Berrien Minute Men, Company K, 29th GA Regiment and Ballard, Company C, 29th GA  had been captured December 16, 1864 at Nashville, TN.   Other arriving prisoners from the 29th GA Regiment included 2nd Lieutenant Walter L. Joiner, Company F.

Edwin B. Carroll and the other prisoners passed Christmas and New Years Day on Johnson’s Island with little to mark the occasion.  By February 1865, Confederate POWs at Johnson’s Island were being exchanged for the release of Federal POW’s imprisoned in the South.

On March 29, Major Lemuel D. Hatch wrote from Johnson’s Island,

For several months we suffered here very much for something to eat, but all restrictions have now been taken off the sutler and we are  living well… The extreme cold of last winter and the changeableness of the climate has been a severe shock to many of our men. I notice a great deal of sickness especially among the Prisoners captured at Nashville. Nearly all of them have suffered with rheumatism or pneumonia since their arrival.

The end of the war came with Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865 and, for Georgians, the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederate Army to General William T. Sherman at the Bennett Place, April 26, 1865.

The surrender of Genl. Joe Johnston near Greensboro N.C., April 26th 1865 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pga.09915

The surrender of Genl. Joe Johnston near Greensboro N.C., April 26th 1865
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pga.09915

After spending almost a year in the Johnson’s Island prison, Edwin B. Carroll was released in June 1865.

To leave Johnson’s Island a prisoner was required to take an Oath of Allegiance to the United States, as by accepting Confederate citizenship they had renounced their citizenship in the United States. The Confederate prisoners called taking the oath “swallowing the eagle,” and men who swore allegiance to the United States were called “razorbacks,”  because, like a straight-edged razor, they were considered spineless.

The prisoner had to first apply to take the Oath. He was then segregated from the prison population and assigned to a separate prison block. This was done for the safety of those taking the Oath as they were now repudiating their loyalty to the Confederacy. Until 1865, only a small number of prisoners took the Oath because of their fierce devotion and loyalty to the cause for which they were fighting. However, in the Spring of 1865, many prisoners did take the Oath, feeling the cause for which they fought so hard was dead. The following letter written by prisoner Tom Wallace shows that “swallowing the eagle” (taking the oath) was not done without a great deal of soul searching.  http://johnsonsisland.org/history-pows/civil-war-era/letters-to-and-from-confederate-prisoners/

Tom Wallace, 2nd Lieutenant in the 6th Kentucky Regiment wrote from Johnson’s Island in 1865 about taking the Oath of Allegiance:

My dear mother,
Perhaps you may be surprised when I tell you that I have made application for the “amnesty oath”. I think that most all of my comrades have or will do as I have. I don’t think that I have done wrong, I had no idea of taking the oath until I heard of the surrender of Johnston and then I thought it worse than foolish to wait any longer. The cause that I have espoused for four years and have been as true to, in thought and action, as man could be is now undoubtedly dead; consequently I think the best thing I can do is to become a quiet citizen of the United States. I will probably be released from prison sometime this month

Edwin B. Carroll swore the Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America on June 14, 1865 at Depot Prisoners of War, Sandusky, OH. He was then described as 24 years old, dark complexion, dark hair, hazel eyes, 5’11”

When the War ended, and he returned home, he could find no employment but teaching, in which he has been engaged almost every year since… In October, 1865, he was married to Mrs. Julia E. Hayes, of Thomasville, Georgia.

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Edwin B. Carroll, Captain of the Berrien Minute Men

August 23, 2020 at 12:50 am (Berrien Minute Men, Civil War, Uncategorized)
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Edwin B. Carroll, Captain of the Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th Georgia Regiment.
Edwin B. Carroll became Captain of the Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th Georgia Regiment in December, 1862.

E. B. Carroll was born in Kenansville, North Carolina, on the 3rd of March, 1841. His parents [James and Elizabeth Carroll of Duplin Co., NC,] were both Baptists – his father an active deacon and his mother a consistent Christian woman. They came to Georgia when he was eight years old and settled at a place now known as [Lakeland, in preset day Lanier County.]  He was a cousin of Mary E. Carroll, who later married 1) William Washington Knight and 2) William J. Lamb. His brother, Daniel B. Carroll, donated land for the construction of the Milltown Baptist Church in 1857.

According to Wiregrass historian Folks Huxford, the Carrolls were among several families that moved to Berrien County, GA from their home community in Duplin County, N. C. “Among these families were those of William J. Lamb, James Carroll, Jesse Carroll, William Godfrey, Andrew J. Liles, William Best, James W. Dixon and others.  These all settled in or around the village then called Alapaha but now named Lakeland, Lanier County… John Bostick and family moved to what was then Lowndes County not long after.” 

Edwin B. Carroll ~ Early Life

The early years of his life, up to seventeen, were spent on the farm, sometimes attending school and at other times, tilling the ground. At that age his father sent him to Marshall College, in Griffin, Georgia, then conducted by Dr. Adiel Sherwood.

Adiel Sherwood, slave owner and outspoken Baptist advocate for slavery.
Adiel Sherwood, slave owner and outspoken Baptist advocate for slavery.

Sherwood, probably the most important spiritual influence in the founding of Mercer University, owned enslaved people and was an outspoken advocate for slavery in the southern states.  Sherwood and other Southern Baptists defended slavery as a biblical institution, and asserted that enslaved people in the south were better off than white northern farmers.  Sherwood claimed that enslaved people had plenty of free time to work for their own profit, and “not infrequently, by the privileges granted them, they are enabled to purchase their own freedom.“

He [Edwin B. Carroll] entered the preparatory department, but in the autumn was admitted into college proper. 

Reverend Jesse H. Campbell was a slave owner and volunteered as an "evangelist" in the Confederate States Army.
Reverend Jesse H. Campbell influenced Edwin B. Carroll to preach the gospel. Campbell was a slave owner and volunteered as an “evangelist” in the Confederate States Army.

When [Edwin B. Carroll] had finished his Freshman studies, he determined to gain a year. This he succeeded in doing, carrying on the course of both Sophomore and Junior classes at the same time. At the opening of the spring term of the Sophomore year, it was announced by the faculty that he was a regular member of the Junior class. He made this effort, not because his necessities forced him to it, but because he wished to do it and felt that he could. The year that he entered college, 1858, a revival wave swept over almost the entire country. In Griffin, there were numbers added to all the churches – to the Baptist Church, nearly one hundred – and he was among them. Dr. Sherwood, as pastor, of the church, baptized him. The night after his baptism, during an earnest prayer offered by Dr. Jesse H. Campbell, he felt impressed with a strong desire to preach the Gospel. The struggle between this desire and a sense of his own unfitness was fierce, and resulted in his putting the work away from him. To use his own language, he “fought against” this impression for fourteen years, and is now in the work because he feels he can not help it, and the cry of his soul is, “Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel!” In 1860, he entered the Junior class in Mercer University, and pursued studies there until May, 1861, when he returned home, and, though only twenty years old, joined a Regiment “for the War”, which was then just beginning.

On Sept. 8, 1860 Edwin B. Carroll was received into Church membership at Penfield Baptist Church by letter from the Baptist Church at Griffin, GA. Penfield was the old chapel of Mercer University.

At Mercer University, Edwin B. Carroll was a classmate of Owen Clinton Pope, who after the Civil War, would come to Milltown (now Lakeland), GA to teach at the Milltown Academy.

In the Confederate States Army

Edwin B Carroll served the Confederacy in the Berrien Minute Men, Company  C (later Company G), 29th Georgia Infantry Regiment. This was the original company of Berrien Minute Men, formed by Captain Levi J. Knight, even before the election of Lincoln. Company Rolls show Edwin B. Carroll was mustered into Confederate States service in Savannah, GA on August 1, 1861. Enlisting as a private, he rose through the ranks.

