Day 59. April 28, 1862.
59
saving the country from further desolation….
Monday 28
Quite wet this morning and it cleard off and was a very fine day. We had orders to march and had to have rations for five days. The boys are all buissy cooking. I don’t know of anything new and I was buissy packing up the medicines today. Got all packed up and ready to move and I hope we will have good weather
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 108
“April 28, 1862: White House borrows “Butler’s Works (Hudibras, etc.) 2 v.” from Library of Congress.”
Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War Michael C.C. Adams P. 203
“The wartime inability of relatives to find emotional closure, when the fate and resting place of so many thousands remained unknown, continued into the postwar years, prolonging anguish and exacerbating grief. Walt Whitman noted that the War Department estimated at least 25,000 Union dead had never received burial, 5,000 drowned could not be recovered, 15,000 lay buried in hastily dug, unmarked graves, and 2,000 corpses had been unearthed by erosion or animals. Whitman acknowledged the government’s efforts to collect remains into National Cemeteries to give as much recognition to the fallen as possible, but he thought officialdom underestimated the number of unidentified: “ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word UNKNOWN.”
P. 202-203
Historians have not done an outstanding job of tracing the consequences of wartime loss over generations. A fascinating exception is Prof. Don Fehrenbacher, who writes about his own family. George Outman, a forebear, was mortally wounded at Stones River, December 1862. The death brought grief and poverty to the family. Seven years later, the widow died while trying to relocate the family to Kansas. She left behind an eleven-year-old daughter, the historian’s grandmother. This grim scenario limited the young girl’s life choices and horizons. Her grandson speculates that, if Outman had survived, his daughter would have grown up differently and married differently, perhaps leading a richer and fuller life. “My very existence, it seems, is connected to a single deadly moment in Tennessee on the last day of 1862.’”
Note: See further below (in this April 28 entry) for my other 2x grandfather’s story– Lewis Brewer– who was in the society, or party. For more APS information: http://ancestrallychallenged.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=681 (I accessed this 7/19/22)
“In November 1861, Confederate authorities in Arkansas learned About an anti-war, perhaps pro-Union, secret organization, located primarily in the north central counties of the state.”
THE ARKANSAS PEACE SOCIETY OF 1861 From Russell P. Baker, Archivist
“In the mountain counties of North Arkansas in the fall of 1861 secret organizations were formed for self protection and apparently to resist Confederate authority. Total membership in the organizations was estimated at 1700 and was concentrated in Searcy, Marion, Carroll, Izard, Fulton, and Van Buren counties. In these counties and perhaps in several others, the local units of the Arkansas Peace Society were quickly suppressed by extra-legal citizens’ committees acting with the county militia units and with justice of the peace courts. Many of the arrested members were forced into Confederate service either by local citizens’ committees or by the state military board at Little Rock. Some were tried for treason in Confederate circuit and acquitted. Many of those forced into Confederate service deserted and joined the Federal army.
Only a part of the records relating to the Peace Society survived, but they are sufficient to show the scope and nature of the organization. Surviving documents contain the names of 240 members and suspected members. Of these 181 were located in the United States census manuscript schedules, 1860. An analysis of that record revealed that of the 181, 115 were born in Tennessee, 13 in North Carolina, and 11 in Arkansas. The leadership of the movement was also predominantly Southern-born. Six preachers among the leaders seem to have been especially influential. The brotherhood was indigenous, composed of mountaineers who had no intention of going to war on either side and who wanted to be left alone. There could of course be no neutrality, and the members were forced to take sides.”
From: Arkansas Historical Quarterly (Spring, 1958) page 83
“MEMBERS OF THE PEACE SOCIETY 1861
Adams, Green Berry – Adams, Joseph – Adams, Spencer – Addison, Mayfield – Arter, Carroll –
Arter, Joseph L. – Bailey, J. F. – Baker, B. A. – Baker, David C. – Baker, James A. – Ball, Gehuger
Ball, James W. – Barnes, James Jackson – Barnes, W. F. – Barnett, David – Bartlet, William
Bishop, Lindsay – Black, Simeon B. – Blasingame, Anderson – Bradshaw, Henry – Bradshaw, John H.
Bradshaw, William – Brantley, B. F. – Branum, Solomon – Bratton, William Milican – Brewer, Aaron V. B.
Brewer, Jonas – Brewer, Lewis S. – Brown, John – Brown, George – Brown, John – Brown, Solomon I.
Brown, William – Broyles, James F. – Carithers, John M. – Cash, Levi C. – Castleberry, John R.
Castleberry, Washington Cahal – Cates, William A. J. – Chambers, Jeff – Chambers, W. R. –
Christy, James F. Homer – Christy, John – Christy, Joseph C. – Clark, Lewis – Conley, Beverly L.
Cook, Henry – Copeland, Alexander N. – Copeland, James B. – Copeland, William – Cummins, Joseph
Curl, John W. – Curl, Samuel M. – Curry, Anderson – Curry, David – Curry, James E. – Davis, H. M.
Davis, William – Denton, Chris – Dickerson, E. – Downey, Patrick L. – Duck, Timothy Arthur –
Dugger, Jasper- Dugger, Thomas M. – Dugger, William M. – Ezell, Isiah – Ezell, John – Faught, Thomas J.
Faught, William C. – Fisher, William Thomas – Forehand, Jonathan – Forehand, Thomas – Foster, James
B. Gadberry, Wm. – Garner, Sr. Parrish – Garrison, _____ – Gary, B. H. – Gerner, Parish – Gilbreth, John
Grinder, Robert – Grinder, Samuel – Guthrey, Thomas – Harley, John – Harness, John W. – Harness, John
Harness, W. H. – Harris, John – Harris, Thomas – Harris, Wm. – Hatley, J. R. – Hatley, J. W. – Haynes, Wm.
Hays, George M. – Hays, Wm. – Hensley, F. H. – Hensley, P.M. – Henson, F. H. – Hoffs, John
Holly, Absolem – Holley, Alex – Holley, Reuben C. – Hollis, James M. – Holmes, John – Hooten, Geroge
Jamison, D. – Jeffery, Wm. – Jenkins, John H. – Johnson,Robert – Jones, Stephen – Kamey, Thomas
Kesner, W. A. – Kilburn Carroll – Kirkham, John W. – Kuykendall, Francis – Ladamon, R. C. – Laive, Jo
Lee, Robert – Long, George – Love, A. J. – Luttrell, James – Lynn, W. G. – Maness, Claiborine
Marshall, William H. – McBee, Alexander – McBee, James H. – McDaniel, John W. – McDaniel, William F.
McEntire, John A. – McInturn, Thomas W. – McLane, S. Allan – McMillan, E. L. – McNair, James Claiborn
Melton, Thomas – Moody, Jonathan – Morris, John Wortman – Morris, John, Jr. – Morris, John, Sr.
Morris, William – Null, John R. – Osborn, Eli L. – Packet, W. J. – Palmer, Benjamin F. – Parks, Daniel J.
Parks, Theophilus (Dink) – Parsley, A. A.- Parsley, Abraham J. – Parsley, J. B. – Passmore, Benjamin J.
Passmore, Joel Henry – Pearce, William – Phillips, Luther P. – Pierce, Austin – Potter, William F.
Price, Charles William – Price, Lindsay – Price, William – Ramsey, Smith – Reeves, Asa – Reeves, Jarrett
Reeves, Joshua – Reeves, Peter – Richardson, James C. – Richardson, Joshua – Ridings, James C.
