Confederate Home Guard in South Dekalb County Alabama
Edwin C. Bridges, a Graduate of my alma mater Furman University and 30 year archivist for the state of Alabama wrote the 2016 Bicentennial History of Momma's homestate. Among other flourishes he has several paragraphs on the failings of the Daughters of the Confederacy to tell the Truth about the Civil War to several generations of Bama's high school youth in their textbooks, and does justice to the truth pointing out DOC fallacies of that era. His illustrious chapter on the Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama goes for 27 pages.
He mentions numerous reports of Homeguard activity along the Bama, Florida panhandle border in the Piney Woods. There are reports from other sources about pockets of Homeguard Activity in NE Bama that went from Stevenson on over to Winston County, basically Robert Aderholt's current Congressional district into Dade County Georgia.
He also has a picture of Judge Frank Johnson in the book and one of Momma's hometown of Collinsville.
Eulene Reed was a distant cousin of my Mother and her family is legendary in Sacred Harp community nationally with an annual singing at the Pine Grove Primitive Baptist Church on Lookout Mtn. She tells a great story of my extended family of Union sympathizers later in this blog. On the Oliver side of her family, Bud, was on first name basis with JFK's Vietnam Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and there is a picture of Bud and McNamara in the Collinsville History Museuam . See Kiri Miller's Traveling Home on the Reed/Oliver contributions to Sacred Harp.
My Grandfather Jordan, born 1881, taught Eulene and her cousin Bud Oliver in the sixth grade at the church. Ive attended annual singings there pretty much every year the last twelve.
His father, my great grandfather John Sanders Jordan was born in 1841 now buried in the Rocky Mount Cemetery about forty yards from the train tracks from Birmingham to Chattanooga up to Knoxville the Shenandoah Valley and beyond constructed in 1872. JSJ fought with the Union in the Alabama Vidette Regiment in skirmishes around Stevenson and the Nickajack area of the Tennessee River Valley.
Oliver Hall II told me today his Dad Harris said the oral history in these parts was the Jordans and other Lincolnites of South DeKalb County wore bonnets in the field to escape inquiries from the Rebels; though II was as certain as my Cousin Eulene was sure, the Homeguard never operated in Collinsville.
I tend to believe Eulene and Barrett Ashely knew what they were talking about.
Today at lunch Eulene told me the story Barrett Ashley told her.
Eulene's great Grandfather didn't believe in Slavery. The Home Guard in South DeKalb County came to his house down around the curve if you take a right at the ST Reed Place top of Lookout Mtn looking for him. He got word and wandered out into a cornfield. The HG got his wife and took her to the barn and threw a rope over an eave and noosed her hangin. She told em they could hang her till she died but she wasn't gonna help em in the least.
They did discover somehow he had ran into the cornfield and they shot it up pretty good but never saw him. I guess they ran out of ammo. Story was later he got to the brow and hollered to kin he made it alive.
Eulene is one of his direct descendants.
She said a retarded son was born soon after the incident. Her ggrandfather went to the neighbor in the homeguard and told him if he didn't apologize for noosing up his wife and the resulting injury to his newborn he was gonna kill him if he didn't get on his knees and pray for forgiveness.
They both had a salvation moment in that ordeal and Eulene's Great Grandfather became a Baptist Preacher.
Gives extra mustard for me at least this August when I sing at Pine Grove, especially the verse of my friend Sam Hodges Great great great Grandfather Fitzpatrick, a Rebel of Crawford County Georgia, whose dying words from injuries in the Battle of Petersburg Va near the end of the war, were from the Sacred Harp hymn Jesus can make a dying bed, soft as downy pillows are.
He mentions numerous reports of Homeguard activity along the Bama, Florida panhandle border in the Piney Woods. There are reports from other sources about pockets of Homeguard Activity in NE Bama that went from Stevenson on over to Winston County, basically Robert Aderholt's current Congressional district into Dade County Georgia.
He also has a picture of Judge Frank Johnson in the book and one of Momma's hometown of Collinsville.
Eulene Reed was a distant cousin of my Mother and her family is legendary in Sacred Harp community nationally with an annual singing at the Pine Grove Primitive Baptist Church on Lookout Mtn. She tells a great story of my extended family of Union sympathizers later in this blog. On the Oliver side of her family, Bud, was on first name basis with JFK's Vietnam Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and there is a picture of Bud and McNamara in the Collinsville History Museuam . See Kiri Miller's Traveling Home on the Reed/Oliver contributions to Sacred Harp.
