the civil war experience as seen through the eyes of the female experience in williamson county,...
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8/6/2019 The Civil War Experience as Seen Through the Eyes of the Female Experience in Williamson County, Tennessee
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1878 Franklin Map
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Sallie Florence McEwen:
Sunday February 16, 1862.
Fort Donelson has fallen. Weare defeated. A great number of
prisoners have been taken,
among them a great number of
our acquaintances. There isgreat panic in Nashville, the
people are fleeing from there is
in great numbers.
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The 18th of May, 1861, was the day set for
the Williamson Greys, as they were called, to
depart for Camp Cheatham, to be drilled for
actual service, a never-to-be-forgotten day
with the mothers, sweethearts and friends.
Early in the day, the Company was drawn
up in front of the Presbyterian Church. After
a prayer by the Presbyterian pastor, Rev.
Morey, the soldiers were presented with a
pocket testament. The thoughtless fellows,many of them, threw them in the mud
puddles by the road side on their way to the
station, others carried them through the war,
and one was sent back from Atlanta, stained
with the life blood of our young relative [Kit
Ridley] who proved himself the noblestRoman of them all. Three young men
sacrificed their blood on their countrys altar,
Richard Irvin, Henry Walker, and Kit
Ridley.
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My father [John B. McEwen] realizing that
we were in range of the guns from both armies
told us to run down into the cellar. We hastily
threw a change of clothing into a bundle and
obeyed at once. My mother [Cynthia GrahamMcEwen], who never knew what fear meant in
her life, was a little reluctant to go and leave
the upper part of the house to the tender
mercies of soldiers, but she finally joined us in
the basement. A few minutes later there was a
crash and down came a deluge of dust andgravel. The usually placid face of our old
black mammy, now thoroughly frightened,
appeared on the scene. She said a cannon ball
had torn a hole in the side of the meat house
and broken her wash kettle to pieces. She left
the supper on the stove and fled precipitatelyinto the cellar.
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Fannie Courtney:
There were forty-four hospitals
in total three for the Federal
wounded and the rest for the
Confederates. Red flags were
waving from unoccupied
dwelling, the seminaries,
churches, and every business
house in town.
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My Mother and I took charge of a
hundred and twenty wounded men, who
occupied the Presbyterian Church, it
being the largest Federal hospital, and
with what we could spare assisted atanother which was in a house owned by
my mother and near our own home.
When we first went to the hospital, the
wounded men told us they had nothing
to eat for two days. We first furnishedthem with bread, meat and tea, and
coffee, every little luxury we could
prepare, for several days. Then they
drew scanty rations form the Rebels,
flour the color of ashes and a little poor
beef not suitable for well men, much less
for wounded. All the cooking was done,
and in truth, everything eatable
furnished, at our house.
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Sallie Hines McNutt:
Events after the fall of Nashville- 1862
An army of 20,000 men under Gen. Buell took
possession of Franklin, Tenn. on March 1st, 1862.
Early one Sunday morning, the advance guard of
Cavalry approached the town, broke ranks and the
men scattered over the town, prying into everyouthouse and back yard in search of concealed
Confederates. Four of the most disreputable men in
town suddenly became violent advocates of the
Union and piloted these soldiers to our homes, and in
many instances aided in the search. That day,
Sunday, the Infantry and Artillery came into the town
at 1 oclock p.m. They were the whole afternoon and
late in the night passing. They encamped in Col.
John McGavocks woodland, a half mile beyond our
home on the Lewisburg Pike. Gen. Buell and Staff
came out a few days later. Gen. Buells army was
under the strictest discipline. The rights of citizens
was guarded; no soldier allowed to trespass on theproperty of anyone; nothing touched; not even a
flower plucked. Through the week they were so
orderly, so circumspect and quiet, all feeling of the
intense dread that possessed everyone at the very
sight of their presence, seemed to be quieted. Many
of us felt that War was not such a terror after all.
Alas! how deluded we were!
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The Methodist College, across the street
from our front gate, was used as a hospital.
As soon as the Army was located in the
town, the hospital was filled with sick and
wounded. They sent up two men right at
once and carried our negro boys and men
there to wait on the sick. They did not half
feed them and worked them early and late.