Rose, M. – Ruff, David Crocket – Sanders, John L. – Satterfield, A. J. – Satterfield, John R.
Satterfield, Nathaniel – Satterfield, P. M. – Scott, William Franklin – Seaton, Nicholas – Shipman, Matthew Shirley, Wm. – Singleferry, Wm. C. – Slay, Benjamin F. – Slay, Thomas J. – Smith, Abner H. – Smith, Claiborn Smith, G. W. – Smith, Gilmore – Smith, John – Snellgrove, Gasaway – Stobaugh, Ananias – Stobaugh, Edmond Strickland, John Anderson – Strickland, Paris – Strickland, Samuel Smith – Strother, Wm. Sutterfield, Ananias J. – Sutterfield, Nathanial – Sutterfield, Peter Moore – Sutton, Logan – Tackett,
W. J. Taylor, Benjamin Franklin – Taylor, Hezikiah – Terry, Morgan M. – Thompson, James Patrick
Thompson, Samuel – Thompson, Thomas – Thompson, William J. – Tilley, James – Tinkle, Mike
Tinkle, Robert – Treadwell, John S. – Treat, James William – Treat, John B. – Treep, James
Treese, Benjamin – Treese, Daniel – Treese, William – Tucker, John Allen – Tucker, John Middleton
Turney, Bowman – Turney, Pleasant B. R. – Turney, Presley – Turney, Si (Josiah S.) – Tyler, Peter A.
Wallace, J. W. – Wallis, James – Ware, J. J. – Watts, Asa – Watts, Benjamin G. – Watts, Samuel
Webb, John – Wells, Wm. C. – Whitmire, Henry J. – Whitmire, J. J. – Wiley, Wallis – William Jasper
Wilson, John – Winn, Wm. M. – Woodrum, Vinsom M. – Woodworth, Nathan F. – Wortman, Christopher M. Wortman, Franklin – Wortman, John – Wren, Shadrich J. – Yeary, Wm. H. – Younger, Alexander
Younger, Thomas
There were members from other counties as well. These included: Marion, Newton, Carroll, Polk, Prairie, Pulaski, Izard, Fulton and Van Buren. A special thanks to Barbara Couser for contributing the information from the Arkansas Family Historian, Volume 21, Number 1, March 1983 – Publ. by Arkansas Genealogical Society.”
Note: There’s a lot online re this society. For documents relating to it, see the excellent two-part collection by Ted R. Worley at couchgenweb.com/civilwar/peacelst1
Carroll County Historical Quarterly, published by the Carroll County Historical Society (Carroll County, Arkansas. Vol. III, No. 1 March 1958
The Arkansas Peace Society of 1861: A Study in Mountain Unionism
By Ted R. Worley P. 9-10
“When Arkansas seceded from the Union May 6, 1861, the only dissenting vote in the convention was that of Isaac Murphy of Madison County in the mountain section of the state. The nearly unanimous vote for secession did not reflect a similar enthusiasm among the people. In several upland counties in the northwestern and north central parts of the state majority sentiment was probably opposed to secession. After the event, however, when loyalty rather than political opinion was at issue, most mountaineers chose the Confederacy. A strong minority remained loyal to the Union, and the mountain section furnished perhaps nine-tenths of approximately 8,000 Arkansans who joined the Federal army.
Apparently the earliest organized internal resistance to the Confederacy came in Arkansas, from secret societies in Searcy, Ban Burren, Izard, Carroll, Fulton, and Marion Counties. These six counties in the north central section of the state were contiguous to each other and three joined Missouri. The societies collectively were usually called the Peace Society or the Peace Organization Society but were also referred to as Home Protection Society, Home Guard, and in one instance as the Pro Bono Public Society. They were referred to vaguely in Arkansas newspapers as “jayhawkers,” a good propaganda term borrowed from the Kansas border. In mid-November, 1861, activities of these secret organizations considered treasonable were noticed in Searcy and Izard Counties by citizens loyal to the Confederacy, who were surprised to find extensive opposition to the cause among their neighbors.
Among the most surprised of all was Samuel Leslie, commandant of Searcy County militia, who, less than a month before, had written Governor Henry M. Rector emphatically to deny existence of disloyalty in his county. Colonel Leslie said,T“It is true the citizens of this county war union men as long as there was aney hope of Union and perhaps a little longer, but all Ida of the Union as it onst was is banished the time has passed for the North and South to live together in pease and harmoney and we must be loyal to the government we live under this is the feeling of the people of this county so fare as I have any Knolledg and when you hear men call the people of Searcy Co. by hard names rest assured they are wilfully lying or misinformed with (respect to) the character of our people.”
On November 20 word came to Leslie that about one hundred loyal citizens in Locust Grove Township, assisted by others from Izard County, were arresting supposed members of a secret organization hostile to the Confederate States. Colonel Leslie immediately took a portion of his militia to the vicinity, where he found about fifty men under arrest. The first members arrested, probably under promise of leniency and threat of hanging, revealed secrets and names of other members including leaders. The brotherhood, it was discovered, was fully formed, with constitution, initiatory oath, passwords, signs, and tokens. A bit of yellow ribbon or rag on a post or on the wall of a cabin meant, to the initiated, that a brother resided there. A wolf howl was a sign to be answered by the hooting of an owl. “It’s a dark night” was a password to be answered “Not so dark as it will be before morning.”
Colonel Leslie mobilized the rest of the Searcy County militia and during two weeks following made further arrests. By December 5 the courthouse at Burrowville, the county seat. Was filled with members and suspected members of the society. Meantime couriers had carried to Governor Rector information collected from prisoners and others. Rector immediately dispatched an order to Colonel Leslie, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Arkansas Militia, saying,“I and my officers in the State are sworn to enforce the laws as they are–and individuals, one or many, revelling against these laws, must be looked after and if for the safety of the country, it becomes necessary to arrest and imprison them or to execute them for treason, that must and will be done promptly and certainly, if it is necessary to call out every man in the State to accomplish it……
You will therefore proceed to arrest all men in your county who profess friendship for the Lincoln (sic) government – or who harbor or support others arousing hostility to the Confederate States or the State of Arkansas. And when so arrested you will march them to this place, where they will be dealt with as enemies of their country– whose peace and safety is being endangered by their disloyal and treasonable acts.”
In compliance Colonel Leslie sent seventy-eight of the arrested men to Little Rock under guard of one hundred soldiers. To prevent possible escape, and perhaps also to make an example of them, the suspected traitors were linked in pairs with ordinary trace chains and marched over the rough ninety miles of rough road to the capital in the shortest possible time.
Meantime in Carroll County on the Missouri border suspects were dealt with firmly but in less summary fashion. There a justice of the peace court, consisting of magistrates Kelly Fostherston and William Owen “siting (sic) as a Court of Enquiry & Investigation into certain secret Treasonable and Insurrectionary Society,” heard testimony from twelve members of the brotherhood which implicated themselves and twenty-two other men. The twenty-two were ordered committed for further trial and conveyed to Little Rock under a guard composed of Arkansas Cavalry Volunteers, C.S.A. and surrendered to the Governor. The twelve informers were bonded to appear before the Governor for further testimony.’
Note: Back to March, a quote out of the North Carolina Standard suggesting “all would be well if only five-hundred public men from both sections could be” “’transported or confined in dungeons for six months.’”
