Excerpt from Streight's Report to Brigadier General WILLIAM D. WHIPPLE, from Chattanooga, Tenn.,
August 22, 1864.
"The engagement at Blount's plantation revealed the fact that nearly all of our remaining ammunition was worthless, on account of having been wet. Much of that carried by the men had become useless by the paper wearing out and the powder sifting away. It was in this engagement that the gallant Colonel (Gilbert) Hathaway (Seventy-third Indiana) fell, mortally wounded, and in a few moments expired. Our country has seldom been called upon to mourn the loss of so brave and valuable an officer. His loss to me was irreparable. His men had almost worshiped him, and when he fell it cast a deep gloom of despondency over his regiment which was hard to overcome."
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Colonel Gilbert Hathaway
ABOUT THE BLOUNT PLANTATION
On May 2, 1863, the Blount Plantation was the site of a Civil War skirmish between the troops of General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Colonel Abel D. Streight. After the Battle ended, the house was used as a field hospital where wounded Union and Confederate soldiers received treatment and care. The soldiers who were killed and who died from their wounds were buried on a hillside to the right of the Blount house. Colonel Gilbert Hathaway, of the Seventy-third Indiana was among the fatalities. (Hathaway's body was buried in the rose garden directly behind the house and was later retrieved by family and reinterred at Pine Lake Cemetery LaPorte, IN.) The day following the skirmish at Blount's Plantation, Colonel Streight surrendered to General Forrest at Lawrence in Cherokee County. When Colonel Streight surrendered with his 1,466 men, he was surprised to discover that General Forrest had only 600 men.
The Blount Plantation, which consisted of over a thousand acres, was sold by Major James G. Blount to Harry Hopkins in 1909. The Hopkins family turned the plantation into a beef cattle farm which contained the first white-faced hereford cattle in the Etowah County area. The Hopkin's sold the plantation to Joe McClain on July 29, 1944. The McClains's converted the beef cattle farm into a large dairy farm. The McClain's sold the plantation on November 3, 1950 to Ralph Bowman. Mr. Bowman changed the property into a beef cattle farm on a large scale. Ralph Bowman sold the house and farm to James B. Allen on July 12, 1954. The property was sold to Clyde and Henry McCleskey on November 28, 1956. The McCleskey brothers, who were reared on an adjoining farm, developed the Blount Plantation into the largest white-faced hereford cattle farm in Etowah County. The property is still owned by the family of Clyde McCleskey and the hosue still stands today.
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