At Savannah, the campfires of the Berrien Minute Men were initially made at Causton’s Bluff, overlooking St. Augustine Creek and Whitmarsh Island. By August 20, 1861 the Berrien Minute Men were sent to Brunswick, GA with the 13th Georgia Regiment at Camp Semmes, Brunswick.   In due course, the Berrien Minute Men were placed in the 29th GA Regiment. On October 11, 1861 three companies of the 29th Regiment, including the Berrien Minute Men, were stationed on Sapelo Island. They were manning Sapelo Battery, an earthworks and gun emplacement on the south end of Sapelo Island defending Doboy Sound. The Civil War letters of  Private John Hagan described Battery Sapelo as armed with five cannons, the largest of which was a 160 pounder.

Sketch of Civil War Earthwork on Sapelo Island
Sketch of Civil War Earthwork on Sapelo Island

By November 1861 Edwin B. Carroll was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant of the Berrien Minute Men. Thomas S. Wylly was Captain.  Their coastal Georgia posts included Stations on Blackbeard Island; Camp Spalding on Sapelo Island; and Camp Security at Darien, GA.  By early 1862 The Berrien Minute Men,  having gotten “regulated” into the 29th Georgia Infantry Regiment , were sent to Camp Wilson, near Savannah.  On the night of February 21,  Captain Wylly’s Company of Berrien Minute Men were ordered from Camp Wilson to Fort Jackson to relieve the Savannah Republican Blues.  By March 7, 1862 “Captain Wylly’s Company” was on Smith’s Island at Battery Lawton supporting Fort Jackson, defending Savannah against incursions by the ships of the U. S. Navy. Most of Edwin B. Carroll’s Confederate service would be in the Savannah River batteries at Battery Lawton on Smith’s Island,

Colonel Edward Clifford Anderson (November 8, 1815 – January 6, 1883) was a naval officer in the United States Navy, Mayor of Savannah, Georgia and a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He commanded Fort James Jackson near Savannah before its capture in 1864. He was elected mayor of Savannah eight times, before and after the war, and on December 6, 1865, he became the first mayor to be elected after the war.
Colonel E. C. Anderson,  (November 8, 1815 – January 6, 1883) was a naval officer in the United States Navy, Mayor of Savannah, Georgia and a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He commanded Fort James Jackson near Savannah before its capture in 1864. He was elected mayor of Savannah eight times, before and after the war, and on December 6, 1865, he became the first mayor to be elected after the war.

At the reorganization of the regiment on May 7, 1862 Edwin B. Carroll was appointed 1st Lieutenant with the notation that he was “deficient in battery and artillery drill.”  In that same election of officers, May 1862, Levi J. Knight, Jr was elected Captain of  Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th GA Regiment following the resignation of Captain Thomas S. Wylly.

All the Savannah River Batteries, including Company G’s position on Smith’s Island were under the command of Col. Edward Clifford Anderson. A product of the U.S. Navy, Col. Anderson was a disciplinarian, critical of subordinates and superiors alike. Captain L. J. Knight, Jr., in particular, drew the censorious scrutiny of Col. Anderson.

Throughout May, June and July of 1862 Lieutenant Carroll, Captain Knight and Berrien Minute Men, Company G garrisoned Battery Lawton on Smith’s Island. In the summer time the soldiers’ daily routine at Battery Lawton, Fort Jackson and other Savannah River batteries under Anderson’s command began at 4:30 am and ended after sunset, approximately 8:30 pm. The conditions of summertime service on the mud island must have been among the worst in the Georgia coastal defenses. The annoyance of mosquitoes, sand flies, and fleas multiplied the discomfort. Captain George A Mercer, after visiting Smith’s Island on Sunday, June 22, 1862, wrote of the miserable experience.

[The] men, on Smith’s Island, are particularly uncomfortable; their tents are pitched on the muddy ground, beneath the blazing sky; not a dry spot of earth, not a shade tree is near; the tide frequently rises above the platforms of their tents, soaks their bedding and washes away all they have; they have positively been obliged to anchor their cooking utensils to prevent their being carried away. And yet these brave fellows must stay — and do stay cheerfully in this dreadful spot, where every comfort is denied them, and sickness and death must add their horrors to the scene…Indeed a sad necessity is imposed upon our troops; they must garrison spots where a white man can hardly live.

The Regimental Return for July 1862 shows Lieutenant Carroll at Camp Debtford, an encampment established by Col. Anderson near Causton’s Bluff to serve as a convalescent camp and respite for troops serving on the Advance River Batteries under his command. In August and September 1862, Lt. Carroll was present at Camp Anderson along with others of the 29th Georgia Regiment. Among Lt. Carroll’s more unpleasant duties, ordering coffins for deceased soldiers.

By October 1862 the Berrien Minute Men Company G were back at Lawton Battery on Smith’s Island, where they were again under the direct observation of Col. Edward C. Anderson. An animosity developed between Captain Knight and Col. Anderson.  Anderson saw Levi J. Knight as an incompetent officer, an irresponsible and demoralizing “evil example” to the men.  By December 1862, Levi J. Knight, Jr was relieved of command.  Knight was brought before an Officers Examining Board on December 4, 1862 and  was “suspended from rank and commission by order of General Beauregard.” Knight’s rank was reduced to private.

Captain Carroll

With Knight busted to private, Edwin B. Carroll was promoted to Captain of the Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th GA Regiment. Under Captain Carroll, Berrien Minute Men Company G remained on post on the Savannah River through the end of 1862. 

March 1, 1863 found the company at Camp Young, Savannah.

In March, deserters from Causton’s Bluff and Thunderbolt batteries at Savannah were communicated in Union newspapers as reporting that Confederate troops were on subsistence rations.

The daily rations of sesesh soldiers. A Hilton Head letter of the 27th says: We have received into our lines several deserters from rebel defences at Causton’s Bluff and Thunderbolt, who affirm that the daily rations of troops consist only of four ounces bacon and seven of cornmeal. Many of the rebel troops are falling sick and all are fearing illness. Deserters assert that only for the fact that they are kept on inside post duty the entire regiments to which they belong would desert. From what is deemed a source entirely trustworthy, I learn that all the women and children have been ordered out of Savannah. – They left the city on Monday and Tuesday. This measure is induced not more by fear of attack than by the inability of commanding General to subsist his troops while there are so many non-combatants to be fed. -Fall River Daily Evening News 01 Apr 1863

In April,1863 food shortages in Savannah drove profiteering and inflation. In the market for enslaved people profiteers were getting $1100 to $2200 per person. Conditions for white civilians worsened. An appalled Lieutenant George Anderson Mercer, Assistant Adjutant General, 1st Georgia Infantry, blamed immigrants, northern sympathizers, draft dodgers and especially Savannah’s Jews.

“A mad fever of speculation – a rabid thirst for wealth – appears to have seized those who are not in the service; a fearful, gambling, corrupt spirit is abroad which is sufficient to call down the denunciations of the Judge of the Universe; all “make haste to be rich,” and they are not innocent. These speculators have done, and are doing, us incalculable harm. They are depreciating our currency and starving the poor…Think of a suit of fatigue uniform clothes costing over $200 in Savannah, and of a Barrel of Whiskey selling for $1600…the sordid speculators, composed chiefly of German Jews, of Aliens, of Yankees, and of our own people who have bought substitutes [to take their place in military service]…The Jews, who nearly all claim foreign protection, and thus avoid service, are the worst people we have among us; their exemption from military duty, their natural avarice, and their want of principle in this contest, render them peculiarly obnoxious; they are all growing rich, while the brave soldier gets poorer and his family starve.