And what Henry Ward Beecher had to say about it all: “The whole guilt of this war rests upon the ambitious, educated, plotting, political leaders of the South. They have shed this ocean of blood….”
A selfish handful of men & is this why? Did he know this? Is this why he was escorted in chains the distance from where he was captured to that courthouse in Little Rock. Was Lewis aware of this? I bet he was. I bet they all were.
Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War Elizabeth R. Varon P. 57
“They launched raids against Confederate assets such as railroad bridges, and risked execution if caught. The persecution of East Tennessee loyalists captured the imagination of the Northern public. But the Union army was slow to make inroads into East Tennessee.”
The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and its Legacies Victoria E. Bynum P. 34-35
“Like deserters throughout the Civil War South, Big Thicket jayhawkers relied on civilians, especially wives, to provide them with staples such as coffee, corn, tobacco, and salt. Surrounded by beehives, the Collins band cut down the trees, gathered honey from the hives, and set up a thriving system of barter. According to local memories, the men took a large plank and placed it between two pear trees to fashion a table. There they laid out honey, venison, and whatever else the woods had to offer. Wives and friends then retrieved the goods and sold them in Beaumont, where they bought tobacco and coffee to return to the deserter’s makeshift table. Other Hardin County women confronted the supervisor of a government corn crib, demanding that he, as a “gentleman,” allow them free access to his corn that they might feed their hungry families.
But the Collins band would eventually have its showdown, too, with Confederate forces. The story comes mainly from folklorists. Lacking military reports and letters from the Official Records of the Confederate Army, historians have relied on tales told by old-times, such as pipe-smoking, seventy-five-year-old Cornelia Sutton, affectionately called “Aunt Deal.” News feature writer Dean Tevis interviewed Sutton in 1930 in her “picturesquely lonely back-country house in the depths of the Hardin County thicket,” wearing a “patterned calico dress.” Folksy in content rather than scholarly, such interviews are forerunners of today’s genre of oral history and provide intriguing narratives of the past, which are often the first steps toward historical verification.
The most enduring and popular Civil War folktale about Warren Collins is that of the “Kaiser Burnout.” According to legend, Captain Charles Bullock of the 24th Texas Cavalry was determined to capture the jayhawkers of the Big Thicket. At one point he is said to have done so, only to have them escape under his nose. Ever the trickster, Warren Collins reportedly played the fiddle and danced a jig for guards in the front part of the jail while his men slipped out the back. Somehow Warren was able to slip away too.
In spring 1865, a frustrated Bullock ordered Captain James Kaiser into the Big Thicket with orders to capture the jayhawkers. Legend has it that Captain Kaiser, unable to penetrate their hideout, decided, literally, to burn the men out. At his command, Kaiser’s forces set the woods on fire, eventually burning two to three thousand acres of land in the Thicket. In the end, the tactic did not work. Although two outliers reportedly died in the flames none were captured, and Warren Collins and his brother remained outlaws in a Confederate nation that was taking its last breaths.
Historians have verified the actions of Captain Charles W. Bullock, and environmental experts agree that someone burned between two and three thousand acres of the Big Thicket, but a Captain James Kaiser in Texas military records is not to be found. Historians have, however, located a Captain H.W. Kyser (the only officer in Texas with that surname) who belonged to Co. G of the 12th Texas Cavalry. This Kyser, records show, was a member of a battalion commanded to hunt jayhawkers and deserters in Hardin County, and thus it appears that the folk legend of Kaiser’s Burnout is based on solid historical evidence.
Note: The Committee on War Claims will deny Southern Unionist Newt Knight’s third and last petition (1900) for compensation. He stayed loyal and resisted the Confederacy all the way through surrender in 1865.
P. 78
Newt Knight’s petitions of the government then faded into oblivion, practically lost to historians despite the unparalleled insights they provide into the South’s most famous Unionist uprising.
P. 23
Historians continue to struggle to understand the guerrilla bands that roamed the South during the Civil War. The communities of dissent that produced Newt Knight, Warren Collins, and Bill Owens were located in widely separated states and provide an opportunity to study Southern Unionism in a comparative context. Each man’s community differed in expression and level of dissent, demonstrating the importance of physical, economic, and political environments, as well as community traditions and cultural beliefs, in generating sustained resistance to Confederate authority. Despite wide distances between the communities, they are linked to one another by migration patterns from the settled East to the Southwest and onward to the West. In the wake of the American Revolution, families migrated from the backcountry of North Carolina to that of South Carolina and then on toward Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The quest for fresh forests and grazing lands amid expanding plantation agriculture continued into Texas, particularly after its annexation to the United States in 1845.
But the connections among these communities are about more than migration patterns. North Carolina was the ancestral seedbed for migrants to Jones County, Mississippi. In turn, many citizens of Jones County moved on to East Texas before the Civil War. Somewhere between North Carolina and Mississippi, Newt Knight’s Quaker heritage was replaced by Baptist allegiances. And, in Texas, Warren Collins of Mississippi entered a state where prosecession rhetoric would be tied to Texas’s 1836 revolution and its annexation a decade later to the United States.
Still, similarities among the communities are striking: most obvious are their locations outside the cotton belt, which extended across the South. In all three, men who deserted the Confederacy received strong civilian support, not only for rejection of Confederate military service but also for waging war on the Confederate government. Men hid in the woods to avoid conscription but also organized and armed themselves for battle much like any regular soldier. Extensive ties of kinship and neighborhood were essential, and women, children, and slaves aided their missions.
P. 95-96
Nor was the U.S. Government much interested in handing out money to Southern Unionists, especially by 1900. At the national level, slavery was no longer trumpeted by either Northern or Southern elites as the cause of the Civil War. The nation had reconciled its differences with comforting images of a tragic war fought by honorable men over abstract principles of constitutional right.
The Civil War was the defining moment in Newt Knight’s life, reshaping his political view of the world and propelling him to forever assert his independence from conventional authority. For the rest of his life, he would revisit the years 1863-1865, filing claims until the close of the century in a vain attempt to gain compensation for his and his band of men’s loyalty to the U.S. Government. Ironically, the Southern white man who fought with such ferocity against Confederate forces on the battlefield spent much of his old age battling the U.S. Government he had defended.
In 1892, or shortly thereafter, Newt bluntly assessed the war that had dominated his entire adult like. Southern nonslaveholding farmers, he told an interviewer, should have risen up and killed the slaveholders rather than agree to fight their war. For it was slaveholders, he proclaimed, who clambered for war in order to protect their peculiar institution against “preachers” up north and women who “wrote books” against slavery. The northern abolitionist movement, he claimed, had stimulated Southern “common people” to steal slaves and lead them to freedom via the Underground Railroad, but slaveholders “could not take this, and so they brought on war.” In the process, they had tricked Southern common men into fighting their war for them.
Such words were heresy to most white Southerners by 1892, but Newt seemed not to care. The lessons of the past twenty-five years had not been lost on him. Being on the winning side did not assure one a place at the table; the fruits of victory were routinely denied to “little men” such as him. With his suit dismissed once and for all in 1900, it was hardly surprising that Newt would conclude that only a massive uprising of the common people could have prevented the travesty of a slaveholders’ war.”
Past and Present of Jasper County, Iowa (1912) Vols I James B. Weaver P. 373-375
Note: On migrations: According to Jacqueline Jones in A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America (P. 250), 1.2 Black people left the South between 1916 and 1927.
