Tweet
Courtesy of the Civil War Preservation Trust
-------------------------------------------------------
(1) Efforts on to preserve Day’s Gap in - Birmingham News
(2) cadets visit battlefields - Shreveport Times
(3) film debuts - Fredericksburg Free Lance Star
(4) New tourism director at - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
(5) Campaign to save Mosby site atMt. Zion
(6) Wal-Mart planned for battlefield – Associated Press
(7) Students interview sons of Union soldiers – Washington Times
(8) Preservation options debated at Franklin - Franklin Review Appeal
(9)'s Vicious Valley Campaign of 1864 – Post
(10) Brown’s Mill battlefield is unique - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
--(1)-----------------------------------------------------
Efforts on to preserve Civil War site
soldiers fought for Union battlefield
KENT FAULK, News staff writer06/03/2004
Birmingham News
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1086254268219441.xml
BATTLEGROUND - As day broke onApril 30, 1863 , dozens of soldiers fighting for the Union Army were finishing breakfast at their overnight camp in a Staples Hollow farm pasture.
Other Union troops had left earlier, heading up the mountainous gap by the Day family's farm to continue a raid across north. units were allowed to linger as a rear guard - a few from the area likely saying their last goodbyes to relatives.
But the boom of a Confederate cannon broke up the reunion; those units scampered up Day's Gap, and a battle erupted between Confederate and Union forces.
Nearly a century and a half later, a quieter battle is being fought on this same turf. This time, it's a fight by descendants of both the blue and gray to preserve the battleground on the Cullman and Morgan county line from relic hunters and development. Some fear the area will see more houses and businesses pop up once the widening of157 into a four-lane highway through the community is completed.
"I think if some action is not taken then it definitely is endangered," said Dan Fulenwider, a historian. "It's part of the history of our state and nation."
In February, the Washington-based Civil War Preservation Trust named Day's Gap to its list of 15 "at risk" Civil War battlefields. No other site made the list.
Of the 10,500 battles or skirmishes in the Civil War, 384 conflicts were identified in 1991 by a congressional committee as principal battles. Day's Gap and sites atFort Blakely , Spanish Fort, , Athens, Mobile Bay and were among the Alabama battlefields identified in that study.
Paul Bryant Jr., immediate past chairman of the preservation trust board, said several of theAlabama sites already have been saved from development. He said Day's Gap is "the only site that could be lost that we've got a chance to do something about."
Fulenwider has pushed local governments for nearly a decade to preserve and mark the route through northAlabama of the running battle between Union forces led by Col. Abel Streight and Confederates led by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. The battle started at Day's Gap and ended May 3, 1863 , in Cherokee County with Streight's surrender. Much of the route followed old Indian and wagon trails that today are paved roads.
Fulenwider, who walked the entire route four years ago, is working to get Streight's route marked and to have pull-off areas for tour buses. He's also been working with the Cullman County Commission to buy land for a park atHog Mountain
Fulenwider is working in concert with the preservation trust, which is trying to negotiate with landowners in an effort to preserve Day's Gap and other spots along the route.
"What we're trying to do is get a Forrest-Streight trail that tracks their movements across the state ofAlabama ... and to mark where specific things happened," said Henry Simpson, a Birmingham lawyer who heads the battlefield preservation committee on the trust's board.
At Day's Gap, the trust is trying to get conservation easements from the owners of three pieces of property to prevent housing or commercial development on the land.
Staples Hollow is still untouched by development, with only a gravel road leading down the mountain to a farm. Among the pastures stands a chimney from Richard Day's cabin. Two log outbuildings from the era still stand around the site where Day's sister had a cabin. There's also a family cemetery.
Some houses have been built at the top of the gap where the main battle of Day's Gap took place in the community now called Battleground.
Battleground residents have gotten into the preservation effort.
A Confederate battle flag flies below the American Stars and Stripes at the Battleground Volunteer Fire Department, and two residents have gotten into the spirit of the battle.
Mack Carter, whose home sits on a hill where Confederate forces set up their cannons, flies a Confederate flag on a pole; next to it is a cannon pointed at Andy Thomas' home, about a quarter mile away. Thomas flies two American flags, with a fake cannon pointed at Carter's home.
Thomas said he's had people from as far away asCalifornia stop in his driveway to look around the battlefield.
Heritage tourism on all aspects of American history has been "huge," especially since the 1990s Ken Burns series about the Civil War, Bryant said.
Earlier this month, Ed Bearss, chief historian emeritus for the National Park Service and a narrator on Burns' PBS series, and Fulenwider led a tour-bus load of history buffs on a tour of Day's Gap and other Cullman County sites along the battle route. Each member of the tour paid up to $2,025 for the seven-day Riding With Forrest journey throughTennessee , Alabama and .
"It is important because it adds to the Forrest legend," Bearss said of the Forrest-Streight route. "I'm impressed by what has been accomplished here."
Streight, who had about 1,500 men, was trying to drive across north to destroy a railroad that was supplying Confederate troops. Forrest, with about 500 men, came in from southern to try to block Streight.
Streight, while stationed inDecatur in 1862, had recruited men from the hills of north , where many Union sympathizers lived. That probably is why a year later the colonel chose that route, Fulenwider and others said.
And that lent one unusual aspect to the Day's Gap battle, Simpson said.
"Seven of the Union troops were from that hollow or right around there, so they were fighting in their own back yards for the Union in," Simpson said. "I don't think that happened anywhere else in Alabama ."
And the battle also was the seed for at least one major event that added to Forrest's legacy.
By the time Forrest arrived for the battle on April 30, forces led by his brother, Bill Forrest, had already been repelled and Forrest's two favorite cannons captured by the Union. Bill Forrest was wounded in the thigh during the battle, Fulenwider said.
An irate Forrest is said to have picked up a Lt. Gould and pushed him against a tree "and said you had better get those cannons back by nightfall or else," Simpson said. The Confederates got the cannons back, although there's still a debate as to exactly what happened to them.
Two weeks later, a still-embarrassed Gould shot Forrest inColumbia , Tenn., Simpson said. The story has it that the wounded Forrest chased Gould outside and stabbed him to death with a penknife, he said. "It's one of the most bizarre stories of the whole Civil War," Simpson said.
--(2)-----------------------------------------------------
West Point By John Andrew Prime06/03/2004
Times
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/news/...CDBC8DF7.shtml
Reading about the Civil War is one thing.
Visiting the ground on which battles and even whole campaigns actually were fought is another thing entirely, as a group ofWest Point cadets -- all history majors or students who plan to major in history -- are finding out this week.
Led by native Lt. Col. Dana Mangham, their history professor, they came through Shreveport by late afternoon. Here, they visited the site of a long-lost Confederate fort and Tone's Bayou, which historians now think may have been used to divert the .
"The Red River Campaign is really little known, but I consider it to be one of the greatest what-ifs of the Civil War," Mangham said after the tour, when he and the cadets and their local tour guide, historian and author Gary Joiner, finished off the night with a big meal at Pete Harris Cafe. "It's not just a failed expedition -- it's a nearly catastrophic campaign."
In the campaign, which personally was planned by President Abraham Lincoln to capture and knock out of the war, a Union army led by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks and an 80-vessel fleet commanded by Adm. David Porter advanced on Shreveport via the Red River and the countryside just west of the river. Banks' army and the boats became separated when Banks took his army farther inland, enabling Confederate troops under Maj. Gen. Richard Taylor to beat Banks decisively at Mansfield . At the same time, the Red River's level was dropping by inches a day, threatening to strand the Union fleet, which had to scurry back to , where it nearly was trapped. Only a last-ditch effort to build a dam there allowed the fleet to flee to the safety of New Orleans .
"On a military level, on a political level, it could have caused the Civil War to end a different way," Mangham said.
The cadets accompanying Mangham and another history professor, Maj. Tom Rider, hailed from states as far-ranging asIowa, Colorado , Oregon and New York . But there were cadets from Texas , Georgia and Florida there as well.
One of them is Jim Perkins, 20, of Coushatta.
"Honestly, I didn't know a lot about the Red River Campaign before I came here," he said. "I've learned a ton. I even learned that some of my family's land is where one of the engagement sites was -- Blair's Landing. I had no idea."
That battle was a lopsided shoot-em-up between Union gunboats and a Confederate cavalry force led by Texas Gen. Tom Green, who was decapitated by a cannonball in the battle.
Cadet T.R. Dilla ofAmes Iowa , was one of a handful of cadets enthralled enough by a tree-covered, long-lost Confederate fort near the Port of Shreveport-Bossier to jump into woods crawling with ticks, chiggers, fire ants and possibly snakes. He had just heard a detailed but energetic talk about its use from Joiner, who discovered the fort.
"You couldn't see anything from the road," Dilla said after leading all but a few of the cadets deep into the dark and forbidding woods that once had been a low earthen fort which never heard the sounds of battle. "I really wanted to see what was in the woods. I found a built-up berm and an area that was kind of built up. I was surprised."