April 1863 newspapers reported food shortages, hoarding and profiteering in Savannah, GA (Lancaster Gazette [Enland], April 18, 1863)
April 1863 newspapers reported food shortages, hoarding and profiteering in Savannah, GA (Lancaster Gazette [England], April 18, 1863)

The Savannah Republican says: – The want of provisions in Savannah is becoming most important. The city authorities have requested the railways to refuse to carry provisions out of the town. This may do good as far as rice is concerned, but it is questioned whether there is anything else in Savannah. For the last few days it has been difficult for families to buy bacon, and many persons could not find Indian corn meal even in small quantities. The evil is that retailers of provisions have been forced to go or send up the country for supplies. They succeeded in buying small quantities, but their entry was stopped by government agents at the Gulf road. Even small parcels remain. Families require them.

♦

“By the summer of 1863, conditions in Savannah were horrendous. Scarlet fever, typhoid, and small pox ran rampant, and corpses piled in the streets. The Union blockade created a powder keg among the urban poor. Food ran low while enterprising merchants and blockade runners kept warehouses full to the brim.” – David T. Dixon

Eventually “bread riots” would erupt in Savannah and other southern cities.

Berrien Minute Men Drill on Coastal Artillery

On November 10, 1863, Edward C. Anderson reported a cold front moved through Savannah in the morning with ice and bitter cold winds out of the northeast. Monday, Nov 23, 1863 was a blustery day on the Savannah River, with cold winds from the north east. Col. Anderson visited Fort Lawton on Smith’s Island and “Drilled Carroll’s men [Berrien Minute Men, Company G] at the guns & fired shell from the 10 & 8 inch guns & blank cartridge from the latter only.” Morris’ company moved up from Proctor’s Point to join the Berrien Minute Men on Smith’s Island.

Civil War soldiers practice firing artillery cannon.
Civil War artillery drill.

With warmer weather and cloudy skies, on November 24, 1863 Col. Anderson ordered that the ordnance magazine at Battery Lawton be overhauled and the gun cartridges be arranged; he sent over all the ordnance men to assist with the work. The following morning, a dreary, rainy day, the men on the Savannah River batteries heard that the Confederate States Army had abandoned Lookout Mountain and was retreating before Sherman’s assault.

On December 18, Captain E. B. Carroll requested a leave of absence.

Lawton Battery
December 13th, 1863

Brig, Genl Jordan
Chief of Staff

General
I have the honor to apply through you to the General Comdg. for twenty (20) days leave of absence. I would not make the application for so long a time, could I do what I wish in a shorter period and I promise, if Savannah is attacked during my absence to return immediately. All the officers of the company are present & able for duty.
Very Respectfully
Your Obt Svt
E.B. Carroll
Capt. Co G. 29th Ga.

Captain Carroll got to spend his Christmas at home. He was absent with leave From December 19, 1863 to Jan 19, 1864. Around this time, late 1863 to early 1864, it appears the Berrien County Company E, 54th Georgia Regiment returned from South Carolina to man the Savannah River defenses along with the Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th Georgia Regiment.

A communique of December 23, 1863 from George Mercer informed the Savannah River Batteries that “the enemy were about to raise the siege of Charleston and concentrate everything on Savannah.” Col. Anderson ordered Major McMullen, commanding the garrison at Smith’s Island, to “burn off the marsh in front of Battery Lawton, which he neglected to do.”  Fortunately, the feared Christmas attack did not materialize.

The new year emerged raw and blustery with bitter cold in Savannah.  Days of heavy rains swelled the Savannah River until about January 8, 1864 Smith’s Island was overflowed and Battery Lawton flooded. During the first half of the year, Confederate engineers continued work on Battery Lawton; Like all of the Advance River Batteries around Savannah, it was being built by the labor of enslaved people. The ground was so soft that pilings had to be driven into the mudbanks to support gun platforms. In the late spring sand was hauled to Fort Jackson by train, dumped onto flatboats and ferried to Smith’s Island for the construction of earthworks for Battery Lawton. It was as if the Confederate States Army was attempting to build a sand castle on a mudbank to stand against the tide.

On Monday, April 4, 1864, Edward C. Anderson reported the tides were the highest he had seen in the Savannah River in 30 years, “overflowing Smith’s Island, drowning its magazine and shell house.” On April 6, 1864, Col. Anderson wrote,

“The high tides of last night again flooded Lawton Battery, depositing within its enclosure a mass of rubbish & trash which the hot sun will soon germinate into miasma. The officers and men have applied to be removed up to the city…Thursday, April 7, The flood tide of last night again overflowed Smith’s Island. On visiting it today I found everything afloat & the evidence of the tides having risen fourteen inches into the mens quarters. Ordered them to move up to the City and telegraphed Suley to prepare for their reception.“

CSS Ida ferried the Berrien Minute Men from Smith's Island to Savannah.
CSS Ida ferried the Berrien Minute Men from Smith’s Island to Savannah.

The two companies from Lawton Battery loaded onto the steamer Ida and were ferried to Savannah. “At nine pm visited the quarters of the men on the Bay – Carroll has the [Republican] Blues drill room for his company & Morris for the present is in Husseys [Georgia Hussars] old quarters, next to McArthurs men.“

Col. Anderson wrote that “the Spring tides continue to drown Smith’s Island.” Heavy rains in the early spring of 1864 kept the Savannah river full, and kept the Berrien Minute Men, Company G in the barracks in the city.

The Berrien Minute Men were thus quartered in Savannah when the “bread riot” occurred in the city on April 17, 1864. Reported in the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel , April 22,1864

A small “bread riot” occurred in Savannah [Georgia] on Tuesday last [April 17, 1864]. The News says that a combination of women numbering from fifty to one hundred, appeared at a grocery store on Whitaker street, when their demand for provisions being made, the proprietor was in the act of distributing bacon among them, when others of the party made a rush into the store and helped themselves to whatever they wanted. The same crowd also went to two other places on the same mission, where they obtained bacon, etc. Three of the women were arrested and taken to the guard house, and would be brought before the Mayor Thursday morning.

In relation to this affair, the News says:

That the present high prices of provisions have provided distress no one can doubt, and it is probable that some who participated in the riotous proceedings of yesterday were goaded to their course by pressure of want, but if we are rightly informed many if not the majority of them, had not even that excuse for the commission of acts of lawlessness. Be this as it may, there can be no necessity or justification for such acts of outrage and robbery. It is not generally the truly worthy deserving poor who resort to such measures, and those who thus set the laws and public propriety at defiance forfeit the sympathy of the community. If there is indeed want and suffering let the sufferers make their condition known in the right quarter, and a community that has never turned a deaf ear to the appeals of the helpless and needy will give them relief.

We trust that our city authorities will investigate this matter, ascertain who they are that truly need assistance, and take the proper steps for their relief. Such action is not only due to the wives and children of soldiers in the service, to the helpless poor, and to the peaceful and good name of our community, but also to the best interests of our city. While the mob spirit should be met with firmness, we should, in these times, act in accordance with the maxim of “help one another.” Let the turbulent be rebuked, but let not the worthy and law abiding poor suffer.

It appears that Captain E. C. Carroll’s company of Berrien men never did return to Lawton Battery on Smith’s Island. On the 20th of April, 1864 Col. Anderson visited “the quarters of Capt. Carroll on the Bay.”  On the 25th, he noted that Headquarters had ordered the reassignment of the companies in “the Lawton Battery Command.”

At last, the Berrien Minute Men, Company G would end their long detached duty in Savannah and rejoin the 29th Georgia Regiment at Dalton, GA.  The 29th Regiment and Edwin B. Carroll were to be part of the Battle of Atlanta, as Confederate forces were arrayed northwest of Atlanta in the futile attempt to block Sherman’s advance on the city.