*Most have heard of events at Lawrence, but not of the Sand Creek Massacre later that year. The land at Sand Creek was the Cheyenne’s according to an 1851 treaty, and repromised to them just the day before November 29th, when, over eight hours, 150-600 or more mainly women, children, and elderly Cheyenne & Arapaho were hunted down by the 1st and 3rd Colorado Cavalry and New Mexico troops. Company D and K of the 1st Colorado Cavalry refused orders to fire. An American flag as well as a white flag Black Kettle placed up were clearly visible. “I saw one squaw cut open, with an unborn child lying by her side.” Robert Bent, New York Tribune, 1879. Also in the New York Tribune, 1879, was Major Anthony of the 1st Colorado: “There was one little child, probably three years old, just big enough to walk through the sand. The indians had gone ahead, and this little child was behind, following after them. The little fellow was perfectly naked, travelling in the sand. I saw one man get off his horse at a distance of about seventy-five yards and draw up his rifle and fire. He missed the child. Another man came up and said, ‘let me try the son of a b-. I can hit him.’ He got down off his horse, kneeled down, and fired at the little child, but he missed him. A third man came up, and made a similar remark, and fired, and the little fellow dropped.” Scalps, genitalia, and fetuses were put on display in area saloons and at the Denver Apollo Theater. President Roosevelt: “[The Sand Creek Massacre was] as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.” Also Roosevelt: “Life should be led like a cavalry charge.” I guess so. Note that not until 1924 does Congress grant universal citizenship to Native Americans, a full 59 years after all the slaves were freed. That’s 148 years after the Declaration of Independence. Over 500 treaties with Native Americans were not honored. See: A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek by Ari Kelman.
Note: What’s termed “English Justification Narratives” — a White English God who chose White English people to settle where the Indigenous all died of the Plague they, the Whites, brought. God killed ’em all to get Whites in.
Note: Roosevelt: In Dr. Hays’ (our Dr. Hays, Ephraim’s boss & champagne slurper) papers stored at the U.S. Heritage and Education Center is this: https://emu.usahec.org/alma/multimedia/184584/20182819MN000022.pdf which appears to be a newspaper clipping about a Harry P. Hays, D.S. Hay’s son, Harry Price Hays, 1869–1954. Harry at the time had an article in Harper’s Weekly sticking up for a Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Harry “defends President Roosevelt from the onslaughts of the nature fakirs, asserting that Mr. Roosevelt is doing more to preserve our heritage than all his foes combined. Mr. Hays is an ardent admirer of the president and as he shares that illustrious personage’s proclivities for the woods and the hunting field [sic] is able to perceive in him qualities which others have not been able to see.” Since Roosevelt was president from 1933-1945, so it’s safe to assume Harry himself may have slipped this newspaper clipping about himself into his own father’s papers.
Note: Booker T. Washington had dinner with FDR at the White House in 1901. S.C. Senator Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman: “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.” That was the last time FDR had a Black guest to the White House. Incidentally, he was the one who named it the White House. No other African-American ate dinner at the White house for the next 28 years. After Washington’s visit, Mississippi Senator James K. Vardaman said, “so saturated with the odor of nigger that the rats had taken refuge in the stable.” The Memphis Scimitar: “the most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States.”
They’re still salting the Earth in his wake (as well as Jeff’s, who later says fake news that slavery had anything to do with the war, & it’s a lie down to the ground. Good luck getting through his 707 page screed about happy slaves flourishing in the best form of government since the Continental Congress). FDR was elected four times to the presidency (1933-45, when he died in office); a 1951 Amendment took care of that, setting the term limit at four years. The Dawes Act of 1887, which subdivided tribal landholdings into allotments, had by FDR’s term in 1934 reduced acreage from 100–138 million acres to 47 million, or “two-thirds of the land base they held in 1887.” Grant, as president, was responsible for stealing 17 million acres of Blackfeet property. As long as you draw breath and gunpowder burns, Mister Man Dawes.
Last, if there is any question about how the Lost Cause could have spread across the Mason-Dixon, listen to FDR in 1936 at the unveiling of yet another new Lee statue (Lee Park in Dallas), who came right out & said, “All over the United States we recognize him as a great leader of men, as a great general. But, also, all over the United States I believe that we recognize him as something much more important than that. We recognize Robert E. Lee as one of our greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen.”
Note last: ‘American Indian Wars’ (if you use the word “war” to define the one-sided forced removal of an entire populace from 99% of all their land, at minimum, much less cultural genocide) continued through 1918; Battle of Bear Valley is listed as one of the last times the U.S. Army fired on Native Americans, in this instance the Yaqui. Of course, from then on the Indigenous will be fired on in a myriad of other ways just as lethal. Note: Colonization in the 15th century in America killed so many it disturbed Earth’s climate. In the 1860s, it’s said some Native Americans hoped both sides of the White men would simply kill each other off.
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide Carol Anderson P. 172
“Quoting sociologist Tressie McMillan: “Whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, and against its own laws and customs.’”
Ottawa Chief Pontiac: “They came with a Bible and their religion. They stole our land and crushed our spirit, and now tell us we should be thankful to the ‘Lord’ for being saved.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates: “It should not surprise us a hoard addicted to the national myth that pitched white men as the unvarnished savior of all civilization is not primed to share the country that they’ve been taught to own. It is myth that sanctifies their action.”
Desmond Tutu: “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “let us close our eyes and pray.” When we opened them, we had the Bible, and they had the land.”
Lucille Clifton:
why some people be mad at me
sometimes
“they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep remembering
mine.”
Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War Elizabeth R. Varon P. 134
“This was a campaign of extermination, driven by an implacable hatred: Chivington instructed his troops to “kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.” Although he faced some criticism in the east, Chivington was regarded as a hero by western settlers. Their continued encroachment on Indians’ traditional hunting grounds set the stage for the decades of Plains warfare after Appomattox. “For Native people gazing east from the banks of Sand Creek,” historian Ari Kelman has written, the Civil War “looked like a war of empire, a contest to control expansion into the West, rather than a war of liberation.’”
The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and its Legacies Victoria E. Bynum P. 28
“Returning to North Carolina, the ancestral home of Free State of Jones and Big Thicket guerrillas, we find the most explosive mixture of political, social, and economic forces of all. Violent, widespread, and protracted inner civil wars raged throughout the state’s Piedmont region. More North Carolina soldiers deserted the Confederacy than in any other state, and numerous outlaw bands roamed the countryside almost from the very beginning of the war. Because of fierce resistance to secession in the Piedmont, local home guard units were organized as early as May 1861 but soon proved inadequate to the task of enforcing loyalty. Confederate militia who were sent to the area essentially occupied a region in which many people never accepted the Confederate government as legitimate.
As a result, confrontations between anti- and pro-Confederate forces were ongoing in the North Carolina Piedmont, whereas in Jones County they were sporadic and in Hardin County they were few and far between. Acts of resistance and revenge were also more amply documented. Numerous letters, official reports, and court cases reveal wartime breakdowns in class relations. References abound to deserter bands such as that led by Bill Owens, who hailed from a neighborhood made up primarily of plain farmers and craftsmen.
Located in the heart of the Quaker Belt, the Randolph County area became North Carolina’s center of militant Unionism during the war. Violence erupted among pro- and anti-Confederate citizens of the North Carolina Piedmont almost immediately after war was declared. Large numbers of men evaded or deserted Confederate Army service from the outset; others waited until after the first year of war to desert, returning to supportive families and communities mobilized in opposition to the Confederacy.”