--(3)-----------------------------------------------------
After four-week delay, new Civil War film set to debut on Saturday
By JEFF BRANSCOME06/03/2004
Free Lance Star
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2...032004/1385295
A $500,000 film about the Battle of Chancellorsville will premičre Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Chancellorsville Battlefield Visitor Center.
"We are the envy of everybody I've talked to in the Park Service for having gotten such a high quality product as this," said John Hennessey, the movie's screenwriter and the chief historian at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park.
Originally scheduled for May 2--during the battle's anniversary weekend--the premičre of the 22-minute film was delayed because of technical difficulties.
It was professionally made by Historical Films Group in partnership with Friends of Fredericksburg Area Battlefields. Filmed last year in Spotsylvania and Charles Town, W.Va., the movie took about eight days to shoot.
"As much as we liked the Fredericksburg film that we premičred two years ago, this one is better," Hennessy said.
Unlike the 1970s-era slide show it replaces, the new movie captures both the military and civilian experience, he said.
"Without a question, this is the biggest project we've ever undertaken," Hennessy said.
It includes dozens of local actors and re-enactors, who appear as named characters and supply voice-overs.
--(4)-----------------------------------------------------
Corinth tourism council hires director
06/02/2004
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
http://www.djournal.com/pages/story....pub=1&div=News
CORINTH - Erwin A. "Del" Horton Jr. is the new permanent director for the Corinth Area Tourism Promotion Council.
Horton, formerly the council's project manager, fills a vacancy created by the resignation of Emy Wilkinson, who accepted a similar position with the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau.
"Del is an excellent choice for this position," said Ricky Marecle, head of the CATPC search committee. "With over 20 years of experience in the advertising and public relations industry and four years with our Corinth program, his knowledge of the product and the ways to market it make him the clear fit for our organization."
Horton described his new job as "an honor and challenge."
"I feel my first-hand knowledge of Corinth and its unique assets will help me implement strategies that most effectively communicate our history and heritage as a tourist destination," he said.
Alliance President Charles Gulotta also had praise for Horton. "Del's knowledge of the (CATPC) budgeting process, the relationships he has built with local and state tourism leaders and his extensive knowledge of Civil War history will be great assets to the council," he said.
Horton experienced
Horton's experience includes chief of Advertising & Public Affairs for the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion in Nashville, Tenn., assistant public affairs officer and photo-journalist for the U.S. Coast Guard and a staff research assistant at the Center for Historic Preservation for Middle Tennessee State University.
Over the past several years, Horton has been active with the Mississippi Tourism Association, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Tourism Association and the Mississippi-Alabama Rural Tourism Planning Committee.
Horton was a co-author on the proposal to establish a Tennessee National Civil War Heritage Area, a member of the Tennessee Civil War Heritage Trail Committee and was president of the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association.
"I have always had a strong interest in the Civil War and the significance Corinth and Alcorn County played in the events that shaped a nation," he said.
"With the opening of the new Civil War Interpretive Center and our continued relationship with Shiloh National Military Park, Corinth should continue to grow as a tourism destination.
"I look forward to the challenges this job offers and I feel certain we can continue to elevate the area as one of the nation's premier Civil War history destinations."
--(5)-----------------------------------------------------
A view with a past: Mount Zion acts to save its setting
By Deborah Fitts
06/01/2004
Fauquier Times-Democrat
http://www.zwire.com/site/tab2.cfm?n...d=506066&rfi=6
In a region growing as voraciously as Northern Virginia, purchasing a piece of land simply to keep its meadows, creeks and woodlands forever unchanged seems to verge on the quaint.
But that is just what the members of the tiny Mount Zion Church Preservation Association did Thursday, when they bought 89 acres on Fauquier's border for $1.7 million to protect the viewshed of their historic building.
The little 1851 brick structure, an eyewitness to battle in the Civil War, stands on the south side of U.S. 50, nearly a mile east of Gilberts Corner. The purchased land is kitty-corner across the highway, extending a half-mile west toward Gilberts Corner and more than a quarter-mile north along Watson Road.
The former owner, developer Robert McCormick of Architectural Systems Inc. in Great Falls, planned seven houses on the property, which he dubbed "Mosby Run." Claude "Brad" Bradshaw, president of the association, urged his 13-member board to action.
"It was ambitious," agreed Bradshaw. "But we felt we could do it. It was obvious we couldn't wait to build up the kitty. The guy was going to build houses."
The board approached McCormick in February of last year. It's taken until now to close the deal, but at last the association came up with the $558,000 down payment, including expenses. The association has five years to complete the purchase, with $225,000 annual lump sums to McCormick at 6 percent interest.
The property will remain open space. Three-quarters meadowland, hay will be cut off to keep the woods from encroaching.
The association has tentative plans for walking trails and a nature preserve. There are four spring-fed streams. Gilberts Corner is out of sight; the view to the west is filled with the Bull Run Mountains.
"You can stand on that property and there's not a building in sight," exulted Bradshaw. "It's the same view that existed since before the American Revolution."
The land also includes the house site of "Yankee Davis," a prominent local Union sympathizer during the Civil War. Bradshaw said records indicate that Union soldiers were buried near Davis's house, which is marked now by a clump of trees on the verge of the highway.
McCormick sold the land at $155,000 below fair market value, receiving in return a charitable reduction against taxes. But Bradshaw said McCormick, raised near the Manassas battlefield, "has a place in his heart for preservation.
"He certainly had the potential to make a lot more money," Bradshaw said.
McCormick attributed the deal to Bradshaw's persistence.
"Brad's awfully persuasive," he said. "The property is lovely. I'm a builder who likes to save a little here and there."
The association is casting its eye on other neighboring properties, but so far no owners are interested in selling, Bradshaw said.
Funds for the down payment included a $240,000 federal transportation-enhancement grant; a $195,000 loan from the Piedmont Environmental Council; $100,000 from the Frederick H. Prince Foundation Trust in Chicago; $5,000 from the Washington-based Civil War Preservation Trust; $1,000 from Aldie Ruritan and grants from several other private foundations.
Bradshaw noted that the association has maintained a $300,000-a-year fund-raising pace for the last five years, and should have no difficulty making payments to McCormick. "The money is out there; you just have to ask for it."
The land is the first property actually owned by the association. The church itself and six acres was given to the county nearly a decade ago, the first of several historic properties adopted by Loudoun.
Mount Zion is undergoing a $200,000 stabilization overseen by Bradshaw's board. It is open to groups by appointment and will host its annual "Eyewitness to War" event, with music and Civil War living history, June 26-27.
Bradshaw lives in Prince William but grew up near the church on his family's Watson Road farm. As a youngster in the 1940s, his "first job" was helping to clean the church, which had an active congregation of Old School Baptists until the 1970s.
As the church fell into disuse and the trustees died off, Bradshaw was named a trustee, and he and two others shepherded the adoption of the church by the county. A retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who works as a magistrate in Fairfax County, Bradshaw has served on the association ever since, working as chief grant writer and fund-raiser, and now board president.
He shrugged off credit for the purchase.
"I worked with lots of folks on this," he said. "It was teamwork that did it."
The acquisition will be celebrated in ceremonies June 27 during the "Eyewitness to War" event at the church.
--(6)-----------------------------------------------------
Possible battlefield is a battleground
Civil War cemetery located on planned Wal-Mart site
05/31/2004
Associated Press Newswires
http://www.dailymail.com/news/News/200405319
FAYETTEVILLE -- From a slight knoll at the center of 59 acres of rolling meadow, it's easy to imagine the thoughts that have teased Geraldine Workman over the decades she has tended the graves of about two dozen Confederate soldiers.
Workman's battlefield visions have nothing to do with shopping 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But that may well be the destiny of the Fleshman/Clark farm. A small piece of the Fayette County that once was, it is now surrounded by the Fayetteville that is.
The farm, which some believe was a Civil War battlefield as well as a resting place for a few of its casualties, is about to become a new kind battleground in a contest between preservationists and a developer with his eyes on the dollars a new Wal-Mart will bring, a war drawing headlines of late from Vermont to California.
And as in many Civil War era border-state towns, Fayetteville -- population 2,754 and growing -- "is split right down the middle," Workman said.
"Half wants it and the other half doesn't."
Fayetteville's town council has approved the rezoning, which is due to become law July 1.
A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, Mia Masten, said her company is working with Paramount Development Corp. of Myrtle Beach, S.C., to plan construction of a Wal-Mart Super Center and a Lowe's building supply center. Paramount spokesman Joe Paramore was not available Friday to talk to a reporter, according to a woman who answered the telephone in the company's offices.
Fayetteville Town Manager Ralph Davis said the developer has agreed to preserve the cemetery and build what he called "a buffer zone with a fence and $50,000 in landscaping" around it.
Alice Todaro, who like Workman is a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, scoffs at the idea.
"How can you have a historic shrine in the middle of a parking lot?" she asked.
Fayetteville's downtown district, dominated by a 19th Century red brick courthouse, has been declared a national historic district, and the town sits on the edge of the New River Gorge National River.
"We're trying to keep that small town feel, and make everything blend together," Davis said. But he also said his town needs a Wal-Mart. It has only a Ben Franklin variety store and a locally owned grocery store, Daniels' Market in downtown Fayetteville, and Davis contends neither considers Wal-Mart a threat.