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Captain J. D. Evans was Skulking and Hiding Out

August 8, 2020 at 4:50 am (Baptists, Civil War, Faith and Begorrah, Uncategorized)
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Desertion of J. D. Evans

Johnathan D. Evans before the Civil War was residing at Nashville, GA.  He was enumerated there as a mechanic in the Census of 1860. A “mechanic” was a craftsman, tradesman or artisan  – a skilled worker in manufacturing, production or entrepreneurial trade. Mechanics worked as independent masters or journeymen in manufacturing and trade establishments, railroads, mills, foundries, potteries, bakehouses, tanneries, currieries, coach makers, saddlers, blacksmiths, soap and candle makers, construction, shoe making, boat manufacture, book binding, watchmaking, and so on. The 1860 Census Schedule 2, “Slave Inhabitants” shows Evans was a “slave owner” enumerated with two enslaved people.

At the outbreak of the war, J. D. Evans became Captain of one of the four companies of Confederate soldiers that went forth from Berrien County, GA.  His name appears on a March 1862 list of Berrien County men subject to do military duty. He enlisted with other men of Berrien County and was mustered into Company E, 54th Georgia Regiment Volunteer Infantry March 4, 1862. On May 6, 1862, J. D. Evans was elected Captain of Company E. Among other Berrien County men serving in Company E, 54th Georgia Regiment were Jehu and James Patten, George Washington Knight , Matthew Hodge Albritton, James Lee, Jesse Lee, John Lee, George Washington Knight, James Madison Baskin, William Varnell Nix, Stephen Willis Avera, William J. Lamb, Thomas L. Lamb, Samuel Guthrie,  William Henry Outlaw, John Webb, Jordan Webb and Benjamin Sirmans, Jeremiah May, Rufus Ray, and Samuel Sanders.  Dr. Hamilton M. Talley was Evans’ second in command.

But after a year of service, J. D. Evans deserted his post.

According to the New Georgia Encylopedia,

“Desertion plagued Georgia regiments during the Civil War (1861-65) and, in addition to other factors, debilitated the Confederate war effort. Deserters were not merely cowards or ne’er-do-wells; some were seasoned veterans from battle-hardened regiments….   Whereas the sixty-three plantation-belt counties in the lowlands provided more than 50 percent of the volunteer infantry companies, desertion rates among soldiers hailing from this region were among the lowest in the state…This phenomenon may be partially accounted for by the fact that Confederate social and military authority remained reasonably intact in the lowlands for most of the war, making it perilous for would-be deserters from the area to flee home…The economic structure of the plantation belt and the widespread use of slave labor also allowed lowland Georgians to remain in the Confederate army without worries for the safety of their homes and families. [Furthermore] wealthy plantation owners in the lowlands were able to apply for exemptions. While 3,368 Georgians deserted to Union lines throughout the war, approximately 11,000 affluent Georgia men received exemptions and were able to remain in their communities and maintain social and economic stability. 

Berrien County men, like J. D. Evans, did desert, though. Men deserted from  Company E (Berrien County), 54th GA Regiment, from the Berrien Minute Men (companies G & K, 29th GA regiment),  and from the Berrien Light Infantry (Company I, 50th GA Regiment).

Companies routinely sent patrols back to their home counties to round up deserters and stragglers who had overstayed their leaves.  Sergeant William W. Williams was sent in 1864 to hunt skulkers in Lowndes and Berrien County, GA. N. M. McNabb, a soldier of Company D, 12th Georgia Regiment, was pressed into service hunting fugitive deserters in Berrien County in September 1864.

Men who were too old for active service would be formed into details to find deserters and send them back to the Army.  Punishment varied widely, but men who deserted, especially multiple offenders, might be executed by firing squad. Nebraska Eadie, who experienced the Civil War as a child in Berrien County, GA, recalled how her uncle Seaborn Lastinger was executed for desertion:

“Uncle Seaborn was shot at sunrise. He was blindfolded standing on his knees by a large pine tree. My father [William Lastinger] took it hard, and recorded it in his record this way: (Shot by those Damned called Details).“

It was not unusual for Confederate soldiers to go absent without having been granted leave.  John W. Hagan, sergeant of the Berrien Minute Men, wrote about having to “run the blockade”  – to slip past sentries and sneak out of camp for a few hours when he didn’t have a pass.  Isaac Gordon Bradwell, a soldier of the 31st Georgia Regiment, wrote from Camp Wilson about his regiment being called to formation in the middle of the night to catch out those men who were absent without leave.  The men returned before dawn, but  “There was quite a delegation from each company to march up to headquarters that morning to receive, as they thought, a very severe penalty for their misconduct. Our good old colonel stood up before his tent and lectured the men, while others stood armed grinning and laughing at their plight; but to the surprise and joy of the guilty, he dismissed them all without punishment after they had promised him never to run away from camp again.”

The men sometimes gave themselves unofficial leave for more than just a night on the town – French leave, they called it.

Desertion was common from the beginning of the war, but, until early in 1862, it was not always defined as such. When the war unexpectedly lasted past the first summer and fall, … recruits began taking what many called “French leave” by absenting themselves for a few days or longer in order to visit friends and family (the term comes from an eighteenth-century French custom of leaving a reception without saying a formal good bye to the host or hostess). Officers pursued these men with varying degrees of diligence, but because most returned in time for the spring campaigns, few were formally charged with and punished for desertion. – Encyclopedia Virginia

In July 1862 a number of men from the 29th Georgia Regiment were detached to Camp Anderson, near Savannah, for the formation of a new sharpshooter battalion. Desertion became a problem; by the end of the year 29 men would desert from Camp Anderson.  At least one deserter killed himself rather than be captured and returned to Camp Anderson. Another, after firing a shot at Major Anderson, was court-martialed and executed by firing squad. Three more deserters were sentenced to death but were released and returned to duty under a general amnesty and pardon issued by Jefferson Davis.

In October 1862 Elbert J. “Yaller” Chapman took  “French leave” when the Berrien Minute Men were returning by train from a deployment in Florida:

“Yaller” stepped off the train at the station on the Savannah, Florida, and Western  [Atlantic & Gulf] railroad nearest his home — probably Naylor, and went to see his family. He was reported “absent without leave,” and when he returned to his command at Savannah, he was placed in the guard tent and charges were preferred against him. It was from the guard tent that he deserted and went home the second time. After staying home a short while he joined a cavalry command and went west.  It is said that he was in several engagements and fought bravely.  

Albert Douglas left the Berrien Minute Men “absent without leave” in December 1862 and was marked “deserted.”  Actually Douglas enlisted in the 26th Georgia Infantry and went to Virginia, where his unit was engaged in the Battle of Brawners Farm. He subsequently served in a number of units before deserting and surrendering to the U. S. Army.  He was inducted into the U. S. Navy, but deserted that position in March 1865.

By the spring of 1863 when the 29th Georgia Regiment was stationed at Camp Young near Savannah, GA, twenty men were reported as deserters. Four of the deserters were from Company K, the Berrien Minute Men, including  Albert Douglas, Benjamin S. Garrett, J. P. Ponder and Elbert J. Chapman. Colonel William J. Young offered a reward of $30 for each Confederate deserter apprehended, $600 for the bunch.  From the weeks and months the reward was advertised, one can judge these were not men who just sneaked off to Savannah,  but were long gone.

Deserter Benjamin S. Garrett was said to have been shot for being a spy.  Back in 1856, Benjamin Garrett had been charged in old Lowndes County, GA with drunk and disorderly “public rioting,” along with his brothers Drew and William Garrett, and their cousins John Gaskins, William Gaskins, Gideon Gaskins and Samuel Gaskins; the venue was later changed to the Court of the newly formed Berrien County, but never went to trial.