The soldiers that were employed to press
help for the hospital, were expert thieves.
The day they came for the negro men, oneof the thieves turned back and ran up in the
back gallery. I had just left the door open
for a minute, heard someone come in,
thought it was Reuben, looked around just
in time to see him jerk up a handful ofsilver spoons and forks and run out. Of
course, I was powerless. He went down to
the hospital and showed the nurses in the
presence of the negroes he had just carried
down, what he got by going uponthehill.
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(Our house back in Franklin) It was so good for
barracks for the troops for the morning we were
banished, we had barely left the house before every
blind was taken from the windows to the Fort
[Granger] for tents. Soldiers moved in, but a short
time elapsed before negroes from Ala. and Georgia
were crowding in and they moved. The soldiers wentback to the Fort leaving our house to the renegade
negroes. We were compelled to leave my mothers
piano and some very nice heavy bedsteads and other
things in the house. It was very hard to find storage
for a great many valuables. My piano had been
moved from place to place many times before I saw
it again. Ladies told me of going to the house to hire
negroes and in my room my former cook, Ussie
(known then in fashionable Yankee society as Mrs.
Puryear) was cooking her dinner. On the andirons
was a part of one of the square posts to one of my
bedsteads and a piano leg, one end in the fire and the
other out on the hearth, with the brass ornaments androller burned black. The first negro school in
Tennessee was in my house, known as The McNutt
High School.
M P
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Mary Pearre:
Sunday Night Feby, 9th, 1863
Have been visiting all day ought to
make it a day lost. A Federal force is at
Franklin, Cavalry scouting foraging and
pressing horses and capturing secesh
soldiers. I am fearful that Robert will be
taken prisoner, not a dog barks but I
imagine the yankees are coming. Oh
when will it end, I told Mag to night I felt
as I would go crazy, Oh that we could
conquer a peace. I almost doubt theefficiency of a Republican form of
government, ours has not yet seen a
century. It is humiliating to reflect upon
our glorious past and then compare it with
the present, Oh! For a Washington, a
Jefferson, a Hamilton or a Jackson orsome such mighty spirits to guide us right
and bring this devastating war to an end.
At times I fondly imagine that Jefferson
Davis our talented and farseeing president
is the man. God grant that he may be.
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Betty Baugh Ryman:
Mother took all of us to the
McGavock farm for safety. They
began to bring in the wounded.
Mrs. McGavock had a new bolt ofdomestic, which she gladly used for
bandages. After this was exhausted,
they used all of the bed linen. By
and by the beds were full ofwounded, and the floors and even
in the yard. I waited on the
wounded all night. A campfire was
built at the feet of each wounded
soldier for warmth. So many
terrible things happened that I
could write volumes on the
subject.
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Martha Cunningham Harrison:
Oh, I should say so; he was mean as he
could be. He had an overseer that went round
and whipped the niggers every morning, and
they hadnt done a thing. He went to my father
one morning and said,Bob, Im gonna whip
you this morning. Daddy said, aint done
nothing, and he said, I know it, Im gonna
whip you to keep from doing nothing, and he
hit him with that cowhideyou know it would
cut the blood out of you with every lick if they
hit you hardand daddy was chopping cotton,
so he just took up his hoe and chopped right
down on that mans head and knocked his
brains out. Yesm, it killed him, but they didnt
put colored folks in jail then, so when old
Charlie Merrill, the nigger trader, come alongthey sold my daddy to him, and he carried him
way down in Mississippi. Old Merrill would
buy all the time, buy and sell niggers just like
hogs. They sold him Aunt Phoebes little baby
that was just toddling long, and Uncle Dick
that was my mammys brother.
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My name is Bessie Royce. I am an exile with my mother and sister from my dear sweet
home in Franklin, Middle Tennessee. I was ordered out of the Federal lines the 16th day of
April, 1863, by General Granger. Four days before we received our orders, the Federals and
Confederates fought around our house for three hours, but we were not alarmed in the least.