New development is springing up along the new four-lane highway that goes by the edge of the historic district.
But smack in the middle of all that development is what was until about a decade ago a family farm.
The only disturbance at the cemetery now is the rumble of tractor-trailers moving down the highway just out of sight behind a row of far-off trees on the edge of the property. The headstones are on a slight rise with a broad view, watched over by an ancient walnut tree, a lone sentinel in the midst of the rolling field.
Davis said there will be a complete archaeological study before construction begins. While historians have confirmed that the farm is the burial site of some Confederate soldiers killed in action during the Battle of Fayetteville that began Sept. 10, 1862, assertions that the farm was the battlefield itself are less certain.
"There are 24 soldiers buried there, but no one is 100 percent sure who they are," Davis said.
Workman, who has been tending the cemetery since 1971, disagrees.
A well-regarded local historian, now deceased, began interviewing Fayette County residents about their family recollections of the battle and reviewing the historical record early in the 20th Century. The historian, the Rev. Shirley Donnelly of Oak Hill, concluded there were 13 to 17 graves at the site, although at the time only one grave was marked.
The family of William S. Morgan erected a stone shortly after his death, identifying him by name, birth date, and the legend, "Killed in battle at Fayetteville, Sept. 10, 1862."
After reading Donnelly's work, Workman and another member of the UDC devoted one summer to identifying the soldiers. They researched original Civil War records held by the West Virginia Department of Archives and History to determine who might be buried on the site.
"When we finished, we had identified 24 soldiers of the Virginia Militia, all of them boys between the ages of 18 and 25 . . . who marched in here from Narrows, Va.," Workman said.
Armed with the 24 names and the dates of their deaths, Workman went back to the farm and began trying to locate the graves.
She used a technique called "dousing," a skill that is a holdover from West Virginia's agricultural past and is most commonly used to locate a spot for drilling a water well. Still in use today in rural areas, its practitioners are often known as "water witches."
Workman uses her skill, however, to find graves.
She uses two metal rods some 3 feet long and bent 90 degrees at one end for gripping. She holds the rods loosely in her closed fists, careful to keep them parallel with the ground and one another, and walks over the site until the rods react.
"When you cross a grave, they cross one another," she said.
Workman once demonstrated the technique to a group of Civil War re-enactors.
"They'd never seen anybody use those rods," Workman said. "I'll tell you, some of those boys got really skittish."
After locating graves, Workman began installing small flat marble markers in the 1980s.
She does not claim to know who is buried where. Other than the original stone placed by Morgan's family, names were arbitrarily assigned to the markers. Because Morgan was a private, the privates' markers were grouped near his, the officers' stones placed a rank or two away.
Masten, the Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said a representative of West Virginia's Department of Archives and History has informed her company that the state cannot confirm the site as a battlefield. West Virginia's historic preservation officer, Susan Pierce, did not immediately return a reporter's telephone calls.
According to Masten, the company still must complete Fayetteville's building permit process and win approval from the state Department of Transportation before construction can begin. She said the company will continue to look into the historical significance of the site.
"We want to be sensitive to that," she said.
--(7)-----------------------------------------------------
Students interview sons of Union soldiers
By Martha M. Boltz, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
05/28/2004 The Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/civilwar/20...1727-8584r.htm
When Peoria, Ill., holds its celebration tomorrow in advance of Memorial Day, an unlikely group will participate — at least seven sons of Union soldiers from the Civil War will be in attendance at the local Grand Army of the Republic Hall, as well as one daughter.
That's right: As incredible as it might seem, these are the "real sons" and a "real daughter" of Union veterans — the first generation, born when their fathers were of great age, and who are themselves getting up there in years.
It will be the third ceremony of its type presented there by a camp of the Sons of Union Veterans (SUV). In addition to sharing stories told them by their soldier fathers, these men will add their own recollections as World War II veterans, bridging the gap from the 1860s to the 1940s. And a teacher brought it all about.
A teacher's passion
Tim Pletkovich, a middle school teacher in Peoria, attended a national meeting of the Sons of Union Veterans two years ago. He met a "real son" from Michigan and was able to get addresses for several other "Civil War children" as he refers to them. Mr. Pletkovich taught eighth-grade English as well as American history, and he pitched to his students the idea of getting in touch with these very elderly "sons," whose ages ranged from 75 to 98, and discovering the stories they had learned from their Union soldier fathers. The young people eagerly adopted the project.
Mr. Pletkovich's graduate studies had been in antebellum history, and he became aware of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War in 1997.
"I had long been familiar with the alphabet soup of Confederate organizations ... and that Southerners have such a deeper appreciation for local and regional history than do Northerners," Mr. Pletkovich said. "In my opinion, this is why so many more Confederate 'children' have been identified as opposed to Union 'children.' Confederate organizations dwarf Union groups in terms of their commitment to preserve American history."
Tales of two wars
As time passed, some of the elderly men died, but the students who had progressed into Peoria's high schools kept up correspondence with many of the surviving ones and elicited stories of their fathers' actions and travails during the Civil War.
What began as an English project for students at Rolling Acres Edison Junior Academy morphed into a combination of history, anthropology and writing. It continued at Blaine-Sumner Middle School, where Mr. Pletkovich also taught.
The students began corresponding with the elderly men, asking for their memories of their Union fathers. When the World War II connection emerged, the memories of that era were also shared. The young people prepared sets of questions that they submitted to the men, and later they were able to meet many of them in person.
The students held seminars at a local library, established a Web site, and turned the whole project into living history. Many seamstress moms and lady re-enactors worked long hours to produce replica Union uniforms for the young men and a collection of antebellum gowns for the young women.
Not a volunteer
A quick look at some of the potential attendees tomorrow shows the variety of the "Civil War children," such as the four living children of Pvt. Charles Parker Pool, who for four years served with the 6th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry. Late in the war, Pvt. Pool sustained a serious knee injury, Mr. Pletkovich said, and ultimately the leg was amputated. His daughter, Mrs. Florence Wilson of Aldridge, Mo., will be in Peoria, along with his sons Bill, Garland and John Pool, all of Bolivar, Mo.
Garland Pool told the students that "when my dad and my mother were married, he was 71 and she was 27. They had five children ... four boys and one girl. Three of us boys are still alive today, and the three of us served our country during World War II, two in the Army and one in the Navy."
Middle school student Crystal Hall asked Onnie Mitchell about his father, the Rev. Cager Mitchell, a private with the 7th West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry. He had enlisted at 22 in Charleston, W.Va. "You asked why my father joined the Union Army. Well, child, my father told me he never volunteered for anything! He said that soldiers just came and took him. A lot of 'just taking people for service' went on back then. He was a private and was his company's buglerţ" Mr. Mitchell said.
Sultana survivor
One of the sons who has not been able to commit yet traces his history to a survivor of the ill-fated steamboat Sultana. Pvt. William C. Warner had been captured by the Confederates in Alabama in 1864. Interned in Cahaba Prison, he was released at the end of the war and marched 50 miles with several hundred other released prisoners to Vicksburg, Miss.
There, they all boarded the Sultana, its capacity of less than 400 stretched to 2,300 men. A few days later, on April 28, 1865, one of the ship's boilers exploded near Memphis, Tenn., setting the boat on fire and causing it to sink. By some estimates, more than 1,800 people were killed. In later years, Pvt. Warner told the story of his Sultana survival to his son, Robert C. Warner of San Angelo, Texas.
A participant in Sherman's march to the sea was the Rev. Nathaniel Amos Whitman of the 9th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, whose son, John, was interviewed by middle school student Ben Smet. Mr. Whitman now lives in Hot Springs, S.D., and may be able to attend. He told the young man, "After my father joined active service in Lexington, Kentucky, his first combat was against [Gen. John Hunt] Morgan's Raiders." Some of John Whitman's recollections came from his mother, the wife of Nathaniel Whitman, who said that "when [he] was in South Carolina, their commanding officer ordered them to burn houses in order to 'punish South Carolina for starting the war.' " She said that in one of the pages of his diary, he wrote: "Today, we burned more houses. I wept."
Tunnel vision
Mr. Pletkovich encountered some organizational tunnel vision regarding the existence of World War II veterans who were "real sons," being advised by an SUV official that there were none. The 43-year-old teacher maintained his equanimity as he gently advised the official that he was wrong, explaining that there were seven "real sons" who were World War II vets in Peoria alone. One of the "real daughters" interviewed by the students was a WAVE in World War II as well.
"This experience elucidates the difference in the Confederate and Union organizations," Mr. Pletkovich said. "The Confederate ones are organized to a much greater extent and have knowledgeable people always ready and available to help with any questions. There are only 6,700 SUV members throughout the country, and to my knowledge, my kids are the only middle school or high school students throughout the entire nation who have ever solicited the 'real sons' to the extent we have."
With the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington today, the sad fact is that about 1,100 veterans of that war die daily, making the preservation of their stories even more imperative.