In April, 1863 deserters from the Confederate works at Causton’s Bluff  and Thunderbolt batteries reported that “the daily rations of troops consist only of four ounces bacon and seven of cornmeal.”

When the 29th Georgia Regiment and the Berrien Minute Men, Company K were sent to Mississippi in May of 1863 they encountered deserter Elbert J. Chapman serving in another regiment. The case became one of the most notorious of the war.  [Chapman’s] desertion  consisted in his leaving [the Berrien Minute Men,] Wilson’s Infantry Regiment, then stationed on the coast of Georgia, and joining a Cavalry Regiment at the front—a “desertion” of a soldier from inactive service in the rear to fighting at the front.  Although Chapman was fighting with another company in Mississippi, he was charged with desertion from the 29th Georgia Regiment and court-martialed.  Despite appeals by his commanding officers Chapman was executed by firing squad. After the war, his indigent wife was denied a Confederate pension.

While Berrien Minute Men Company G was detached at the Savannah River Batteries, the papers of commanding officer Col. Edward C. Anderson indicate desertions from the Savannah defenses were a common occurrence.

It was in July 1863 that Captain J. D. Evans deserted from Company E, 54th Georgia Infantry Regiment.  Given that the 54th Georgia Infantry was engaged in repelling Federal assaults on the defenses of Charleston, his punishment was remarkably light.

Just a few days after J. D. Evans went absent without leave,  Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, issued a general pardon to deserters.

Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Davis

His proclamation, issued on August 1, 1863, admitted Confederate defeats, the horrific death toll, and the pending invasion of Georgia by overwhelming U.S. forces. Davis claimed the goal of the U.S. government is a slave revolt and the genocide or enslavement of Southern whites. He assuaged the guilt of deserters and asserted that Confederate victory could still be pulled from defeat, if all the Confederate deserters would but return to their camps. Finally, Davis “conjures” the women of Georgia not to shelter deserters from disgrace.

Jefferson Davis’ proclamation of pardon and amnesty for Confederate deserters was published in newspapers all over the South.

TO THE SOLDIERS OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES.
After more than two years of a warfare scarcely equaled in the number, magnitude and fearful carnage of its battles; a warfare in which your courage and fortitude have illustrated your country and attracted not only gratitude at home but admiration abroad, your enemies continue a struggle in which our final triumph must be inevitable. Unduly elated with their recent successes they imagine that temporary reverses can quell your spirit or shake your determination, and they are now gathering heavy masses for a general invasion, in the vain hope that by a desperate effort success may at length be reached.
You know too well, my countrymen, what they mean by success. Their malignant rage aims at nothing less than the extermination of yourselves, your wives and children. They seek to destroy what they cannot plunder. They propose as the spoils of victory that your homes shall be partitioned among the wretches whose atrocious cruelties have stamped infamy on their Government. The design to incite servile insurrection and light the fires of incendiarism whenever they can reach your homes, and they debauch the inferior race hitherto docile and contented, by promising indulgence of the vilest passions, as the price of treachery. Conscious of their inability to prevail by legitimate warfare, not daring to make peace lest they should be hurled from their seats of power, the men who now rule in Washington refuse even to confer on the subject of putting an end to outrages which disgrace our age, or to listen to a suggestion for conducting the war according to the usages of civilization. Fellow citizens, no alternative is left you but victory, or subjugation, slavery and the utter ruin of yourselves, your families and your country. The victory is within your reach. You need but stretch forth your hands to grasp it. For this and all that is necessary is that those who are called to the field by every motive that can move the human heart, should promptly repair to the post of duty, should stand by their comrades now in front of the foe, and thus so strengthen the armies of the Confederacy as to ensure success. The men now absent from their posts would, if present in the field, suffice to create numerical equality between our force and that of the invaders— and when, with any approach to such equality, have we failed to be victorious? I believe that but few of those absent are actuated by unwillingness to serve their country; but that many have found it difficult to resist the temptation of a visit to their homes and the loved ones from whom they have been so long separated; that others have left for temporary attention to their affairs with the intention of returning and then have shrunk from the consequences of their violation of duty; that others again have left their post from mere restlessness and desire of change, each quieting the upbraidings of his conscience, by persuading himself that his individual services could have no influence on the general result.
These and other causes (although far less disgraceful than the desire to avoid danger, or to escape from the sacrifices required by patriotism, are, nevertheless, grievous faults, and place the cause of our beloved country, and of everything we hold dear, in imminent peril. I repeat that the men who now owe duty to their country, who have been called out and have not yet reported for duty, or who have absented themselves from their posts, are sufficient in number to secure us victory in the struggle now pending.
I call on you, then, my countrymen, to hasten to your camps, in obedience to the dictates of honor and of duty, and summon, those who have absented themselves without leave, or who have remained absent beyond the period allowed by their furloughs, to repair without delay to their respective commands, and I do hereby declare that I grant a general pardon and amnesty to all officers and men within the Confederacy, now absent without leave, who shall, with the least possible delay, return to their proper posts of duty, but no excuse will be received for any deserter beyond twenty days after the first publication of this proclamation in the State in which the absentee may be at the date of the publication. This amnesty and pardon shall extend to all who have been accused, or who have been convicted and are undergoing sentence for absence without leave or desertion, excepting only those who have been twice convicted of desertion.
Finally, I conjure my countrywomen —the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the Confederacy— to use their all-powerful influence in aid of this call, to add one crowning sacrifice to those which their patriotism has so freely and constantly offered on their country’s alter, and to take care that none who owe service in the field shall be sheltered at home from the disgrace of having deserted their duty to their families, to their country, and to their God.
Given under my hand, and the Seal of the Confederate States, at Richmond, this 1st day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three.

JEFFERSON DAVIS.
By the President:
J. P. Benjamin, Sec’ry of State.

Johnathan D. Evans did not return to his post, however.  In his absence, the 54th Georgia Regiment continued on station.  The Georgia Journal and Messenger reported “the 54th Georgia Regiment suffered severely” on the night of August 25 when federal forces assaulted Battery Wagner on Morris Island.

On Oct 23, 1863, Evans’ Colonel wrote to General Samuel Cooper that Evans was a skulker and hiding from duty. (Cooper was the highest ranking officer of the Confederate States Army, outranking Robert E. Lee and all other officers of the Confederacy.)

Hed. Qrs. 54th Ga. Infantry
James Island, S.C.
Oct. 20th, 1863

Gen’l S. Cooper
Adj’t Insp’r Gen’l
Richmond,

Gen’l
I have the honor to request that you will drop in disgrace from the Army rolls, the name of Captain J. D. Evans of Company “E” 54th Ga. Infantry.
This officer has been absent from his command for a period of sixty days without leave. On the 27th day of July last, the Regiment being ordered to Morris Island, Capt Evans reported sick, and at his own request was sent, by the Surgeon, to the hospital in Charleston. He was subsequently transferred to Columbus, S.C., and thence to Augusta, Ga., since which time he has never reported.
I regret to state that all the circumstances surrounding this case indicate, but too clearly, that he never intends to rejoin his command – at least while it is in active service; (nor from all the reports which reach me) can I be induced to believe that he is sick – on the contrary, I am forced unwillingly to think that he is skulking and hiding from duty. If a more charitable construction could be placed upon his conduct, I should be the last one to suggest so harsh a proceeding in his case.
Where he is – what he is doing – when he intends to return – and where to reach him with an order are questions which no one can answer.
Verbal reports reach me that he is at home with his family – that he is engaged in a Government workshop – but all parties report him well. His influence with his command is lost. For the good of the service, and as a proper example to deter others from adopting a similar course, I earnestly recommend that his name be dropped from the Army Rolls.

