Tell Me a Story

My great-great-great-uncle, Lorenzo "Ren" Dow Headley, according to family tradition, was personally shot by Confederate General John Hunt Morgan. Headley was a militiaman opposing Morgan's famous raid through Indiana and Ohio; supposedly, Morgan shot him when Headley refused to surrender. (This doesn't make much sense and I highly doubt that it happened that way, but that's the story that got passed down.)

One of my great uncles has the letters written home by my great-great-grandfather Benjamin Franklin Waggoner, who was in the 14th Ohio in the Army of the Cumberland. In one of his letters he described drinking water out of horse hoofprints after a rain, because the story had gotten around that the retreating Confederates had poisoned the local wells. (Here too, I have cause to doubt that was actually the case, though I don't doubt that rumors like that went around the various camps...)
 
My Dickerson cousins lived in Fulton, Tennessee, which at that time was a substantial river town just south of Fort Pillow. My mother's much older cousin used to tell her stories of how her brothers rode with Forrest's cavalry. Several of the boys stopped by unexpectedly one day while the ladies of the family were having a picnic. The horses were unsaddled and the feast spread when warning came that a party of Federals were nearby. There was no time to resaddle the horses; the boys just jumped on them and galloped off. Presently the Federals rode up, asking if the ladies had seen any Confederate soldiers. In order to hide the saddles, the ladies sat on them and concealed them beneath their crinolines while they invited the soldiers to eat with them to give their boys time to get away.

I somewhat doubted the truth of this story, but the details check out. There were five Dickersons in company M of the 7th Tennessee cavalry, including two of her brothers. Company M were on detached duty as scouts for Forrest in the neighborhood of Fulton shortly before the battle of Fort Pillow.
 
http://civilwartalk.com/threads/wha...other-interesting-things.111489/#post-1085234

My maternal great great grandfather served the Confederacy under duress after his brother was shot and killed by a conscription gang. After the war he purposely nicknamed his son after a Union Officer. Another GG grandfather, Stanford Lee served with the TN Mounted Infantry USA.

Paternal Great Grandfather Hardin Passmore served the Confederacy with the Thomas Legion and disappeared. We have no idea what happened to him. What's interesting is his Unit and Stanford Lee's Unit were both in Madison County NC around the same time. We have no idea if they ever met in battle but Passmore's son William married Lee's daughter Frances. I've often wondered if the in-laws got along. :wink:


Greatgreat Grandfather Benjamin Lawson served with the 60th NC and died of disease in 1864.

My husband's great grandfather was also Lorenzo Dow. :wink:
 
(Another branch of the Headleys ran a "station" on the Underground Railroad in Greene County, Pennsylvania, in the very southwest corner of the state. According to a book I have, there's a small complex of caves that at least at one time was named "N----r Rock" because of it.)
 
My Dickerson cousins lived in Fulton, Tennessee, which at that time was a substantial river town just south of Fort Pillow.
That story has a ring of truth to me. Except that it's South Fulton, TN and Fulton, Ky. I've been there several times. Back in the 70s, you could drink at 18 on the TN side, but not until 21 on the KY side. So you had to be careful which side of the street you walked on.
My great grand uncle, Martin Pierce, Co. G, 15th (Russell's)Regiment, Tennessee Cavalry, was in the fight at Ft. Pillow.
Fantastic story! I can still feel the scratch of those crinlolines and they certainly "stood out" far enough to cover up a saddle.
 
(Another branch of the Headleys ran a "station" on the Underground Railroad in Greene County, Pennsylvania, in the very southwest corner of the state. According to a book I have, there's a small complex of caves that at least at one time was named "N----r Rock" because of it.)
I'm sure that is true!
 
Sorry. No stories. My great grandfather was 50 and had 7 kids when the war broke out. He just hunkered dowm and complained about the "prizes" of salt and sugar. He only spoke enough English to trade in town, and he was, like many Northerners and Southerners, a subsistance farmer. That is, raise what it takes to feed your family and (hopefully) some excess to sell for bit of cash so momma could make and repair clothes.

Ever think of that? You can raise meat and feed it, but you have to buy salt and sugar, and cloth. You can grind your own flour but you are almost never self-sufficient.
 
Well, you know what they say. Methodists are just Baptists who will speak to each other in the liquor store. LOL!
"The River Runs Through It" has a line I've always laughed at. "A Methodist is a Baptist who can read." Not cute by current PC standards, but I thought it was funny.
 
OK. Here is one of mine.