A 'Panama suit'
Other attendees in Peoria will be William H. Upham Jr. of Milwaukee, and Frederick M. Upham of Fort Collins, Colo. Their father, William H. Upham Sr., was a corporal with the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry who was seriously wounded in the chest during the Battle of First Manassas. Initial reports had him listed as dead, and funeral services were held in Racine, Wis., in his honor. Later it was discovered that he was captured after the battle and spent several months at Libby Prison in Richmond until released in a prisoner exchange in 1862.
"During my father's imprisonment at Libby, he collected some material with which to sew and knitted himself a 'Panama suit.' ... That suit is still on display at the Wisconsin State Historical Society," said Frederick Upham, who is 83 years old.
The soldier then went directly to Washington, meeting with a Wisconsin senator and President Lincoln, and where he was able to obtain an appointment to West Point. Upham graduated from the academy in 1866, and he later served one term as governor of Wisconsin before retiring from public life.
Tim Pletkovich's great-great grandfather, Luther M. Preston, was in the same unit as Upham, also sustained a chest wound, and at a different time also was incarcerated at Libby Prison.
As a result of the middle school project and its widening influence, William Upham Jr. has established a scholarship fund in his father's name for Peoria middle school students who demonstrate an exceptional interest in Civil War studies.
Unique memories
Sixth-grader Becca Epping talked with Henry Shouse, the son of Dr. Hiram Craig Shouse, a private with the 11th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Henry Shouse shared unique World War II memories with her. He served with the Search and Rescue Corps. Before the advent of helicopters, "we had canoes, snowshoes and sled dogs" for searches and rescues. He was assigned to three locations in Canada and two in Greenland, with men and dogs transported in small planes by bush pilots. He told Becca how they used 100 sled dogs for rescue work during the Battle of the Bulge. His unit was attached "to a M.A.S.H.-type field hospital but not like TV's 'M*A*S*H.' " He supplied the students with a photo of the first helicopter ever brought into Goose Bay, in Labrador, Canada by cargo plane.
James Madison Gowin Jr. was interviewed by young Ben Smet regarding Union Pvt. James Madison Gowin Sr. Mr. Gowin, in replying to the student's questionnaire, said, "It thrills me to have young people wanting to know about our nation's past, for it gives them wisdom to prepare for themselves, and for our leaders of tomorrow. Mankind has not yet learned that in wars there are no winners, only losers."
The young people involved in this project have an even loftier goal in mind. They would like to see the first-person narratives of the men and their photographs from both war eras transformed into a book. With 23 vignettes and numerous photographs, it could happen. If so, the activities of a small group of middle school students will have produced a piece of living history for all time.
Martha M. Boltz is a writer in Northern Virginia and a frequent contributor to the Civil War page.
--(8)-----------------------------------------------------
Purchase isn’t only way to keep homes off golf course
By CLINT CONFEHR / Review Appeal Senior Staff Reporter
05/25/2004
Franklin Review Appeal
http://reviewappeal.midsouthnews.com...iewStory=22104
Short of a public-private collaboration to buy the Country Club of Franklin, there may be a way to make sure the golf course isn’t developed as a housing subdivision, one of the preservationists on Franklin’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen said on Sunday afternoon.
It’s called a conservation easement, a publicly recorded contract between a property owner and a qualified entity which can include local government. The Land Trust for Tennessee Inc. is another legal entity which monitors conservation easements. It’s unclear whether golf qualifies as a conservation purpose here, but it has elsewhere.
Alderwoman Pam Lewis spoke briefly about this alternative to a controversy that’s disturbed hundreds of city residents.
A conservation easement could be accomplished with a payment or exchange of something of value to the owner of land where development would be restricted.
While Mayor Tom Miller denies Franklin City Hall has any plan to buy the fairways and greens visible from Lewisburg Pike, Lewis has acknowledged her interest in preserving that open space since the property’s owner, Rod Heller of Washington, D.C., challenged the community at-large to do something about it.
Heller paid $5 million to a businessman who planned to sell the property rented by the Country Club of Franklin, club members and city officials have said. The previous owner had another buyer who reportedly planned to build homes there. Heller is interested in preserving the open space since he’s a descendant of the family that built Carnton Mansion, a former chairman of the national Civil War Trust, and he’s a golfer.
Lewis’ observation followed a tour and Civil War history lesson at the Collins Farm, just northwest of the country club and Historic Carnton Plantation. She was asked what she thought of the situation which includes Country Club of Franklin members and other city residents who oppose city spending to transform a golf course into a battlefield park, and the historic backdrop detailed by leaders of Save the Franklin Battlefield Inc.
“It’s very compelling that it’s battlefield property,” Lewis said of the Collins Farm which was part of the McGavock family plantation, better known as Carnton, and the golf course between the mansion and Lewisburg Pike.
“The question is whether we can prevail,” she said.
“One option is to buy the development rights,” said Lewis, explaining that could be “done with a conservation easement.”
The cost “would be less than $5 million,” the alderwoman said.
“It would leave the golf course and open options to buy other properties,” she said after about 30 people learned about combat on the eastern front in the Battle of Franklin.
The audience included Tom Greuel and Hank Beyke, residents of Dallas Downs subdivision southeast of the Country Club of Franklin, who used to live, respectively, near the Civil War battlefield at Manassas, Va., and Fort Recovery, Ind., which was recovered from the Shawnee.
“I’m glad there’s some movement,” Beyke said before the history lesson in the Collins Farm parking lot. “It’s unfortunate we’ve had to wait so long. The longer you wait, the harder it is” to create a battlefield park.
Greuel, who knew only a little about the golf course situation before the history lesson, said he would favor anything that could be done to expand the public’s view of the battlefield.
Senior Staff Reporter Clint Confehr can be contacted at clint@reviewappeal.com.
--(9)-----------------------------------------------------
Historian Highlights Sheridan's Vicious Campaign of 1864
05/13/2004
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004May11.html
Everyone seems to know that Gen. William T. Sherman marched across Georgia to the sea in December 1864 and left ruined buildings and lives along his 300-mile route. Less well known is the devastation wrought by Gen. Philip H. Sheridan on a sliver of Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, where homes, barns and mills were burned and dozens of families were left destitute in September and October of the same year.
Although the destruction in dollars was greater in Georgia, the human impact was far more intense in the Shenandoah Valley, because family farms and small towns were targeted, according to author and historian John L. Heatwole.
The 140th anniversary of "the Burning," as Sheridan's campaign became known, as well as the battles of New Market, Second Kernstown, Third Winchester, Cedar Creek and others, will be commemorated this year in the Shenandoah Valley, about 80 miles west of Washington at its northern end.
The Shenandoah Valley, a part of the Great Valley of Virginia, is about 125 miles long, running from the northern part of Rockbridge County in the south to the Potomac River in the north. It is only 25 miles wide at its widest point and is bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains on the east and the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains to the west.
Well before the war, the Shenandoah Valley was known for its network of family farms, which produced huge amounts of wheat, corn and livestock. During the war, that agricultural wealth supported the Confederate armies that often moved through the narrow valley.
By 1864, the Union realized that it had to oust the southern army from the valley to protect nearby Maryland and Washington and destroy the resources that had supported the enemy for so long.
On Aug. 26, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ordered Sheridan to "give the enemy no rest, and . . . do all the damage to railroads and crops you can. Carry off stock of all description, and Negroes, so as to prevent further planting. If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste."
His command was followed.
Sheridan, after two weeks of torching private property, reported to Grant that his men had destroyed "630 barns; 47 flouring mills; 4 sawmills; 1 woolen mill; 3,982 tons of hay, straw and fodder; more than 400,000 bushels of wheat; 3 furnaces; 515 acres of corn; 750 bushels of oats; more than 3,000 head of life stock; 560 barrels of flour; 2 tanneries; 1 railroad depot; 1 locomotive engine; and 2 boxcars."
Although Grant did not order homes to be destroyed and Sheridan did not account for any, that was what happened, according to Heatwole's book "The Burning: Sheridan's Devastation of the Shenandoah Valley." His accounts of homes burned for spite or vengeance or through carelessness come from diaries, letters, military reports and newspaper stories.
A Pennsylvania cavalryman wrote home in mid-October: "We burnt some sixty houses and all most of the barns, hay, grain and corn in the shocks for fifty miles [south of] Strasburg. . . . It was a hard-looking sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this season of the year."
Among the unfortunate was John Alexander Herring Sr., who was ill in bed in late September when soldiers showed up at his 1776 estate, Retirement, near Dayton. The soldiers carried the owner out of the house and dumped him onto the lawn. From there, he and his wife watched as household possessions were thrown through smashed windows and the house set afire along with the barn and other outbuildings.
Some families were given a few minutes to grab furniture and clothing before their homes were set ablaze. They loaded whatever they had saved onto wagons supplied by Sheridan and joined the long line of refugees following the Union army north, camping with the soldiers for the limited protection that provided against highway robbers out to steal what little they had.
A correspondent traveling with the army wrote: "Hundreds of nearly starving people are going North. Our trains are crowded with them. They line the wayside. Hundreds more are coming; not half the inhabitants of the valley can subsist on it in its present condition."