I have the honor to be, Gen’l,
Very Respectfully,
Yr Ob’t Sv’t
Charlton H. Way

Col. Charlton H. Way letter of October 10, 1863 requesting Capt. J. D. Evans be dropped in disgrace from Army rolls.

Col. Charlton H. Way letter of October 10, 1863 requesting Capt. J. D. Evans be dropped in disgrace from Army rolls.

 

Col. Charlton H. Way letter of October 10, 1863 requesting Capt. J. D. Evans be dropped in disgrace from Army rolls.

Evans never did return to his unit. He was dropped from the rolls of Confederate officers for desertion.

The most significant wave of desertion among Georgia soldiers began in late 1863 following the Battle of Chickamauga,…the biggest battle ever fought in Georgia, which took place on September 18-20, 1863.  With 34,000 casualties, Chickamauga is generally accepted as the second bloodiest engagement of the war; only the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, with 51,000 casualties, was deadlier.

Lt. H. M. Talley assumed command of Company E, 54th GA Regiment.  By the spring of 1864, Company E and the rest of the 54th Georgia Regiment were back at Savannah, GA serving on river defenses under the command of Edward C. Anderson. Anderson’s command also included the Berrien Minute Men, Company G, 29th Georgia Regiment. Col. E. C. Anderson’s frustrations with Confederate desertion included the embarrassment of having his personal boat stolen by three deserters from the Confederate tugboat CSS Resolute on the night of April 15, 1864.

By the summer of 1864, the Confederate States Army was again in pursuit of skulkers.  Colonel Elijah C. Morgan of the  Georgia Militia, wrote from Valdosta, GA to his superior officer requesting a guard to conduct skulkers back to their units. Col. E. C. Morgan had served as Captain of the Berrien Light Infantry, Company I, 50th GA regiment  from the formation of the company in 1862  until April 14, 1863 when he resigned because of tuberculosis; before the war he had been a Berrien County, GA attorney.

Colonel Elijah C. Morgan requests a guard to conduct skulkers from Valdosta, GA back to their Confederate units, August 16, 1864.

Colonel Elijah C. Morgan requests a guard to conduct skulkers from Valdosta, GA back to their Confederate units, August 16, 1864.

Valdosta, Ga   Aug 16th 1864

General,

I again urge the necessity of sending Sergt Wm W Williams back to use as a guard in sending forward skulkers who will not do to trust without a guard.

E. C. Morgan
Col. & ADG
6th Dist GM

According to historian Ella Lonn, of the approximately 103,400 enlisted men who deserted the Confederacy by war’s end, 6,797 were from Georgia.

After the war, J. D. Evans became a Baptist preacher. In 1874 he came to Ray’s Mill, GA (now Ray City) where he was instrumental in organizing a missionary Baptist Church.

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There Is Nobody Killed But A Private Or Two

June 22, 2020 at 12:20 am (Berrien Minute Men, Civil War, Hagan Family, Uncategorized)
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On Wednesday, June 22, 1864, both companies of Berrien Minute Men were in the line of battle at Marietta, GA.  It was a hot summer day.

That morning John W. Hagan, of Berrien County, GA, wrote his wife Amanda there was “only 7 but what was killed or wounded” in the 29th Georgia Regiment. That made the total count of men killed, wounded or missing in the past week an even 100 from the 29th GA Regiment.  Hagan reported that among the dead was Jasper M. Roberts, of the Berrien Minute Men. He asked his wife to tell Jasper’s mother, “he was killed dead in a charge he was gallantly leading & chering his men on to battle and was successfull in driving back the Yankees. He was taken off the battle field & was burried as well as the nature of the case would permit.“

In the evening, on the other side of the line, Pvt Charles T. Develling, 17th Ohio Regiment wrote in his journal.

June 22nd, the rebels gave us a severe shelling this afternoon, from five different points. Our artillery replied promptly and with effect. Shortly after dark we moved to the right and into front line, already fortified, in an open field, in the hottest hole we have yet found, as regards both the sun and fire from the rebels.

That same day, the Columbus Times, Columbus, GA published a Civil War poem by an anonymous author, a poem apparently not ever appearing elsewhere in print before or since.

For the Times.
There is Nobody Killed but a Private or Two.

The crack of the rifle in the distance is heard,
From the hills far away comes the shriek of the shell
Through the valley re-echoes the huge cannon’s roar,
Mingling its deep thunder with the victor’s wild yell.

At last we are told that ’twas only a skirmish,
That again to their colors our gallants were true ;
Tho’ around them flew thickly the shot and the shell,
“There was nobody killed but a private or two.”

At the dawn of the morrow a squad is detailed,
’Tis supplied with no arms but the shovel and spade;
To the scene of the conflict their steps are now turned,
Where their comrades lie sleeping in death’s gloomy shade,
The dead are wrapp’d hurriedly in the cold, wet sod,
Uncoffin’d, unshrouded, scarcely hidden from view,
Their task is soon over, to the camp they return,
For “there’s nobody killed but a private or two.”

The telegraph columns of the papers, announce
Another slight skirmish just in front of our lines;
The report is scarce read, and the public complain.
That there’s so little news, considering the times,
Ah ! yes, there is one who has scanned the dispatches,
In her hands her pale face is now hidden from view,
Great God! she exclaims, ’tis my husband they have slain,
Tho’ “there’s nobody killed but a privateer two.”

That mother sits weeping alone in her cabin,
The low mourning winds in the tree-tops are sighing,
Her four little children stand gazing around her,
Wondering the reason why mamma keeps crying.
“Your papa, my darlings, never more will return,
Never more the fond ties of affection renew,
In the cold distant grave his body’s reposing,
But there’s nobody killed but a private or two.”

How lonely and sad is the cold world to them now !
Ah ! who can portray the deep sorrow that is there!
Four orphans so desolate, left drifting alone,
A mother’s heart wrapp’d in the black gloom of despair!
When they think of the grave where that father’s now sleeping.
Recall to the memory his last fond adieu,
How sad to be told with such wanton indifference,
That “there’s nobody killed but a private or two.”
B***.    – Columbus Times June 22,1864

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Tebeauville, Old No. Nine

June 6, 2020 at 12:58 am (African American, Civil War, Railroads, Reconstruction)
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Tebeauville, Old No. Nine

Prior to the Civil War General Levi J. Knight, of present-day Ray City, GA, invested in the development of railroads across Wiregrass Georgia.  Two of Knight’s investments were in the Brunswick & Florida Railroad, and the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad, the junction of which was at Tebeauville, GA.   When the Civil War commenced, Knight’s railroads were still being constructed, largely with the labor of enslaved African-Americans. During early part of the war, Knight’s company of Berrien Minute Men was transported on these railroads to their posts at the coastal defenses of Georgia.

Depot at Tebeauville

Depot at station No. Nine, Tebeauville, GA (now Waycross, GA) was the junction point of the Brunswick & Florida Railroad with the Savannah, Albany & Gulf Railroad and the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad.

Although the Brunswick & Florida Railroad had been chartered in 1837, construction did not commence until 1856.  The track was started at Brunswick, GA but by 1857, only 36 miles of rail had been completed.  If completed, the B&F could move men and materials from ports on the Gulf of Mexico to the Brunswick port on the Atlantic in 24 hours “in case of war between this country and a foreign nation.”  And there were plans that the B&F would make connections to bring passenger and freight traffic to Brunswick from as far west as Vicksburg, MS.