The Civil War The Final Year: Told by Those Who Lived It Edited by Aaron Sheehan-Dean P. 714-715 Diary of Samuel T. Foster, of the 34th Texas Cavalry had joined the Army of Tennessee, and wrote this entry near Greensboro, North Carolina.
April 27
“No move today. This evening Muster Rolls are made out and all hands including officers and men draw 1.25 in silver– the first silver larger than a dime I have seen in a long while.
Just before night the following order from Head Qurs is read
Hd Qurs Army of Tenn
near Greensboro N C April 27, 1865
Genl order
NO 18
By the terms of a military convention convention made on the 26th inst. by Maj. Gen. W. T. Sherman U S A. and Gen. J. E. Johnson C. S. A. the officers and men of this army are to bind themselves not to take up arms against the U. S. until properly relieved from that obligation, and shall receive guarantees from the U. S. Officers against molestation by the U. S. Authorities, so long as they observe that obligation, and the laws in force where they reside.
For these objects a duplicate muster roll will be immediately made, and after distribution of the necessary papers, the troops will march under their officers to their respective States, and there be disbanded, all retaining their personal property. The object of this convention is pacification to the extent of the authority of the commanders who made it.
Events in Va. which broke every hope of success by war imposed on its General the duty of sparing the blood of this gallant army, and saving the country from further desolation and the people from ruin.
J E Johnson
General”
Note: As I type this, I think of all those stories that didn’t survive, the forever untold stories, because no one survived to tell them throughout history. All the events that never got documented. We have a feather from a bird, a few feathers at times, but no bird. I think of the legacies of ancestral pain & horror through the generations, & how that has played out in America.
During the Civil War, chance, circumstance, geography, fate & feint of lottery directed many early Americans’ eventual lines of people. My grandmother (my mother’s mother Avis Maisie Tuggle Doppler, 7/19/1909) was only born because a Confederate Captain by the name of Cordelle, in cold blood, executed my 2nd great grandfather’s first wife (in front of her 11 year old son). And she only married him because her first husband got killed in the war; I think he may have been James Henry Birkes, with whom she may have had 1 or 2 children, one of whom was named John. Break out the flowcharts. Stories like this were common in that era because so many were killed.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20180825071956/http://notfog.com/lewis_s_brewer
So the website is no more but you can find all the pages of it at the Internet Archive, 12/24.
The Arkansas Peace Party was one of many Union strongholds during the war in a free & independent area like the State of Scott (TN.), the Republic of Winston (AL.), Nickajack (North AL, East TN.) the New Virginians (WVA.), Jones County (MS.), & the Texas Hill Country. More attention needs paid specifically to southern resistance. I only found it in snatches here & there in my research. Anyone want to do a website, film, book, whatever?
Ancestry trivia: My mother’s mother’s grandfather (my 2nd great grandfather) Lewis Solomon Brewer (1832-1879, born in Wayne, Tennessee), his grandmother, who lived to 95, was one of 20 siblings, one of whom Lanier Brewer Jr., 1746-1824, married: “Narcises Cherokee Indian in 1768”; supposedly Cherokee– with a bit of Shawnee– of the Aniwodi Red Paint Death Clan, OR Tuckahoe now known as Lundee, OR just, “Indian concubine,” her husband Lanier Jr., supposedly having 30 male offspring, & 3 female via 2? 3? women).
Where were we? Lewis had moved to Arkansas with his first wife Martha. No idea what happened to Martha. There’s so much contradictory Brewer genealogy online that I have pretty much no idea if this Brewer info. here is even accurate. On ancestors.familysearch.org there’s a photograph of Narcises supposedly married to Lanier, both names misspelled, dates all wrong, then under the “activities” area is “Traditional Dress,” the suggestion to “Put your face in a costume from Rebecca Narcissa’s homelands.” How bout we don’t. And considering the earliest known photograph was taken in 1826 or 1827, I highly doubt this young woman someone’s purporting is Narcises, who died in 1834 at 94. Anyway, “about 1816” five of Lanier Jr’s son’s “left North Carolina and headed for Tennessee. Henry, Royal, Wiley, Joseph and Cornelious” according to notfog.com/lanier_b_brewer_jr.
For a break in the family history trivia: Supposed to be the very first picture of lightning, 1882. Captured by William A. Jennings:
When war broke out, my 2xgrandfather Lewis, his brothers, & other family members like cousins refused to sacrifice their southern bodies for a slavery cause that had nothing to do with them so they joined the Arkansas Peace Party. When Confederate authorities discovered its existence, they arrested 78 members then forced-marched –via 100 guards, apparently– them 6 days, in chains, to Little Rock to stand trial. Rather than sit the war out in jail (leaving his family with zero protection), Lewis was forced to join the Home Guard to fight insurgents, the very type of men he had tried to be. Come April, 1864, when Lewis had to be away guarding, a Confederate Captain named Cordelle broke into his home and beat his wife Martha to death in front of Lemuel, their eleven year old son. Later, Lemuel identified Cordelle as the killer, so Lewis and Martha’s brother Green Hensley hunted Cordelle down & killed him. Missouri Hodges– already a war widow– and my 2xgrandmother– was the woman he married later that year. They had four children (two son’s names were Plato and Socrates; my mother still has Socrates’ shaving mug handed down).
Violence followed Lewis to the end. It was Christmas Day. His daughter– my great grandmother Chloe– was just ten years old the day he was murdered. His obituary from an 1879 newspaper:
On yesterday, at Clemens’ still, on Calf Creek, near the place of the late disaster, a quarrel arose between Joseph Clemens and Louis Brewer (Clemens’ wife’s stepfather), which resulted in Clemens shooting Brewer twice through the body, killing him. Brewer lived about two hours. We have not learned the cause, but think it whisky and an old grudge.
It is to be greatly regretted, for both were good, honest, industrious citizens, each having many friends.
As well, The Arkansas Gazette January 16th, 1880:
“The community [Calf Creek] is also thrown into great excitement over the death of L.S. Brewer, at the hands of W.J. Clemons, who is now at large. The cause of the trouble grew out of a quarrel concerning whisky traffic, in which it seems that Brewer was underselling Mr. Clemons, which he took offense at. They had been partners for years in the mercantile business but at the time of which I speak, Clemons was running a distillery, and being called upon by Brewer. In the course of the conversation a dispute arose, then difficulty, in which Brewer was shot, and mortally wounded, by Clemons.”
3/2/25 Edit: The below certainly throws a proverbial wrench into the works. It’s off https://www.brewer-family.org/genealogy/brewer/family. And, well, who the hell killed Lewis, then? But hey, way to bury the lede with “charges dropped.” Took five Brewers, incl. a PONY Brewer, to take the two men down. Lewis took in at least four orphaned minor Brewers, so his death must have been doubly hard on these kids. Something– besides the mystery surrounding who exactly murdered Lewis, or even why, at this point– tells me there was more to the story than met the record or newspaper.
Note: I think Lewis ended up in McNair’s 4th Regiment, Arkansas Infantry, Co. H, as a Private, & left the same rank. There were other Brewers in Co. G: a Henry: 11/17/61; “Discharged for disability 10Feb1862.” There was a James: 11/17/61; “Druggist at St Johns College Hospital Little Rock, AR Aug1863.” And there was a William: 11/17/61; “Nurse in St Johns College Hospital Little Rock, AR Jun1862.”