Grant's strategy worked. The valley could no longer sustain the Confederate army or supply Gen. Robert E. Lee as he defended Richmond.
The end was just a few months away.
--(10)----------------------------------------------------
Civil War battle site proposal is unique
BILL BANKS, For the Journal-Constitution
05/06/2004
Atlanta Journal-Constitution http://www.ajc.com/
July marks the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Brown's Mill, a Civil War cavalry fight in the woods and thickets two miles southwest of Newnan.
For years, despite a 1908 monument marking the battle site, Brown's Mill seems to have been purged from local consciousness. Many have admitted living in and around Newnan for decades without knowing a Civil War battle was fought nearby.
But that's beginning to change. The past six months have produced three significant steps toward preserving not only the battlefield (or at least a crucial portion of it) but much of its intriguing history:
Last November the Jaeger Co. of Gainesville completed a master plan that could make Brown's Mill one of the nation's most distinctive Civil War parks. Planners earlier wanted to turn Brown's Mill into a passive recreation park, but public outcry caused them to change course. The new master plan details an interpretive battlefield park.
Much of this plan was designed by Anne Wilfer, a senior landscape architect with Jaeger, and Athens historian David Evans. Author of the 1996 book "Sherman's Horsemen: Union Cavalry Operations in the Atlanta Campaign," Evans had many Coweta relatives who told him war-related stories.
A particular favorite occurred the day after the July 30, 1864, fight, when Evans' great-grandfather, William Russell Evans, then 13, wandered over the grisly, carnage-strewn site, and saw chickens pecking out the eyes of dead Yankees. Evans himself grew up riding horses over part of the battlefield. As a teenager he stumbled over the 1908 monument, then overgrown with weeds and thoroughly hidden.
Therefore, the historian was thrilled when, in December 2002, the county purchased 104 acres (previously owned by a Texas timber company) near the intersection of Old Corinth and Millard Farmer roads, site of the battle's most intense fighting.
The fundamental feature of Evans' and Wilfer's design is a "regional history trail" --- a scaled-down replication of troop movements preceding and including the Brown's Mill fight. The walking trails on the grounds will represent about 250 miles of cavalry routes (chickens not included) within the 104-acre tract.
A grassy spot on the tract's east side will symbolize Atlanta. Three lines of actual railroad tracks will converge within the city (or grassy inlet), symbolizing Sherman's obsession to cut the Confederacy's remaining supply lines.
If this plan is implemented, Brown's Mill would be one of only two Civil War parks featuring a cavalry battle (Brices Cross Roads, Miss., is the other), and the only Civil War battlefield devoted to interpreting a cavalry raid, according to the master plan.
"We wanted to do something that's never been done," Evans said. "This way you won't have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Civil War buff to understand what happened. here."
The Coweta County Board of Commissioners unanimously adopted this landscape design Feb. 17. There is, however, no time frame for completing, or even beginning, this project. Coweta comprehensive planner Sandra Parker estimates that implementing the entire plan, if done today, would cost $3.5 million.
"This plan is definitely realistic," said County Administrator Theron Gay. "Everything I've heard is positive --- I know of no movement within the county against it. Let's face it, the mind-set of the county is, we've already invested a lot of money [$480,000 for the battlefield's purchase and $19,952 to pay for the master plan] without seeing the project through."
Evans believes the next step involves starting a "Friends for the Battle of Brown's Mill" collective which, among several objectives, would write grant applications for money that would finance on-site construction.
Also in February, the nonprofit Civil War Preservation Trust named Brown's Mill one of America's 25 most endangered battlefields. Other sites on the list include part of Gettysburg, Pa.; Chancellorsville, Va.; Appomattox, Va., and Harper's Ferry, W.Va.
As Evans said, "That's quite an honor, in a dubious way."
Brown's Mill was a victory for the Confederate cavalry genius Joseph Wheeler. It played, Evans writes, "a subtle but significant role" in forcing Sherman to change tactics.
Sherman wanted a quick victory and never intended to spend an extended period laying siege to Atlanta. He ordered the siege because the Union cavalry (thanks to Wheeler) failed to cut the rail connections between Atlanta and the rest of the Confederacy. Later still he employed infantry (not cavalry) to make mincemeat of railroad lines.
Besides Wheeler, the battle produced a number of compelling characters. Pvt. George W. Healy of the 5th Iowa Cavalry captured and disarmed five Confederate soldiers during the chaotic combat in the woods, and marched them back to Union lines. This subsequently earned him a Medal of Honor.
James L. Pierpont, a Northern-born Confederate, served as a company clerk in the 5th Georgia Cavalry. In 1857, while living in Boston, he composed a tune for his church's Thanksgiving program, which he named "Jingle Bells."
But Brown's Mill may have yet another verse added to its hallowed narrative.
"To get this plan up and going," Evans said, "is the only fitting effort to the men who fought and died there. It's a monument to them, but it'll also be a monument to the community for caring, for saving this land from becoming a highway or subdivision." Map BATTLE OF BROWN'S MILL
A master plan has been finished for a Civil War battlefield
Map points out the location of the battlefield. Area of detail encompasses southwest Coweta County.
-------------------------------------------------------
(1) Efforts on to preserve Day’s Gap in - Birmingham News
(2)
(3)
(4) New tourism director at
(5) Campaign to save Mosby site at
(6) Wal-Mart planned for
(7) Students interview sons of Union soldiers – Washington Times
(8) Preservation options debated at Franklin - Franklin Review Appeal
(9)
(10) Brown’s Mill battlefield is unique - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
--(1)-----------------------------------------------------
Efforts on to preserve Civil War site
KENT FAULK, News staff writer
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1086254268219441.xml
BATTLEGROUND - As day broke on
Other Union troops had left earlier, heading up the mountainous gap by the Day family's farm to continue a raid across north
But the boom of a Confederate cannon broke up the reunion; those
Nearly a century and a half later, a quieter battle is being fought on this same turf. This time, it's a fight by descendants of both the blue and gray to preserve the battleground on the Cullman and Morgan county line from relic hunters and development. Some fear the area will see more houses and businesses pop up once the widening of
"I think if some action is not taken then it definitely is endangered," said Dan Fulenwider, a historian. "It's part of the history of our state and nation."
In February, the Washington-based Civil War Preservation Trust named Day's Gap to its list of 15 "at risk" Civil War battlefields. No other
Of the 10,500 battles or skirmishes in the Civil War, 384 conflicts were identified in 1991 by a congressional committee as principal battles. Day's Gap and sites at
Paul Bryant Jr., immediate past chairman of the preservation trust board, said several of the
Fulenwider has pushed local governments for nearly a decade to preserve and mark the route through north
Fulenwider, who walked the entire route four years ago, is working to get Streight's route marked and to have pull-off areas for tour buses. He's also been working with the Cullman County Commission to buy land for a park at
Fulenwider is working in concert with the preservation trust, which is trying to negotiate with landowners in an effort to preserve Day's Gap and other spots along the route.
"What we're trying to do is get a Forrest-Streight trail that tracks their movements across the state of
At Day's Gap, the trust is trying to get conservation easements from the owners of three pieces of property to prevent housing or commercial development on the land.
Staples Hollow is still untouched by development, with only a gravel road leading down the mountain to a farm. Among the pastures stands a chimney from Richard Day's cabin. Two log outbuildings from the era still stand around the site where Day's sister had a cabin. There's also a family cemetery.
Some houses have been built at the top of the gap where the main battle of Day's Gap took place in the community now called Battleground.
Battleground residents have gotten into the preservation effort.
A Confederate battle flag flies below the American Stars and Stripes at the Battleground Volunteer Fire Department, and two residents have gotten into the spirit of the battle.
Mack Carter, whose home sits on a hill where Confederate forces set up their cannons, flies a Confederate flag on a pole; next to it is a cannon pointed at Andy Thomas' home, about a quarter mile away. Thomas flies two American flags, with a fake cannon pointed at Carter's home.
Thomas said he's had people from as far away as
Heritage tourism on all aspects of American history has been "huge," especially since the 1990s Ken Burns series about the Civil War, Bryant said.
Earlier this month, Ed Bearss, chief historian emeritus for the National Park Service and a narrator on Burns' PBS series, and Fulenwider led a tour-bus load of history buffs on a tour of Day's Gap and other Cullman County sites along the battle route. Each member of the tour paid up to $2,025 for the seven-day Riding With Forrest journey through
"It is important because it adds to the Forrest legend," Bearss said of the Forrest-Streight route. "I'm impressed by what has been accomplished here."
Streight, who had about 1,500 men, was trying to drive across north
Streight, while stationed in
And that lent one unusual aspect to the Day's Gap battle, Simpson said.
"Seven of the Union troops were from that hollow or right around there, so they were fighting in their own back yards for the Union in
And the battle also was the seed for at least one major event that added to Forrest's legacy.
By the time Forrest arrived for the battle on April 30, forces led by his brother, Bill Forrest, had already been repelled and Forrest's two favorite cannons captured by the Union. Bill Forrest was wounded in the thigh during the battle, Fulenwider said.