The short line Brunswick & Florida Railroad would run from Brunswick to the Savannah, Albany & Gulf Railroad station number nine, which was also to be a junction with the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad.  The Atlantic & Gulf was intended to serve the two coastal railroads as a “Main Trunk” stretching across South Georgia.  At Bainbridge, GA it was planned to serve the steamboat docks on the Flint River creating a passenger and freight connection to the Gulf of Mexico.

The junction point of the B&F, A&G and the S, A & G, was ninth station to be constructed on the line from Savannah and was situated just south of the Satilla River. The eponymous community which sprang up there was No. Nine.  Blackshear, GA. was No. Eight and Glenmore, GA was No. 10.

Philip Coleman Pendleton, agent for the Lowndes County Immigration Society

Philip Coleman Pendleton, agent for the Lowndes County Immigration Society

In 1857, Philip Coleman Pendleton had settled his family at No. Nine before the tracks of the S, A & G or the B & F even reached the station. At Tebeauville, Pendleton engaged in farming and timber. He also served as postmaster and stated the first Sunday school in Ware County.   (Pendleton had come from Sandersville, GA where he was co-owner of the Central Georgian newspaper, with O. C. Pope, Sr.)

At that time [1857] a Savannah company headed by James Screven, father of the late John Screven, was building a railroad from Savannah to Thomasville. The western terminus [of the Savannah, Albany and Gulf Railroad] was then at a point some twelve or fifteen miles east of Blackshear…The laying of the iron reached Mr. Pendleton’s place about a year later…  The old stage road between Thomasville and Brunswick passed here, with a fork running to Burnt Fort, on the Satilla River. There was a post-office at this place called “Yankee Town.” It was so designated because northern people operated the stage coaches and they owned at this place a relay stable; but it passed away with the coming of the railroad, and Screven named the station ‘Pendleton’. The man thus honored took the first train to Savannah and caused the name to be changed to Tebeauville, after his father-in-law, Captain F. E. Tebeau, a member of one of the old Savannah families. Perhaps a year or so later a civil engineer came along surveying the route for the [Brunswick & Florida Railroad]. When he arrived at Tebeauville he made a side proposition to Mr. Pendleton to run the prospective city off in lots and to give him each alternate lot. Mr. Pendleton did not think that the man was authorized thus to approach him, and suggested that he tell the president of the road to see him in regard to the matter. Miffed at this rebuke, the engineer went back three or four miles pulling up the stakes as he went, and made a curve to miss Mr. Pendleton’s land. If one will stand at the crossing near Tebeau Creek, in the heart of Waycross, and look towards Brunswick, he can see the curve in the road [railroad tracks], caused by this effort of the engineer to make something on the side. – Georgia’s Men of Mark

The tracks of the Savannah, Albany and Gulf reached station No. Nine on July 4, 1859.

By 1859, 60 miles of B & F track had been laid stretching from Brunswick north around the headwaters of East River then westward toward Tebeauville. The B&F junction at station No. Nine completed a rail connection between Brunswick and Savannah and connected Brunswick with the “Main Trunk” Atlantic and Gulf Railroad.

 

Civil War era map of the Brunswick & Florida Railroad, running from Yankee Town (now Waycross), GA to Brunswick, GA - Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

Civil War era map of the Brunswick & Florida Railroad, running from Yankee Town, the post office at Tebeauville (now Waycross), GA, to Brunswick, GA – Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

Construction of the A & G was progressing westward from Tebeauville toward Lowndes County, GA.  The steel rails were imported from Le Havre, France.  There were 1200 enslaved African Americans at work building the Atlantic & Gulf, making the railroad perhaps the largest single “owner” of enslaved people in Georgia. In 1859, 75 percent of railroads in the south were built with the labor of enslaved people and one-third of all southern lines worked 100 or enslaved laborers.

African Americans maintaining a southern railroad. In 1859, 1200 African American slaves labored to build the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad across Wiregrass Georgia, laying a little over a mile of track every week. The first train reached Valdosta, GA on July 30, 1860. Image: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpb.02135/

African Americans maintaining a southern railroad.
In 1859, 1200 enslaved African Americans labored to build the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad across Wiregrass Georgia, laying a little over a mile of track every week. The jubilee train reached Valdosta, GA on July 31,1860. Image: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpb.02135/

The southern railroads were dependent on enslaved black laborers for construction and maintenance, and sometimes operations. The enslaved workers were either the “property” of the railroads or leased from “slave owners”. “Sometimes owners were actually reluctant to hire out their enslaved laborers because of the extreme danger associated with rail construction and train operations; if they did so, they often would take out insurance on their [human] property from working on the riskiest tasks. Of course, those contractual provisions were not always obeyed, leading contractors and slave owners to the courtroom.” – From Here to Equality.

About 20 miles west of Tebeauville, railroad superintendent Gaspar J. Fulton made a side investment in real estate. Fulton purchased land along the tracks from John Smith, of Clinch County. However, no station was established there until the 1880s (now Argyle, GA).

By February 1860, the A & G track had crossed the Alapaha River near Carter’s Bridge about nine miles south of Milltown (now Lakeland, GA).  By March 12, hundreds of bales of cotton were being shipped to Savannah from Station No. 13 at Stockton, GA, which was described as “‘quite a brisk little place, with its hotel and livery stable’ to say nothing of its numerous refreshment saloons.” There were 50 bales of cotton shipped from “Alapaha” on March 10. By about the end of the month at Station No. 13, there were “about 120 bales of cotton for shipment, and the warehouses crowded with western freight.”  The May 1, 1860 annual report of the A & G [inclusive of the S, A&G] stated that in previous 12 months [during which track was extended from Tebeauville, GA to Naylor, GA] there were 4.8 million feet of lumber and timber shipped over the railroad.

The residents at Troupville, GA, then county seat of Lowndes, were hopeful that the town would be the site where the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad spanned the Withlacoochee River.  By July 1860, the Atlantic and Gulf track extended 62 miles to near the Withlacoochee but the route passed four miles southeast of Troupeville and crossed the river eight miles downstream, sorely disappointing the town’s residents.  The many of the town residents packed up and moved to the tracks, some even moving their houses, and founded the city of Valdosta, GA.

The Satilla was the first locomotive to arrive at Valdosta, July 4, 1860. The engines of the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad (Savannah, Albany & Gulf) were named for the rivers of South Georgia. The Satilla is on exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI.

The Satilla was the first locomotive to arrive at Valdosta, July 30, 1860. The engines of the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad (Savannah, Albany & Gulf) were named for the rivers of South Georgia. The Satilla is on exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI.

John Screven, president of the A & R reported that the tracks reached Valdosta on July 25, 1860.

The Augusta Daily Constitutionalist reported the completion of the Atlantic & Gulf railroad to Valdosta, GA

The Augusta Daily Constitutionalist reported the completion of the Atlantic & Gulf railroad to Valdosta, GA

When the Civil War broke out, the completion of the Brunswick & Florida, the Savannah, Albany and Gulf, and the Atlantic & Gulf railroads became strategically important, although the threatening “foreign nation” was the United States.  Troops from all over Wiregrass Georgia were mobilized on the railroads. P. C. Pendleton “was engaged in planting and looking after his splendid timbered lands when the war came on… “Tebeauville, though not a town of much size, at the outbreak of the war in 1861, nevertheless furnished several recruits to Colquitt’s Brigade” … [Pendleton] raised a company of volunteers in Ware county and upon its organization became a major of the 50th Georgia Regiment.  – J. L. Walker, State Historian, DAR

During the war, the Sunday School at Tebeauville was superintended by Mrs. B. F. Williams, wife a Confederate army surgeon. Mrs. Williams lived a few miles from Tebeauville at Sunnyside, near the Satilla River. She also helped to organize a non-denominational church “composed of ‘Hard-Shells,’ Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, that existed and flourished for years in perfect harmony. – J. L. Walker, State Historian, DAR

In 1861 the Berrien Minute Men, the Confederate infantry company raised by General Knight, traveled on the Brunswick & Florida from Station No. 9, (Tebeauville) to Brunswick.  Per orders, Captain L. J. Knight took his company of Berrien Minute Men to the Georgia coast where they and other volunteer companies from South Georgia counties were garrisoned at Camp Semmes for the defense of the port at Brunswick, GA (Berrien Minute Men at Brunswick ~ July, 1861).  The Confederate States government compensated the railroads for providing transportation.