But strangely, Lewis’s brother Wiley Jackson Brewer somehow managed to make it over to the Union side, joining Co. A of the 2nd TN Mounted Infantry, Co. A. Wiley’s buried in his family-named cemetery. Reported deserted at Clifton along with 2 others on 9/2/64. Charge removed by Special Order #164, Dept. of the Cumberland. Honorably discharged. A letter “on explanation of desertion” is dated 1/26/65. The same letter of explanation in Wiley’s file shows up in two other Co. A. soldier’s files. Wonder what the story was, because men kept deserting at Clifton at various times, & also at Nashville. Some men from A are described physically, many with “gray eyes.” Looks like only one man deserted Co. A & meant it.
(Picture of the brothers lower left courtesy of Brenda Copeland on findagrave.com; Wiley on the right, his brother Josiah on the left. The gravestone pic is by Sue McCluskey, also on findagrave. 3rd pic is Lemuel Wiley Brewer, a son of Lewis Brewer (1853-1932). Then a son of Lemuel was Solon Lecurtis Brewer (1874-1957), who notfog.com says traded a couple horses & a wagon for 240 acres of land near Cedardale, Oklahoma & he is also pictured again with his wife Mary & his father Lemuel Brewer. Solon had Phillip Miles Brewer (1917-1991), who was a WWII flight engineer on B-17 bombers. This picture on notfog.com is titled “Mom and Dad by truck” & I love this one. Whoever runs notfog.com isn’t reachable, but pics 3-6 are from notfog):
More on Missouri: Missouri Hodges Brewer (1/23/1838-10/25/1909) was born in Calf Creek, Searcy, Arkansas to– according to Ancestry.com, so I don’t know for sure– Isham Hodges (born 1812 in Tennessee) and Irena C. “Rena” Horn (born 1816 in Rome, Georgia). At some point after Lewis dies, Missouri hauls her four children (in 1880, John aged 14, Chloe 10, Socrates 8, and Plato 6) and rides all the way to Utah. She gives birth to my grandmother in a room at Park City hospital, the same room my grandmother will give birth to my mother. Chloe, some of her scattering of children, and her mother Missouri are buried at Glenwood Cemetery in Park City. Seven other close blood relatives are there as well, & their some of their spouses. I remember being here visiting as a child with my mother & her parents, & I’m 99% certain I met Mel Fletcher one day.
But it’s now cemetery in disrepair, as I discovered in a recent visit. Overgrown, & not tended at all except for in the very front where they mow the lawn. We found various graves only by walking on some of them in the weeds, not knowing they were there. I never found all the graves my mother, on her 80th birthday, asked me to take pictures of. On her next visit, we’re going to find who has oversight, because this is very upsetting to her to the point she cried.
In 2012, a 4-year-old was killed when he climbed a six-foot-tall 1800s tombstone. The cemetery won the lawsuit. This was years after Mel Fletcher’s death, the cemetery caretaker for many years. 11/12/21 email from my mother: “The man who cared for the cemetery for 50 years died a few years ago and no one has replaced his dedication. He was a wonderful man and when I was a kid I had a crush on him. As an adult I finally told him and he laughed.” I asked if he was “cute,” & she said no, just very kind & understanding. Because she grew up in Keetley (ghost town now) she spend a fair amount of time in the cemetery. Apparently I answered back, “The thing that stands out the most for me having spent all this time writing about history– is when we die, all our stories also die UNLESS they’re passed down. It’s eerie when you think about it. All the thousands of years of humans, now like they never existed. The thousands of ancestors who bred & made our lives possible. The only thing we have to show they ever lived are our genes. I didn’t even get grandma or grandpa’s stories. It points to the present moment is all we ever have. So if you want to pass on any stories, at least there’s the chance they’ll end up living through something I write. So what was the caretaker’s name? Was he cute? I don’t know why they don’t keep it up, considering Park City, that area is now so snooty & rich.”
In fact, the Sundance Film Festival comes here each year, the largest independent film festival in the U.S., founded in 1978. Wikipedia (for what it’s always worth) has, in 2016, 46,600 through that year. Park City is supposedly the “nation’s 2nd wealthiest small urban area.” 8,396 folks, with the largest ski areas in America, 7000 feet in the air. For some history, see: https://www.parkcitymag.com/arts-and-culture/2018/12/how-park-city-survived-the-ghost-town-years-of-the-1950s
https://bit.ly/3KPhwkN On Keetley, from 1994. “The Birth and Death of a Small Town”
I hadn’t realized until researching that my mother grew up in such a tiny area. Imagine growing up somewhere & now it’s gone. Her father Harry Andrew Doppler was a mining engineer there, whose bone cancer death may or may not be tied to the mines. Doppler, the effect, Christian (1803-1853), from what I read died of a blood clot from the same blood disorder he passed down Harry’s side to my mother & I. Supposedly the same Doppler. Who knows. I’d have to trace it, but the story is he & Harry were related.
Back to the war: Lewis was buried in Arkansas at an unknown location. EDIT 12/2/24: Discovered at long last he’s at McDaniel Cemetery, in Snowball, Searcy County, Ark.
There was a prior entry for him at findagrave that was bogus, but as of today, there exists one legit one for him. The below gravestone photos of his are from his accurate FindAGrave memorial. Wrong dates, yet the picture taken off notfog.com (below) is the right Lewis Solomon Brewer. This is Lewis posing with perhaps the same revolver that killed him at notfog.com:
I am indebted to notfog.com for Lewis Solomon Brewer’s story, without which– because my grandmother never spoke of her relatives except to call them “a bunch of horse thieves”– I would never know this history. See June 20 for hopefully the last of the family story time travel. [4/29/22 addendum: Because I can’t help myself, apparently, I’ll return here at some point with more. Turns out a phone conversation with my mother today revealed the Brewers or Tuggles or both were slaveholding families in the south. This is odd, since I’d asked a few times before, pointing out “Tuggle” is also a Black name in the south (which may or may not tie to slavery directly). I looked for hours at my specific Brewer line going way back to 1544 Somerset, England, then to Arkansas & found nothing today, which doesn’t mean there’s nothing. My mother told me Chloe’s grandparents were “big, big slaveholders in Arkansas, which is why Missouri wanted to leave.” Of course, there was also the fact her husband got shot to death over whiskey by his son-in-law, to where no one could even say where he got buried right after? …. & after that, Missouri got out of Searcy County to Utah. Married 3x, her last husband John O. Brown (1839-1924) was also born at Searcy. Not sure which side the slaveholders would have been on. Definitely unsettling to have this question in my family history. Bad.]
[May 1: Indeed, a John Brewer (1594-1635?), grocer on Bartholomew Lane in Chard, England, came to Isle of Wight, VA. & got classified as an “Ancient Planter,” owning two huge estates. Was in the State of VA. Legislature. By 1669, his descendants down the line had 87,621 pounds of tobacco, a shitton of gold & silver, the list goes on. I’m gathering what I can & will update in a later entry. Ugly to see the word “chattel” & “stock” in these wills down the line.]