My 2nd g-grandfather, Cullen Green Cribbs, was a circuit riding Cumberland Presbyterian minister in the early to mid 1800s. Later in life, he came off the circuit and farmed several hundred acres in Carroll Co, TN. He only had two slaves, Matt Cribbs, and a teenage girl, who had both lost their parents to disease. Rev. Cribbs son Aswell Preston joined the Union forces (6th TN Cavalry), while another son, William Thomas Calton, joined the Confederacy (Co. F, Faulkner's Regiment, Kentucky Cavalry). WTC found himself camped near Carroll Co., so he slipped off to visit his folks. Unfortunately, he was seen by some Union sympathizers who reported the sighting to a nearby Union detachment. The Cribbs family was warned that the Yankees were looking for their son so they hid him in the bottom of a well on the property.

When the Yankees quizzed Rev. Cribbs, he denied that WTC was there. They said they didn't believe him, stripped him of his shirt, tied him between two trees and proceeded to beat him with a bullwhip until he gave up the location of his son. Old Matt Cribbs came to his rescue and said, "I'm not going to let you whip this man. He is a man of God and if he says that his son isn't here, then he isn't". So the Union soldiers went away.

Of course, both the Reverend and Old Matt were lying their butts off. Matt Cribbs was celebrated for saving the Rev. and WTC. Later, Rev. Cribbs made provision for Matt to live with my great grandmother, Hiley Emily Clementine Cribbs Pierce, so she could take care of him in his later years. This is the story as related to me both verbally and in writing by my grandmother, Ruby Bates Pierce Evans.

Aswell Preston was captured at Bolivar, TN and died in a Confederate POW prison.
 
Sorry. No stories. My great grandfather was 50 and had 7 kids when the war broke out.
That's actually a great story! Too often, the stories of the citizens who lived through it are kind of lost between those of valor and despair of battle. I've told the story of how the Greens lost their ancestral home, Flamstead Hill, in VA. Although they supported the Confederacy, they never owned slaves (they had share croppers instead). And Charles Brimer Green didn't join the fight. Yet, they suffered and eventually lost everything just the same.
Thanks for sharing.
 
My great-grandfather, George William Ralston (1848-1931), lived with his family near Jefferson City, Missouri. Sometime early in the war, when he was 13 or 14, Confederate troops were retreating through the area and confiscated all the livestock they could find to prevent them from falling into Union troops' hands. One of the animals they took was George's beloved pony. One night soon after, George sneaked away from the family home and, using his knowledge of the local terrain, passed undetected through both Federal and Confederate pickets, only to present himself at the Confederate general's tent. There, he explained his situation and asked for his pony back. George explained that he was a small animal, not big enough to mount a trooper or help pull a gun, and of little use to the army. The general, impressed with his pluck and daring, agreed, and the animal was returned to George. Thereupon he and the pony successfully made it back through Union lines undetected, and home safely once again.

I've never tried to nail down the specifics of this story, and I'm a little dubious about it. I make no claims whatsover that it's factually true. But it makes a great yarn. This is George (lower left) with his family about 1903, when he would have been in his mid-50s. George's wife, Martha Julia "Mattie" Daffan, was the younger sister of Lawrence Daffan of the Fourth Texas Infantry that I've mentioned here before. The youngest child, upper right, is my maternal grandmother.

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Front Row, l. to r.: George William Ralston (.aka.a William George Ralston), b. 1848; Martha Julia "Mattie" Daffan, b. abt 1854; George Ralston, b. abt 1877. Middle Row, l. to r.: Margaret Mary "May" Ralston, b. abt 1879; Eavantha Daffan "Eva" Ralston, b. abt ____; Eulalia "Eula" Ralston, b. abt 1876, d. 1918; Sara Frances Goodwin Ralston, b. 1891, d. 1973. Back Row, l. to r.: William Ralston, b. 1889; Rubina Celeste "Rubi" Ralston, b. abt _____.
 
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"The River Runs Through It" has a line I've always laughed at. "A Methodist is a Baptist who can read." Not cute by current PC standards, but I thought it was funny.
LOL! I think most Methodist and Baptists are pretty good natured about the ribbing. At least this Methodist is. The more free speech the better!

I've actually been told that one of the reasons the Cumberland Presby. broke away from the regular Presbyterians was that they had educational requirements that were difficult to meet on the frontier.
 
My great-grandfather, George William Ralston (1848-1931), lived with his family near Jefferson City, Missouri. Sometime early in the war, when he was 13 or 14, Confederate troops were retreating through the area and confiscated all the livestock they could find to prevent them from falling into Union troops' hands....
What a wonderful story! I have it on good authority from the written account of my husband's 4th great grand uncle, Senator F. B. Ragland, who was a member of the TN Legislature during the "revolution" as it was called, that Confederate forces did, in fact, burn the crops in the fields to keep the Yankees from profiting from them. So your story has some truth to it and it is possible that it happened the way it was reported. What a daring lad!
 
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