The Civil War Experience as Seen Through the Eyes of the Female Experience in Williamson County, Tennessee

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.


4/21

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.


5/21

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.


6/21

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.


8/21

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.


10/21

(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


11/21

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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13/21

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.


14/21

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.


15/21

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.


16/21

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.


17/21

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.


18/21

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.


19/21

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.


20/21

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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The Civil War Experience as Seen Through the Eyes of the Female Experience in Williamson County, Tennessee

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