Tobacco on the Chesapeake
“Sir George Yeardley died on 12 November 1627 and his widow sold his land in Stanley Hundred on 9 February 1628 to a Lieutenant Thomas Flint. Thomas Flint obtained patent on this land on 20 September 1628. Thomas and Mary Flint conveyed their title to the 1,000 acres in Stanley Hundred to a merchant named John Brewer in January 1629. At this point in time Stanley Hundred had enough residents to send two men to represent the area at the House of Burgesses, including John Brewer. Brewer then became a member of the Virginia Governor’s Council in 1632 and served until his death in 1635. John Brewer, son of John and Mary Brewer, inherited the “plantation in Virginia called Stawley Hundred als Bruers Borough” after the death of his father. The second John Brewer served as a Burgess for Isle of Wight County in 1657 and 1658. He died intestate in 1669. His nephew and namesake, John Brewer, was to next to gain possession of Stanley Hundred, now encompasing 1300 acres of land. He decided to sell the land in 1713, purchased by a Charles Doyley. The Roscow family gained possession of Stanley Hundred sometime between 1713 and 1770. James Roscow placed an announcement about the sale of his Warwick County land in the 17 January 1777 edition of Purdie’s Virginia Gazette.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Hundred
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Yeardley&wprov=rarw1
Addendum: Going back further, I found William De Brewere, circa 1482-1562 who had Edward Holden Brewer, 1500-1591, who had Dr. William Brewer of Chard, Somerset, England, 1548-1618, who was apparently “memorialized in the Anglican church” there. It’s hard to suss out the exact line at a certain point back. But on down the line those Brewers went: John Brewer I, “born about 1595 in London, England. On down the line those Brewers went: Thomas (1572-1631), John Brewer I, “born about 1595 in London, England, then John II (1619-1669), then III “born about 1635 in Jamestown, Virginia, died about 1708. On they went at Isle of Wight, a George Garrett Brewer Sr. (1685-1744) next, till we get to Lanier B. Brewer Sr. (1716-1795) in Surry, Colonial Virginia, who had 17 kids, one of whom was Lanier B. Brewer Jr. (1746-1824) who “married Narcises Cherokee Indian in 1768.” All notfog.com knows about him is he was shown to be living in Moore, North Carolina in 1790 and 30 years later still there. He had 10 kids. One of them was Wiley Jackson Brewer (1785-1868) who had 19 kids. 19. Margaret Cockman (1795-1868) was the Saint. One of those 19 was Lewis S. Brewer (1832-1879), & he had (before getting shot to death over Whiskey), with Missouri Brewer, a daughter named Chloe M. Brewer Tuggle (1870-1946), who was my mother’s grandmother. Missouri got the hell out of Dodge, or Searcy County Arkansas, & by hook or crook made it to a tiny mining town called Park City in Utah. From what my mother told me on the phone, it was Chloe’s grandparents who were the slaveholders. If true, that would have been the 19 kid couple, Wiley & Margaret.
Brewer slaveholders in Virginia: Thomas Brewer, “after 1574,” & died in 1637 in London. His son was the one who sailed over to Jamestown: John Brewer, born “circa 1594” in London, was a merchant & grocer— which I read was a big deal back then— & died “circa 1635” in Isle of Wight, VA., having possibly arrived prior to 1622 to drive off the Warraskoyak in the massacre of 1622. He is referred to as an “ancient planter” in some sources: “John Brewer is listed as an “Ancient Planter.” This term “is applied to those persons who arrived in Virginia before 1616 , remained for a period of three years, and paid their passage.”[5] The couple’s arrival in Virginia prior to 1616 indicates all their children were born in Virginia, not England.” https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brewer-1433#_note-3
“John Brewer was the owner of two large estates, Brewers Neck (which is between Brewer’s and Chuckatuck Creeks), consisting of 1000 acres, and a tract in ‘Stanley Hundred’,[4] another 1000 acres on Warwick River, Virginia, just across the James River from Jamestown. He was a Representative from Warwick in 1629-30 to the Virginia House of Burgesses, which met in the wooden church in Old Jamestown. He was a member of the Governor’s Council 1632-34, and a man of power and influence.[6]”
He was a major player in VA. Legislature, House of Burgess. He had a tract of land, aka Bruers Borough, in the Stanley Hundred Plantation, 1000 acres on the north side, “just across the James River from Jamestown.” This purchase came about because Sir George Yeardley (1587-1627), Gov. of VA., sailed to VA. aboard the Deliverance from Bermuda, transporting indentured servants. Captain Flint first arrived to VA. in 1618, a real live wire with anger & incest problems, & got stripped of the rank of lieutenant, then jailed. Nevertheless, as so often happens with men like him, he went on to stay esteemed, & was the Burgess of Denbigh, etc. Flint had purchased the Stanley Hundred from Yeardley, after which John Brewer bought it. Brewer apparently paid fare to the new world (strange term, as it was most definitely not a new world to inhabitants now being massacred, here for however long) for 18 people besides himself & his wife.
Down the line, by June 15, 1669, by John I’s son’s John II’s death, John I’s original estate got inventoried at 87,621 pounds of tobacco plus “155 in gold and silver money, & seventy eight ounces of valuable plate.” John III now had it all.
Brewers Borough, the 1000 acre tract in Stanley Hundred, stayed in the Brewer family for how many generations I’m unclear. See isaacbrewer-familyhistory.blogspot.com and geni.com/people/John-Brewer-of-London-Virginia
As with any family history online or anywhere else, multiple verifiable sources need checked & confirmed. From what I can tell, this info. checks out. Brewer was a “Representative from Warwick in 1620-30 to the Virginia House of Burgesses. He was a member of the Governor’s Council 1632-1634, and a man of power and influence.” His will was probated May 13, 1636, where he asked “to be buried without any mourning apparel or gowns given to any but those of mine own household.” His son John Brewer got most of the whole shebang, with his mother gaining 1/3 plus “chattels.” Appoints wife Mary & uncle Roger Drake guardians of his children, & gave the 2 guardians “40 S to buy each of them a ring for remembrance of me.” After he died (a little late, right?), he finally got those 1000 acres— 50 acres for each of the 20 total including himself he brought over from England— later called Brewer’s Neck, which was all handed over to Reverend Thomas Butler, whom Mary (“relict”) married shortly after John’s death. These Johns are easy to mix up, & half the women were named Mary. Take this all with a grain of salt. In a research file from years back on these Brewers, I had written NEAT TRICK. THE PERSON BELOW IS TIME TRAVELLING BACKWARD TO DIE INSTEAD OF FORWARD. SO WHICH IS IT? AND THEY HAD ONE SON OR ELEVEN OR TEN???
Last, southern men like Lewis– openly opposing conscription then taking a direct hit for it– weren’t actually that common, it turns out. See April 10, Hitchcock.
Above pic left: Chloe who was Missouri’s daughter, her daughter Avis (my mother’s mother), & my mother blacked-out because she, I don’t know why. She was a darling ringletted child in an unknown year, late 1930’s, Utah. Right: Missouri Brewer’s grave.
Note: Secession was opposed by 70% of eastern Tennessee voters. Few slaveholders lived in this mountainous region. More than in any other Southern state, 30k took up arms for the Union.
Note: According to James McPherson (P. 292), “More than any other state, Missouri suffered the horrors of internecine warfare and the resulting hatreds which persisted for decades after Appomattox.” Yet 3/4th of White Missourians who fought were Unionists.
My Will is Absolute Law: A Biography of Union General Robert H. Milroy Jonathan Noyalas P. 149
“Commonly Unionists throughout the South defended secessionists not because they were friendly with them or wanted to do the right thing; rather they believed that in times of a raid or Confederate occupation their properties and lives would be spared for having aided in the protection of Confederates during Federal occupations. Also, defending Confederate sympathizers was a means by which many Unionists ensured that should they ever be captured or be found in a similar situation, their Confederate neighbors would come to their aid. Sometimes this worked and other times it did not, but doing nothing assured their demise at the hands of Confederate occupiers.”