My Grandfather Jordan, born 1881, taught Eulene and her cousin Bud Oliver in the sixth grade at the church. Ive attended annual singings there pretty much every year the last twelve.
His father, my great grandfather John Sanders Jordan was born in 1841 now buried in the Rocky Mount Cemetery about forty yards from the train tracks from Birmingham to Chattanooga up to Knoxville the Shenandoah Valley and beyond constructed in 1872. JSJ fought with the Union in the Alabama Vidette Regiment in skirmishes around Stevenson and the Nickajack area of the Tennessee River Valley.
Oliver Hall II told me today his Dad Harris said the oral history in these parts was the Jordans and other Lincolnites of South DeKalb County wore bonnets in the field to escape inquiries from the Rebels; though II was as certain as my Cousin Eulene was sure, the Homeguard never operated in Collinsville.
I tend to believe Eulene and Barrett Ashely knew what they were talking about.
Today at lunch Eulene told me the story Barrett Ashley told her.
Eulene's great Grandfather didn't believe in Slavery. The Home Guard in South DeKalb County came to his house down around the curve if you take a right at the ST Reed Place top of Lookout Mtn looking for him. He got word and wandered out into a cornfield. The HG got his wife and took her to the barn and threw a rope over an eave and noosed her hangin. She told em they could hang her till she died but she wasn't gonna help em in the least.
They did discover somehow he had ran into the cornfield and they shot it up pretty good but never saw him. I guess they ran out of ammo. Story was later he got to the brow and hollered to kin he made it alive.
Eulene is one of his direct descendants.
She said a retarded son was born soon after the incident. Her ggrandfather went to the neighbor in the homeguard and told him if he didn't apologize for noosing up his wife and the resulting injury to his newborn he was gonna kill him if he didn't get on his knees and pray for forgiveness.
They both had a salvation moment in that ordeal and Eulene's Great Grandfather became a Baptist Preacher.
Gives extra mustard for me at least this August when I sing at Pine Grove, especially the verse of my friend Sam Hodges Great great great Grandfather Fitzpatrick, a Rebel of Crawford County Georgia, whose dying words from injuries in the Battle of Petersburg Va near the end of the war, were from the Sacred Harp hymn Jesus can make a dying bed, soft as downy pillows are.
posted by foxofbama | 12:39 PM
3 Comments:
I have just submitted a letter to the Ft Payne Alabama Times Journal about the bad history of the Daughters of the Confederacy. May share it here upon publication.
My letter to Ft Payne Alabama Times JOurnal:
publication
Ft Payne Alabama Times Journal
The Editors:
Monday afternoon April 9 the first caller to the Paul Finebaum show made reference to Plainview High School, their legendary alum Jeremy Pruett now with the U Tenn Vols, and Auburn legend Charles Barkley. Upshot is with Barkley's recent interview on CNN and his pledge of half million dollars toward a revisionary High School history curriculum it's way passed time for Dekalb County to come out of the 19th Century and begin to tell the whole truth and nothing but the Truth to students about the Civil War.
I am a proud graduate of Furman University in Greenville South Carolina whose class of 2018 will include Clayte Hubbard, son of former Bama Speaker of the House, Mike Hubbard. Edwin C. Bridges is an early 80s graduate of Furman and for the last 30 odd years has been director of archives for the state of Alabama in Montgomery. Right after Christmas 2017 I picked up a copy of his new (2016) history of Alabama. It is great.
He sets the proper course for the misinformation of the Daughters of the Confederacy and other groups about the the Civil War. In a great 27 page chapter on the War and Reconstruction he says in the 1890s the DOC and other groups set out to restructure the the teaching of history in Alabama to conform to views they had adopted for their own white women's group. They didn't like what they considered the insults of the North. Built on a sequence of interelated claims some of which isolated were true they concocted a story comparable to current fundamentalist views on the Bible that distort the truths of Scripture. They sought to downplay slavery as a cause of the war and modified the role of Redeemer White Groups use of violence during Reconstruction to reassert white control in the South. Because of the economy of textbook publication the false narrative of the DOC pretty much became the official view of textbooks nationwide.
At a minimum Historical associations in Dekalb County, Womens study clubs, even WMU chapters in your local Baptist church can get hold of a copy of Bridges History. For extra mustard there is a photo of my hero Judge Frank Johnson in the book, even one of downtown Collinsville. The Board of Education in Rainsville should have a copy for school board members to consult and every High school library in the system should have a copy in their libraries by the beginning of next year.
Sincerely,
Did Fort Parne Journal refuse your letter ? Why ?
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