An irate Forrest is said to have picked up a Lt. Gould and pushed him against a tree "and said you had better get those cannons back by nightfall or else," Simpson said. The Confederates got the cannons back, although there's still a debate as to exactly what happened to them.
Two weeks later, a still-embarrassed Gould shot Forrest in
--(2)-----------------------------------------------------
West Point By John Andrew Prime
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/news/...CDBC8DF7.shtml
Visiting the ground on which battles and even whole campaigns actually were fought is another thing entirely, as a group of
Led by
"The Red River Campaign is really little known, but I consider it to be one of the greatest what-ifs of the Civil War," Mangham said after the tour, when he and the cadets and their local tour guide, historian and author Gary Joiner, finished off the night with a big meal at Pete Harris Cafe. "It's not just a failed expedition -- it's a nearly catastrophic campaign."
In the campaign, which personally was planned by President Abraham Lincoln to capture
"On a military level, on a political level, it could have caused the Civil War to end a different way," Mangham said.
The cadets accompanying Mangham and another history professor, Maj. Tom Rider, hailed from states as far-ranging as
One of them is Jim Perkins, 20, of Coushatta.
"Honestly, I didn't know a lot about the Red River Campaign before I came here," he said. "I've learned a ton. I even learned that some of my family's land is where one of the engagement sites was -- Blair's Landing. I had no idea."
That battle was a lopsided shoot-em-up between Union gunboats and a Confederate cavalry force led by Texas Gen. Tom Green, who was decapitated by a cannonball in the battle.
Cadet T.R. Dilla of
"You couldn't see anything from the road," Dilla said after leading all but a few of the cadets deep into the dark and forbidding woods that once had been a low earthen fort which never heard the sounds of battle. "I really wanted to see what was in the woods. I found a built-up berm and an area that was kind of built up. I was surprised."
--(3)-----------------------------------------------------
After four-week delay, new Civil War film set to debut on Saturday
By JEFF BRANSCOME
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2...032004/1385295
A $500,000 film about the Battle of Chancellorsville will premičre Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Chancellorsville Battlefield Visitor Center.
"We are the envy of everybody I've talked to in the Park Service for having gotten such a high quality product as this," said John Hennessey, the movie's screenwriter and the chief historian at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park.
Originally scheduled for May 2--during the battle's anniversary weekend--the premičre of the 22-minute film was delayed because of technical difficulties.
It was professionally made by Historical Films Group in partnership with Friends of Fredericksburg Area Battlefields. Filmed last year in Spotsylvania and Charles Town, W.Va., the movie took about eight days to shoot.
"As much as we liked the Fredericksburg film that we premičred two years ago, this one is better," Hennessy said.
Unlike the 1970s-era slide show it replaces, the new movie captures both the military and civilian experience, he said.
"Without a question, this is the biggest project we've ever undertaken," Hennessy said.
It includes dozens of local actors and re-enactors, who appear as named characters and supply voice-overs.
--(4)-----------------------------------------------------
Corinth tourism council hires director
06/02/2004
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
http://www.djournal.com/pages/story....pub=1&div=News
CORINTH - Erwin A. "Del" Horton Jr. is the new permanent director for the Corinth Area Tourism Promotion Council.
Horton, formerly the council's project manager, fills a vacancy created by the resignation of Emy Wilkinson, who accepted a similar position with the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau.
"Del is an excellent choice for this position," said Ricky Marecle, head of the CATPC search committee. "With over 20 years of experience in the advertising and public relations industry and four years with our Corinth program, his knowledge of the product and the ways to market it make him the clear fit for our organization."
Horton described his new job as "an honor and challenge."
"I feel my first-hand knowledge of Corinth and its unique assets will help me implement strategies that most effectively communicate our history and heritage as a tourist destination," he said.
Alliance President Charles Gulotta also had praise for Horton. "Del's knowledge of the (CATPC) budgeting process, the relationships he has built with local and state tourism leaders and his extensive knowledge of Civil War history will be great assets to the council," he said.
Horton experienced
Horton's experience includes chief of Advertising & Public Affairs for the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion in Nashville, Tenn., assistant public affairs officer and photo-journalist for the U.S. Coast Guard and a staff research assistant at the Center for Historic Preservation for Middle Tennessee State University.
Over the past several years, Horton has been active with the Mississippi Tourism Association, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Tourism Association and the Mississippi-Alabama Rural Tourism Planning Committee.
Horton was a co-author on the proposal to establish a Tennessee National Civil War Heritage Area, a member of the Tennessee Civil War Heritage Trail Committee and was president of the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association.
"I have always had a strong interest in the Civil War and the significance Corinth and Alcorn County played in the events that shaped a nation," he said.
"With the opening of the new Civil War Interpretive Center and our continued relationship with Shiloh National Military Park, Corinth should continue to grow as a tourism destination.
"I look forward to the challenges this job offers and I feel certain we can continue to elevate the area as one of the nation's premier Civil War history destinations."
--(5)-----------------------------------------------------
A view with a past: Mount Zion acts to save its setting
By Deborah Fitts
06/01/2004
Fauquier Times-Democrat
http://www.zwire.com/site/tab2.cfm?n...d=506066&rfi=6
In a region growing as voraciously as Northern Virginia, purchasing a piece of land simply to keep its meadows, creeks and woodlands forever unchanged seems to verge on the quaint.
But that is just what the members of the tiny Mount Zion Church Preservation Association did Thursday, when they bought 89 acres on Fauquier's border for $1.7 million to protect the viewshed of their historic building.
The little 1851 brick structure, an eyewitness to battle in the Civil War, stands on the south side of U.S. 50, nearly a mile east of Gilberts Corner. The purchased land is kitty-corner across the highway, extending a half-mile west toward Gilberts Corner and more than a quarter-mile north along Watson Road.
The former owner, developer Robert McCormick of Architectural Systems Inc. in Great Falls, planned seven houses on the property, which he dubbed "Mosby Run." Claude "Brad" Bradshaw, president of the association, urged his 13-member board to action.
"It was ambitious," agreed Bradshaw. "But we felt we could do it. It was obvious we couldn't wait to build up the kitty. The guy was going to build houses."
The board approached McCormick in February of last year. It's taken until now to close the deal, but at last the association came up with the $558,000 down payment, including expenses. The association has five years to complete the purchase, with $225,000 annual lump sums to McCormick at 6 percent interest.
The property will remain open space. Three-quarters meadowland, hay will be cut off to keep the woods from encroaching.
The association has tentative plans for walking trails and a nature preserve. There are four spring-fed streams. Gilberts Corner is out of sight; the view to the west is filled with the Bull Run Mountains.
"You can stand on that property and there's not a building in sight," exulted Bradshaw. "It's the same view that existed since before the American Revolution."
The land also includes the house site of "Yankee Davis," a prominent local Union sympathizer during the Civil War. Bradshaw said records indicate that Union soldiers were buried near Davis's house, which is marked now by a clump of trees on the verge of the highway.
McCormick sold the land at $155,000 below fair market value, receiving in return a charitable reduction against taxes. But Bradshaw said McCormick, raised near the Manassas battlefield, "has a place in his heart for preservation.
"He certainly had the potential to make a lot more money," Bradshaw said.
McCormick attributed the deal to Bradshaw's persistence.
"Brad's awfully persuasive," he said. "The property is lovely. I'm a builder who likes to save a little here and there."
The association is casting its eye on other neighboring properties, but so far no owners are interested in selling, Bradshaw said.
Funds for the down payment included a $240,000 federal transportation-enhancement grant; a $195,000 loan from the Piedmont Environmental Council; $100,000 from the Frederick H. Prince Foundation Trust in Chicago; $5,000 from the Washington-based Civil War Preservation Trust; $1,000 from Aldie Ruritan and grants from several other private foundations.
Bradshaw noted that the association has maintained a $300,000-a-year fund-raising pace for the last five years, and should have no difficulty making payments to McCormick. "The money is out there; you just have to ask for it."
The land is the first property actually owned by the association. The church itself and six acres was given to the county nearly a decade ago, the first of several historic properties adopted by Loudoun.
Mount Zion is undergoing a $200,000 stabilization overseen by Bradshaw's board. It is open to groups by appointment and will host its annual "Eyewitness to War" event, with music and Civil War living history, June 26-27.
Bradshaw lives in Prince William but grew up near the church on his family's Watson Road farm. As a youngster in the 1940s, his "first job" was helping to clean the church, which had an active congregation of Old School Baptists until the 1970s.
As the church fell into disuse and the trustees died off, Bradshaw was named a trustee, and he and two others shepherded the adoption of the church by the county. A retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who works as a magistrate in Fairfax County, Bradshaw has served on the association ever since, working as chief grant writer and fund-raiser, and now board president.
He shrugged off credit for the purchase.
"I worked with lots of folks on this," he said. "It was teamwork that did it."
The acquisition will be celebrated in ceremonies June 27 during the "Eyewitness to War" event at the church.