The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory Adam H. Domby P. 97
Note: Domby, writing of forced conscription: “….conscription and the subsequent Confederate harassment of recusant conscripts, deserters, and their families may have created more “Union men” than any other act of the Confederate government, including secession.”
The South: A Tour of its Battlefields and Ruined Cities, A Journey Through the Desolated States, and Talks with the People, 1867 J.T. Trowbridge, J.H. Segards, Editor P. 316
(Note: after the war, Trowbridge interviews people in Tennessee)
“Some of the hardest times we saw, hyere in the Union parts of Tennessy, was when they come hunting conscripts. They got up some dogs now that would track a man. One of my neighbors turned and shot a hound that was after him, and got away. The men come up, and they was torn-down mad when they saw the dog killed. They pressed a man and his wagon to take the carcase back to town; they lived in Adamsville, eight miles from hyere. They stopped to my house over night, going back.”
“They just bemoaned the loss of that dog,” said Mrs. —. “They said they’d sooner have lost one of their company.”
“They got back to town, and they buried that dog now with great solemnity. They put a monument over his grave, with an epitaph on it. But some of the conscripts they’d been hunting, dug him up, and hung him to a tree, and shot him full of bullets, and made a writing which they pinned to the tree, with these words on it: ‘We’ll serve the owners of the dogs the same way next.’”
Note: April 27, 1865: Fair winds & following seas: the worst maritime disaster in United States’ history. Union soldiers on the way home from Andersonville, finally, in ’65, board the Sultana, a sidewheel steamboat along the Mississippi, $5 bucks per person at a capacity of 376 passengers with cargo and a crew of 85. A four-deck, 260 foot boat that was carrying 2,137. More will die on this riverboat than on the Titanic. Seven miles north of Memphis, three of its four boilers explode. 1,500-1,700 outright killed. It was 1800 lives lost. No one was ever held accountable. 1,960 of the Union men had just been released from Andersonville and Cahaba prisons. 2am it went down. They fished bodies out downriver for months after. A few went as far as Vicksburg. Some men clung to tops of flood-submerged trees in the river & were rescued but many were never found, as if the Civil War insisted on continuing to disappear men in the silt, staying in their old secret language. DeSoto is said to be there still. Note that several steamboats sat empty adjacent to the Sultana which could have spread the numbers out & gotten the men all home safely. Bribery was Captain Mason’s downfall, yet no crew or officer was ever held accountable (to be fair, Mason drowned).
Note: In another instance of the war’s impact intergenerationally, my 2xgrandfather Henry Sowden Efnor (1839-1919), at age 23, of the 28th Iowa Volunteers, Co. K., mustered in at Camp Pope (near present-day Kirkwood College, Iowa City) in response to Lincoln’s July ’62 call for 300k, & saw, among other events, Sheridan take the famous ride. Under Cap’t. Meyer, Henry went through the Vicksburg Siege, Champion Hills, shot through his right thigh, then captured. Taken prisoner 5/16/63 at Champion Hills, all 25 died who were taken prisoner except for him. His wound not washed for three days, he then laid on the ground for two weeks, given “a half pint of thin soup” only. Henry was exchanged, put on a boat to Memphis. He lived through 14 engagements (including being an only son with 6 sisters). I found at a source I’ve lost track of so can’t cite, that he was also shot on 9/3/62? He mustered out 7/31/65. His daughter Ella May Efnor (born 5/30/76– “just as sun was going down”– I have one picture of her holding me when I was just born; she died 6 mo. later) was my father’s mother’s mother. Ella May’s mother had a brother named Lincoln who was a store clerk in D.C. (Whipped out a flowchart yet?)
http://battleofchampionhill.org/28iowa.htm
http://www.iowacivilwarmonuments.com/cgi-bin/gaarddetails.pl?1224013297
Past and Present of Jasper County, p. 605-607: a third pic to be posted whenever this fuckshit web connection will allow an upload 🙄
Interestingly, my father’s mother’s father (6/17/1865-1953) was named Ulysses Grant Brown. His father, a farmer, was named Alexander Hamilton Brown, born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1835. He came through NYC to settle in Newton, Iowa, where my grandmother was born & raised, who often spoke of Melbourne, Iowa as a kind of heaven. Other Efnors going back had names like “Americana, Bonaparte.” Henry’s brother or cousin Jack (spelled “Efner” in ), age 27, enlisted in Co. F, 91st NY Albany Regiment 10/61-7/65, was a POW at Convalescent Camp in Brashear City, LA.
Henry Efnor’s mother Perlexe Nims (1813-1871, Newton, Iowa) referred to herself as a “Down-East Yankee”– which means Lincoln’s party, & people like frontiersmen and women, “settlers” or colonizers, however you put it. Henry’s wife Esther Maggie (Henry was surname) Efnor’s parents died two weeks apart, leaving her an orphan at 7 years old in Cuba, Illinois, adopted by a family with the surname Keenan. I read, though lost track of, information I read on microfiche, but I believe she worked as a servant in her late teens, early 20s, possibly as the Keenan’s.
Henry Efnor & his wife Maggie had 7 children. If I go back far, I’m led to a Valentine Effner (from Oeffner), the one who came over, Henry’s 2xgrandfather, from Hamburg, “Doty Colonials,” in all the wars going back further than the Revolution. The Efnors died at Saratoga to be reborn into all the next wars on down the line. Records from the mid-1850s all say they were Republicans. They were Majors, NY State Representatives, school founders, Colonels in the war of 1812. Church Deacons, Knights of Pythias, Masons. They crossed the Mississippi from New York on ice so thin they had to unhitch the teams then pull the wagons across by hand. At a hotel in Genesco, they slept on boards covered in buffalo robes 18 to a room. Where they settled– Galesburg, IA.– they built fences from rails that went for 25 cents per hundred on 160 acre land purchased at $1.25 an acre. Grain was cut with a cradle & oxen trampled it out with flails. They were people, who, after they died, had large funerals, headlines in the news, like “It Was in the Days of the Indians When Electa Efnor Butin Came to Iowa.” It’s said the “Indians” of Red Rock country were “friendly with the whites.” Friendly meant the Sauk and Meskwaki (Sauk & Fox) tribes gave up land west of the Mississippi & agreed to a line whereby they stay west of the “Red Rock Line” then eventually relocate to Kansas.
Past and Present of Jasper County, Iowa (1912) Vols I James B. Weaver P. 722 Regarding Jacob Zwank, 1847-1897, who ran off to join the Union Army but got sent back home because he was too young:
Sidenote: For some Efnor details I am indebted to familytreemaker.com, accessed 8/30/10, & Richard Efnor’s Descendants of Valentine Effner.
2025: still on the hunt for Henry’s likeness. You never know who you’ll run into, huh:
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medicines today got all packed up and ready to move….
And at our backs graves we do not understand, campfires all extinguished, that explanations fail for those 750-800k as if they’d stepped off Earth & into a void. As if the war were extradimensional, dark matter floating between galaxies, that 65% not accounted for we still don’t what is besides an appearance held together by its opposite. Yet the world is everything that is not the case, the unknown as well as the known. If there is a definition, an ordering, an answer, it goes in darkness because sometimes you have nothing to say & nowhere to say it. Whatever was apparently real fade away as you approach 160 years from now, as if watching tailfins on ’50s cars, red light in a line receding silently in the distance.
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