Legion's 3rd Battalion, Company F. I show him enlisting at 17 as a substitute for I.L. McGirigh. I show him wounded, did not know the nature of the wound. I show him unmarried and a farmer at the time he joined the CSA.
I really appreciate your info, thanks!
I can probably fill in some blanks of his life, his "legend" still lives large in my family. But the age of 17 on enlisting is interesting, family stories have him 16, and him as a substitute is news to me. Thanks that's interesting! I need to do more research into his service.
Supposedly he walked barefoot to enlist, (over the unbelievable distance of a hundred miles, I personally don't buy it, but I buy the barefoot part he was a devout Primitive Baptist), and was proud of his service the rest of his life. I met some distant cousins a year or so ago who actually knew him, and had heard a couple of war stories from him as children, one he told them was of Chickamauga, and all they could remember of him talking of Chickamauga was he told them of how, "Where we were there were so many bodies covering that field you could walk across and never touch the ground." After that most of his stories are forgotten. After Appomattox for some reason he spent the rest of 1865 in Northern Georgia, and all is known is he met my GG-Grandmother, a half Cherokee, before returning to Alabama to live and farm. According to more family lore sometime during Reconstruction a carpetbagger came out repeatedly to "purchase" his land, and finally one night when he was there Grandpa Pepper, as he still known as, grabbed a hoe and killed the carpetbagger. After that it was decided to move to Texas as his uncle Arthur Pepper, (only a couple of years older and had served in I think it was the 34th or 35th Alabama Infantry and was captured at Nashville) had moved there before him and spoken well of it, so the growing Pepper family relocated to Texas. He first settled in Harmony Hill, (where he is buried), and later moved down the road to Chalk Hill where he set up a saw mill, a dipping vat for cattle, a General Store, and farmed. Chalk Hill Cemetery was originally founded on a piece of land he donated to the small town, and has a monument to him near its gate, (one Confederate monument I'd fiercely defend more than any other).
As for his later life, he would walk either to nearby Lee's Creek, or the Sabine River to fish, always barefooted, (that finally had bad consequences when a snapping turtle bit one of his toes off), and farming or tending to his business interests. He was extremely devout, and the church along with the school and a house or two in town all had their lumber come from his mill, (all except the church are in ruins now), but by all accounts he was also extremely proud of his Confederate service. Apparently sometime in the early 1900's a yankee preacher came to town, and it resulted in just about the only time he didn't go to church which caused concern. After services he was found in front of his house in a chair with a musket swearing he'd kill the first d***yankee to set foot on his property. He was well known and highly respected, with some folks thinking he was odd, as he'd loan money to black people when they needed it. a couple of years ago I happened to meet a very elderly black women who was telling her, I assume, great-grandkids during a living history we were doing in nearby Henderson to not assume folks with Confederate flags were racist, as when she was born her family was destitute and it was a Confederate veteran who loaned her parents money and let them take what they needed from his store, I inquired about this to her, and had a laugh when I found out it was my own GG-Grandfather John Pepper! His marriage to my GG-Grandmother ended with her passing in 189? and a few years later he remarried and that wife passed away in the early 1920's with John Pepper dying in 1930. For the funeral he asked to buried in white like both of his wives, beside them, and my G-Aunt told me when I was little, before her passing, it was the funniest funeral she ever went to, because it poured down rain and as a little girl she thought it was so funny to see so many grown men in their Sunday best getting knee deep in mud to push the horse drawn hearse out of the mud. He had 12 children by my GG-Grandmother, and 4 more by his second wife, making for 16 kids total!
Growing up his life and its stories were captivating to me, my Dad had told me when he was twelve them being poor, the aunt he spent a lot of time living with had him wear Grandpa Pepper's uniform he wore home from Appomattox one winter because he had no coat, (he said it wasn't very warm, and after making some uniform item from the same English blue-gray kersey I agree), and my Dad, Uncle and their cousins played cowboy's and indians with his pistols, and Confederate money. I spent years trying to track down those items, the pistols were supposedly destroyed from their playing with them so much, and the coat remained elusive to me, all I knew was it was Grandpa Pepper's trunk. I finally found it and the fate of his uniform, as apparently after my Dad wore it he had so many pants tore up from his going through barb wire fences, (and with that I learned where I got the habit), and my aunt took it apart for repairing his cloths.
If your looking for any info on uniforms worn by Hilliard's Legion or the 60th Alabama, my years long "hunt" may be beneficial. As for the uniform coat my Dad had wore I'm almost certain from descriptions it was most likely a collar trim variant of a imported Peter Tait uniform. As for early War, there's once was a picture of John Pepper in uniform from early on, and descriptions of that picture, (I'm hunting now hunting for the picture) match up with the early War Alabama jackets like the one worn by one John Young Gillmore of the 3rd Alabama Infantry, so there's another Hilliard's Legion uniform with the other two variants I've found in pictures of Hilliard's Legionnaires.
An article featuring the Gillmore jacket-
http://adolphusconfederateuniforms.com/state-of-alabama-quartermaster-uniforms-1861-1864.html