Robert E. Lee visited Tebeauville, GA in 1861

Robert E. Lee visited Tebeauville, GA in 1861

Robert E. Lee stopped for a few hours in Tebeauville in 1861 while making a general survey of the Confederate coastal defenses. In a letter to his wife, transcribed in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, he referenced the Battle of Port Royal, in which the 29th GA regiment was engaged, and mentioned plans to visit Brunswick:

“Savannah, November 18, 1861.

“My Dear Mary: This is the first moment I have had to write to you, and now am waiting the call to breakfast, on my way to Brunswick, Fernandina, etc. This is my second visit to Savannah. Night before last, I returned to Coosawhatchie, South Carolina, from Charleston, where I have placed my headquarters, and last night came here, arriving after midnight. I received in Charleston your letter from Shirley. It was a grievous disappointment to me not to have seen you, but better times will come, I hope…. You probably have seen the operations of the enemy’s fleet. Since their first attack they have been quiescent apparently, confining themselves to Hilton Head, where they are apparently fortifying.

“I have no time for more. Love to all.

“Yours very affectionately and truly,

“R. E. Lee.”

In his 1914 Georgia’s Men of Mark, historian Lucian Lamar Knight included:

It is one of the local traditions, to which the old residents point with great pride, that when in command of the coast defense, at the outbreak of the war, General Robert E. Lee stopped for a short while in Tebeauville. Many of the people who lived here then remember to have seen this Man of the Hour who still lives in the hearts of the people today. Among the the citizens who resided here then were the Tebeaus, the Reppards, the Remsharts, the Parkers, the Grovensteins, the Millers, the Behlottes, the Sweats, the Smiths and the Cottinghams.  To this day many old timers refer to the section of [Waycross] where the Tebeauville station was located as “Old Nine”. 

At the time of General Lee’s survey, the campfires of the Berrien Minute Men were made at garrisons defending Darien, GA, the next port north of Brunswick. “As a result of [General Lee’s] coastal survey, upon his return to Savannah 3 days later, he notified the War Department in Richmond of the confirmation of his previous opinion that the ‘entrance to Cumberland Sound and Brunswick and the water approaches to Savannah [including Fort Pulaski] and Charleston are the only points which it is proposed to defend.'”  National Park Service 

The defenses of Georgia’s sea islands were abandoned, their guns and men redeployed to defend the three southern ports. The Berrien Minute Men were moved to garrisons around the port of Savannah.

Ultimately, Levi J. Knight’s investment in the B&F railroad became another casualty of the Civil War.  “The Brunswick and Florida Railroad was in operation up to the fall of 1863, when the Confederate Government seized it under the Impressment Act, tore up the rails, and distributed the property of the Company among other railroads, which were considered as leading military lines. The line of the B&F had become a liability as U.S forces had occupied Brunswick in early 1862.

P. C. Pendleton moved his family to Valdosta, GA in 1862 where after the war he established the South Georgia Times newspaper. His former business partner, O. C. Pope moved to Milltown in 1866 where he taught in the Milltown Academy.

In late 1867 Major Philip Coleman Pendleton again passed through Tebeauville as a passenger on the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad from Valdosta to Savannah, where he was sailing for Scotland.  He was on a mission for the Lowndes Immigration Society to recruit Scottish immigrants to settle at Valdosta, GA, and work the cotton, as Wiregrass planters had an aversion to hiring and paying formerly enslaved laborers to do the work.

The town of Tebeauville was incorporated in 1866. “In 1869, the State of Georgia provided about $6 million in bonds to rebuild [the tracks from Tebeauville to Brunswick]. The railroad was then reorganized as the Brunswick and Albany Railroad.”  Tebeauville was designated county seat of Ware County in 1873. It was incorporated as “Way Cross” on March 3, 1874. Waycross gets its name from the city’s location at key railroad junctions; lines from six directions meet at the city.

Tebeauville Historic Marker, Waycross, GA

Tebeauville Historic Marker in Bertha Street Park, Waycross, GA,  “On this site stood the old town of Tebeauville. Erected by the Lyman Hall Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, Waycross, GA.

The B&A went bankrupt in 1872 after a bond was nullified by the Georgia General Assembly. It was reorganized in 1882 and was then named the Brunswick and Western Railroad.

The name Tebeauville remained in use for the station at Waycross at least as late as 1889, as evidenced in railroad schedules and newspaper references.

(See source citations below)

Related Posts:

Sources:

Georgia.1836. Acts of the General Assembly of the state of Georgia passed in Milledgeville at an annual session in November and December 1835. An act to incorporate the Brunswick and Florida Railroad.pg 187.

United States. (1851). The statutes at large and treaties of the United States of America from. Boston: C.C. Little and J. Brown. pg 146

Dozier, Howard Douglas. 1920. A history of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. Houghton Mifflin. pg 79.

Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. 1908. A history of transportation in the eastern cotton belt to 1860. pg 358.

Georgia Telegraph. Dec 20, 1853. From Milledgeville. Macon, GA. Pg 2

Georgia Telegraph. June 13, 1854. Minutes of the stockholders of the Brunswick and Florida Railroad. Macon, GA. Pg 3

Southern Recorder, May 15, 1855. Brunswick and Florida Railroad. Pg 2

Georgia Telegraph. Apr 8, 1856. Minutes of the Board of Commissioners of the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad Company, First Meeting, Wednesday, Feb 27, 1856. Macon, GA. Pg 3

United States. 1857. Appendix to the Congressional Globe containing speeches, important state papers, laws, etc., of the third session, Thirty-fourth Congress. Naval Depot at Brunswick, Georgia: Speech of Hon. A. Iverson of Georgia in the Senate, January 20, 1957. pg. 270-275.

Poor, H. V. (1869). Poor’s manual of railroads. New York: H.V. & H.W. Poor; [etc., etc. Pg. 337.

Loyless, T. W. (1902). Georgia’s public men 1902-1904. Atlanta, Ga: Byrd Print. Pp 166.
Miller, S.F. 1858. The bench and bar of Georgia: memoirs and sketches, with an appendix, containing a court roll from 1790 to 1857, etc. (1858). J. B. Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia. Pg 170

Milledgeville Federal Union, Nov. 18, 1856. Commercial Convention at Savannah. page 3. Milledgeville, GA.

United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1860. M653, 1,438 rolls. Census Place: Berrien, Georgia; Roll: M653_111; Page: 362; Image: 363.

Mitchell, S. Augustus. 1855. Mitchell’s new traveller’s guide through the United States and Canada. pg 87

Swayze, J. C., & H.P. Hill & Co. (1862). Hill & Swayze’s Confederate States rail-road & steam-boat guide: Containing the time-tables, fares, connections and distances on all the rail-roads of the Confederate States, also, the connecting lines of rail-roads, steamboats and stages, and will be accompanied by a complete guide to the principal hotels, with a large variety of valuable information. Griffin, Ga: Hill & Swayze.

Railga.com. Brunswick & Florida Railroad. https://railga.com/brunfl.html

Walker, J. L. (1911, Nov 11). Tabeauville. Waycross Evening Herald.

 

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