--(6)-----------------------------------------------------
Possible battlefield is a battleground
Civil War cemetery located on planned Wal-Mart site
05/31/2004
Associated Press Newswires
http://www.dailymail.com/news/News/200405319
FAYETTEVILLE -- From a slight knoll at the center of 59 acres of rolling meadow, it's easy to imagine the thoughts that have teased Geraldine Workman over the decades she has tended the graves of about two dozen Confederate soldiers.
Workman's battlefield visions have nothing to do with shopping 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But that may well be the destiny of the Fleshman/Clark farm. A small piece of the Fayette County that once was, it is now surrounded by the Fayetteville that is.
The farm, which some believe was a Civil War battlefield as well as a resting place for a few of its casualties, is about to become a new kind battleground in a contest between preservationists and a developer with his eyes on the dollars a new Wal-Mart will bring, a war drawing headlines of late from Vermont to California.
And as in many Civil War era border-state towns, Fayetteville -- population 2,754 and growing -- "is split right down the middle," Workman said.
"Half wants it and the other half doesn't."
Fayetteville's town council has approved the rezoning, which is due to become law July 1.
A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, Mia Masten, said her company is working with Paramount Development Corp. of Myrtle Beach, S.C., to plan construction of a Wal-Mart Super Center and a Lowe's building supply center. Paramount spokesman Joe Paramore was not available Friday to talk to a reporter, according to a woman who answered the telephone in the company's offices.
Fayetteville Town Manager Ralph Davis said the developer has agreed to preserve the cemetery and build what he called "a buffer zone with a fence and $50,000 in landscaping" around it.
Alice Todaro, who like Workman is a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, scoffs at the idea.
"How can you have a historic shrine in the middle of a parking lot?" she asked.
Fayetteville's downtown district, dominated by a 19th Century red brick courthouse, has been declared a national historic district, and the town sits on the edge of the New River Gorge National River.
"We're trying to keep that small town feel, and make everything blend together," Davis said. But he also said his town needs a Wal-Mart. It has only a Ben Franklin variety store and a locally owned grocery store, Daniels' Market in downtown Fayetteville, and Davis contends neither considers Wal-Mart a threat.
New development is springing up along the new four-lane highway that goes by the edge of the historic district.
But smack in the middle of all that development is what was until about a decade ago a family farm.
The only disturbance at the cemetery now is the rumble of tractor-trailers moving down the highway just out of sight behind a row of far-off trees on the edge of the property. The headstones are on a slight rise with a broad view, watched over by an ancient walnut tree, a lone sentinel in the midst of the rolling field.
Davis said there will be a complete archaeological study before construction begins. While historians have confirmed that the farm is the burial site of some Confederate soldiers killed in action during the Battle of Fayetteville that began Sept. 10, 1862, assertions that the farm was the battlefield itself are less certain.
"There are 24 soldiers buried there, but no one is 100 percent sure who they are," Davis said.
Workman, who has been tending the cemetery since 1971, disagrees.
A well-regarded local historian, now deceased, began interviewing Fayette County residents about their family recollections of the battle and reviewing the historical record early in the 20th Century. The historian, the Rev. Shirley Donnelly of Oak Hill, concluded there were 13 to 17 graves at the site, although at the time only one grave was marked.
The family of William S. Morgan erected a stone shortly after his death, identifying him by name, birth date, and the legend, "Killed in battle at Fayetteville, Sept. 10, 1862."
After reading Donnelly's work, Workman and another member of the UDC devoted one summer to identifying the soldiers. They researched original Civil War records held by the West Virginia Department of Archives and History to determine who might be buried on the site.
"When we finished, we had identified 24 soldiers of the Virginia Militia, all of them boys between the ages of 18 and 25 . . . who marched in here from Narrows, Va.," Workman said.
Armed with the 24 names and the dates of their deaths, Workman went back to the farm and began trying to locate the graves.
She used a technique called "dousing," a skill that is a holdover from West Virginia's agricultural past and is most commonly used to locate a spot for drilling a water well. Still in use today in rural areas, its practitioners are often known as "water witches."
Workman uses her skill, however, to find graves.
She uses two metal rods some 3 feet long and bent 90 degrees at one end for gripping. She holds the rods loosely in her closed fists, careful to keep them parallel with the ground and one another, and walks over the site until the rods react.
"When you cross a grave, they cross one another," she said.
Workman once demonstrated the technique to a group of Civil War re-enactors.
"They'd never seen anybody use those rods," Workman said. "I'll tell you, some of those boys got really skittish."
After locating graves, Workman began installing small flat marble markers in the 1980s.
She does not claim to know who is buried where. Other than the original stone placed by Morgan's family, names were arbitrarily assigned to the markers. Because Morgan was a private, the privates' markers were grouped near his, the officers' stones placed a rank or two away.
Masten, the Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said a representative of West Virginia's Department of Archives and History has informed her company that the state cannot confirm the site as a battlefield. West Virginia's historic preservation officer, Susan Pierce, did not immediately return a reporter's telephone calls.
According to Masten, the company still must complete Fayetteville's building permit process and win approval from the state Department of Transportation before construction can begin. She said the company will continue to look into the historical significance of the site.
"We want to be sensitive to that," she said.
--(7)-----------------------------------------------------
Students interview sons of Union soldiers
By Martha M. Boltz, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
05/28/2004 The Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/civilwar/20...1727-8584r.htm
When Peoria, Ill., holds its celebration tomorrow in advance of Memorial Day, an unlikely group will participate — at least seven sons of Union soldiers from the Civil War will be in attendance at the local Grand Army of the Republic Hall, as well as one daughter.
That's right: As incredible as it might seem, these are the "real sons" and a "real daughter" of Union veterans — the first generation, born when their fathers were of great age, and who are themselves getting up there in years.
It will be the third ceremony of its type presented there by a camp of the Sons of Union Veterans (SUV). In addition to sharing stories told them by their soldier fathers, these men will add their own recollections as World War II veterans, bridging the gap from the 1860s to the 1940s. And a teacher brought it all about.
A teacher's passion
Tim Pletkovich, a middle school teacher in Peoria, attended a national meeting of the Sons of Union Veterans two years ago. He met a "real son" from Michigan and was able to get addresses for several other "Civil War children" as he refers to them. Mr. Pletkovich taught eighth-grade English as well as American history, and he pitched to his students the idea of getting in touch with these very elderly "sons," whose ages ranged from 75 to 98, and discovering the stories they had learned from their Union soldier fathers. The young people eagerly adopted the project.
Mr. Pletkovich's graduate studies had been in antebellum history, and he became aware of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War in 1997.
"I had long been familiar with the alphabet soup of Confederate organizations ... and that Southerners have such a deeper appreciation for local and regional history than do Northerners," Mr. Pletkovich said. "In my opinion, this is why so many more Confederate 'children' have been identified as opposed to Union 'children.' Confederate organizations dwarf Union groups in terms of their commitment to preserve American history."
Tales of two wars
As time passed, some of the elderly men died, but the students who had progressed into Peoria's high schools kept up correspondence with many of the surviving ones and elicited stories of their fathers' actions and travails during the Civil War.
What began as an English project for students at Rolling Acres Edison Junior Academy morphed into a combination of history, anthropology and writing. It continued at Blaine-Sumner Middle School, where Mr. Pletkovich also taught.
The students began corresponding with the elderly men, asking for their memories of their Union fathers. When the World War II connection emerged, the memories of that era were also shared. The young people prepared sets of questions that they submitted to the men, and later they were able to meet many of them in person.
The students held seminars at a local library, established a Web site, and turned the whole project into living history. Many seamstress moms and lady re-enactors worked long hours to produce replica Union uniforms for the young men and a collection of antebellum gowns for the young women.
Not a volunteer
A quick look at some of the potential attendees tomorrow shows the variety of the "Civil War children," such as the four living children of Pvt. Charles Parker Pool, who for four years served with the 6th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry. Late in the war, Pvt. Pool sustained a serious knee injury, Mr. Pletkovich said, and ultimately the leg was amputated. His daughter, Mrs. Florence Wilson of Aldridge, Mo., will be in Peoria, along with his sons Bill, Garland and John Pool, all of Bolivar, Mo.
Garland Pool told the students that "when my dad and my mother were married, he was 71 and she was 27. They had five children ... four boys and one girl. Three of us boys are still alive today, and the three of us served our country during World War II, two in the Army and one in the Navy."
Middle school student Crystal Hall asked Onnie Mitchell about his father, the Rev. Cager Mitchell, a private with the 7th West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry. He had enlisted at 22 in Charleston, W.Va. "You asked why my father joined the Union Army. Well, child, my father told me he never volunteered for anything! He said that soldiers just came and took him. A lot of 'just taking people for service' went on back then. He was a private and was his company's buglerţ" Mr. Mitchell said.
Sultana survivor
One of the sons who has not been able to commit yet traces his history to a survivor of the ill-fated steamboat Sultana. Pvt. William C. Warner had been captured by the Confederates in Alabama in 1864. Interned in Cahaba Prison, he was released at the end of the war and marched 50 miles with several hundred other released prisoners to Vicksburg, Miss.