On the contrary, my mother captured four guns and a lot of ammunition, and I captured afine revolver by climbing over a fence seven feet high. We were left on the battlefield that
night with the dead. The Feds refused to move them until the next day. They then buried
the Confederates close by the side of us, but the precious Yankees were conveyed to the
cemetery. As I said above, we received orders four days after, to leave their lines in three
days. They then put guards around us so we could save nothing except our clothes.
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America Cattles Carter:
My friends are still in theSouth & my whole heart is
with them, yet I must say
that I am sick of this War &
would to Heaven all wouldlay down their arms & go
home.
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Mary Alice McPhail Nichol:
As evening came on the neighbors began to
come in. Mr. and Mrs. Sykes and two children, Aunt Fannie,
Aunt Dollie, my mother, Aunt Sallie McKinney Carter,
Grandpa and all the neighbors [Albert Lotz family] began to
go down in the cellar. Grandpa had already put rolls of rope
in the windows. Of course, I did not realize what it all meant,
but I soon found out it was to keep the bullets out.
The Negroes crouched down in the dining room,
and all the children and grandchildren and neighbors in the
hall and cellar, and Grandpa walked back and forth and
watching out the window. To the north he could see the
Yankee soldiers all around the house, how I remember the
first sound of the firing and the booming of the cannons. We
children all sat around our mother and cried and every chargethey made we could hear the Yankees running into the house
to catch on fire. The Yankees ran down the cellar steps and
hid and tried to get into the cellar and I remember the only
way we had to fasten the door was to put a plank under it.
Grandpa talked pretty rough to them. When we came out of
the cellar, and they were all on the steps. Grandpa had to
push them out so we could come up the steps. It was between
one and two oclock in the morning and such a sight we saw I
can never forget. The house was full of soldiers, the parlor
carpet was wet with blood. Most of the wounded had been
taken away and the whole house was open and the soldiers
coming and going all over the house. I remember seeing a lot
of soldiers in Yankee uniform coming down the stairs with a
confederate officer, he had captured them in the upstairs
room over the parlor. There were thirty of them and they hadnever fired a gun, but hid in the house during the Battle.
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Sallie Ewing Carter:
On one occasion, Mrs. T.
Handy, who was a very timid and quiet
lady, was out on the street and stopped on
the corner where the Arlington Hotelnow stands [First Tennessee Bank in
2007] and spoke to a lady friend. While
they were talking, a precession passed
taking a soldier to bury. Just as they
passed Mrs. Handy laughed at something
her friend said. An officer saw her right
then and as soon as the burial was over
he had her arrested, saying she was
laughing at his dead. And he said if it
were ever repeated that she would be sent
through the lines. Mrs. Handy neverlaughed on the street again during the
war. Not long after this Mr. and Mrs.
Handy were sent through the lines and
their house taken for headquarters.
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Ex-Confederate Resolution:
. . . We, citizens and ex-Confederate soldiers
of Williamson County, have heard with deep
regret of the untimely death of our fellow-
citizen, Gen. James P. Brownlow. He came tous during the war a stranger and an enemy,
holding the rank of Colonel in the Federal
army. Even while occupying this relation he
won the admiration of our soldiers for his
valor, and the kindness and justice to non-
combatants. He was thoroughly imbued withthe courage and chivalry of the Tennessean.
He lived long enough with us after the war to
change our esteem and respect into affection;
therefore,
Resolved, that we deplore his early
death, which has taken from us one of thenoblest and truest of men, and blighted our
hopes, which looked towards his future
usefulness as a man and a citizen.
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C.B. Ruggles, Relief Agent U.S. Sanitary Commission:Too much cannot be said in regard to the untiring exertions of the
ladies of Franklinnearly every family have labored as their
inclinations led them, either for Union men or Confederates. I am
pleased to mention those whom I know to have done all in their
power for our own men; Mrs. [Elizabeth] Hoffman (a widow ladywith two or three children and dependent on her own exertions for
support), and Mrs. [Perkins] Priest, aided by Mrs. [Henry] Eelbeck,
were the first to visit our wounded. They carried every day pails of
soup and coffee, and also biscuits prepared by their own hands to thebattlefield, and fed our boys till they were removed to hospitals,
which was not accomplished for four days.
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