There, they all boarded the Sultana, its capacity of less than 400 stretched to 2,300 men. A few days later, on April 28, 1865, one of the ship's boilers exploded near Memphis, Tenn., setting the boat on fire and causing it to sink. By some estimates, more than 1,800 people were killed. In later years, Pvt. Warner told the story of his Sultana survival to his son, Robert C. Warner of San Angelo, Texas.
A participant in Sherman's march to the sea was the Rev. Nathaniel Amos Whitman of the 9th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, whose son, John, was interviewed by middle school student Ben Smet. Mr. Whitman now lives in Hot Springs, S.D., and may be able to attend. He told the young man, "After my father joined active service in Lexington, Kentucky, his first combat was against [Gen. John Hunt] Morgan's Raiders." Some of John Whitman's recollections came from his mother, the wife of Nathaniel Whitman, who said that "when [he] was in South Carolina, their commanding officer ordered them to burn houses in order to 'punish South Carolina for starting the war.' " She said that in one of the pages of his diary, he wrote: "Today, we burned more houses. I wept."
Tunnel vision
Mr. Pletkovich encountered some organizational tunnel vision regarding the existence of World War II veterans who were "real sons," being advised by an SUV official that there were none. The 43-year-old teacher maintained his equanimity as he gently advised the official that he was wrong, explaining that there were seven "real sons" who were World War II vets in Peoria alone. One of the "real daughters" interviewed by the students was a WAVE in World War II as well.
"This experience elucidates the difference in the Confederate and Union organizations," Mr. Pletkovich said. "The Confederate ones are organized to a much greater extent and have knowledgeable people always ready and available to help with any questions. There are only 6,700 SUV members throughout the country, and to my knowledge, my kids are the only middle school or high school students throughout the entire nation who have ever solicited the 'real sons' to the extent we have."
With the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington today, the sad fact is that about 1,100 veterans of that war die daily, making the preservation of their stories even more imperative.
A 'Panama suit'
Other attendees in Peoria will be William H. Upham Jr. of Milwaukee, and Frederick M. Upham of Fort Collins, Colo. Their father, William H. Upham Sr., was a corporal with the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry who was seriously wounded in the chest during the Battle of First Manassas. Initial reports had him listed as dead, and funeral services were held in Racine, Wis., in his honor. Later it was discovered that he was captured after the battle and spent several months at Libby Prison in Richmond until released in a prisoner exchange in 1862.
"During my father's imprisonment at Libby, he collected some material with which to sew and knitted himself a 'Panama suit.' ... That suit is still on display at the Wisconsin State Historical Society," said Frederick Upham, who is 83 years old.
The soldier then went directly to Washington, meeting with a Wisconsin senator and President Lincoln, and where he was able to obtain an appointment to West Point. Upham graduated from the academy in 1866, and he later served one term as governor of Wisconsin before retiring from public life.
Tim Pletkovich's great-great grandfather, Luther M. Preston, was in the same unit as Upham, also sustained a chest wound, and at a different time also was incarcerated at Libby Prison.
As a result of the middle school project and its widening influence, William Upham Jr. has established a scholarship fund in his father's name for Peoria middle school students who demonstrate an exceptional interest in Civil War studies.
Unique memories
Sixth-grader Becca Epping talked with Henry Shouse, the son of Dr. Hiram Craig Shouse, a private with the 11th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Henry Shouse shared unique World War II memories with her. He served with the Search and Rescue Corps. Before the advent of helicopters, "we had canoes, snowshoes and sled dogs" for searches and rescues. He was assigned to three locations in Canada and two in Greenland, with men and dogs transported in small planes by bush pilots. He told Becca how they used 100 sled dogs for rescue work during the Battle of the Bulge. His unit was attached "to a M.A.S.H.-type field hospital but not like TV's 'M*A*S*H.' " He supplied the students with a photo of the first helicopter ever brought into Goose Bay, in Labrador, Canada by cargo plane.
James Madison Gowin Jr. was interviewed by young Ben Smet regarding Union Pvt. James Madison Gowin Sr. Mr. Gowin, in replying to the student's questionnaire, said, "It thrills me to have young people wanting to know about our nation's past, for it gives them wisdom to prepare for themselves, and for our leaders of tomorrow. Mankind has not yet learned that in wars there are no winners, only losers."
The young people involved in this project have an even loftier goal in mind. They would like to see the first-person narratives of the men and their photographs from both war eras transformed into a book. With 23 vignettes and numerous photographs, it could happen. If so, the activities of a small group of middle school students will have produced a piece of living history for all time.
Martha M. Boltz is a writer in Northern Virginia and a frequent contributor to the Civil War page.
--(8)-----------------------------------------------------
Purchase isn’t only way to keep homes off golf course
By CLINT CONFEHR / Review Appeal Senior Staff Reporter
05/25/2004
Franklin Review Appeal
http://reviewappeal.midsouthnews.com...iewStory=22104
Short of a public-private collaboration to buy the Country Club of Franklin, there may be a way to make sure the golf course isn’t developed as a housing subdivision, one of the preservationists on Franklin’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen said on Sunday afternoon.
It’s called a conservation easement, a publicly recorded contract between a property owner and a qualified entity which can include local government. The Land Trust for Tennessee Inc. is another legal entity which monitors conservation easements. It’s unclear whether golf qualifies as a conservation purpose here, but it has elsewhere.
Alderwoman Pam Lewis spoke briefly about this alternative to a controversy that’s disturbed hundreds of city residents.
A conservation easement could be accomplished with a payment or exchange of something of value to the owner of land where development would be restricted.
While Mayor Tom Miller denies Franklin City Hall has any plan to buy the fairways and greens visible from Lewisburg Pike, Lewis has acknowledged her interest in preserving that open space since the property’s owner, Rod Heller of Washington, D.C., challenged the community at-large to do something about it.
Heller paid $5 million to a businessman who planned to sell the property rented by the Country Club of Franklin, club members and city officials have said. The previous owner had another buyer who reportedly planned to build homes there. Heller is interested in preserving the open space since he’s a descendant of the family that built Carnton Mansion, a former chairman of the national Civil War Trust, and he’s a golfer.
Lewis’ observation followed a tour and Civil War history lesson at the Collins Farm, just northwest of the country club and Historic Carnton Plantation. She was asked what she thought of the situation which includes Country Club of Franklin members and other city residents who oppose city spending to transform a golf course into a battlefield park, and the historic backdrop detailed by leaders of Save the Franklin Battlefield Inc.
“It’s very compelling that it’s battlefield property,” Lewis said of the Collins Farm which was part of the McGavock family plantation, better known as Carnton, and the golf course between the mansion and Lewisburg Pike.
“The question is whether we can prevail,” she said.
“One option is to buy the development rights,” said Lewis, explaining that could be “done with a conservation easement.”
The cost “would be less than $5 million,” the alderwoman said.
“It would leave the golf course and open options to buy other properties,” she said after about 30 people learned about combat on the eastern front in the Battle of Franklin.
The audience included Tom Greuel and Hank Beyke, residents of Dallas Downs subdivision southeast of the Country Club of Franklin, who used to live, respectively, near the Civil War battlefield at Manassas, Va., and Fort Recovery, Ind., which was recovered from the Shawnee.
“I’m glad there’s some movement,” Beyke said before the history lesson in the Collins Farm parking lot. “It’s unfortunate we’ve had to wait so long. The longer you wait, the harder it is” to create a battlefield park.
Greuel, who knew only a little about the golf course situation before the history lesson, said he would favor anything that could be done to expand the public’s view of the battlefield.
Senior Staff Reporter Clint Confehr can be contacted at clint@reviewappeal.com.
--(9)-----------------------------------------------------
Historian Highlights Sheridan's Vicious Campaign of 1864
05/13/2004
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004May11.html
Everyone seems to know that Gen. William T. Sherman marched across Georgia to the sea in December 1864 and left ruined buildings and lives along his 300-mile route. Less well known is the devastation wrought by Gen. Philip H. Sheridan on a sliver of Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, where homes, barns and mills were burned and dozens of families were left destitute in September and October of the same year.
Although the destruction in dollars was greater in Georgia, the human impact was far more intense in the Shenandoah Valley, because family farms and small towns were targeted, according to author and historian John L. Heatwole.
The 140th anniversary of "the Burning," as Sheridan's campaign became known, as well as the battles of New Market, Second Kernstown, Third Winchester, Cedar Creek and others, will be commemorated this year in the Shenandoah Valley, about 80 miles west of Washington at its northern end.
The Shenandoah Valley, a part of the Great Valley of Virginia, is about 125 miles long, running from the northern part of Rockbridge County in the south to the Potomac River in the north. It is only 25 miles wide at its widest point and is bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains on the east and the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains to the west.
Well before the war, the Shenandoah Valley was known for its network of family farms, which produced huge amounts of wheat, corn and livestock. During the war, that agricultural wealth supported the Confederate armies that often moved through the narrow valley.
By 1864, the Union realized that it had to oust the southern army from the valley to protect nearby Maryland and Washington and destroy the resources that had supported the enemy for so long.
On Aug. 26, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ordered Sheridan to "give the enemy no rest, and . . . do all the damage to railroads and crops you can. Carry off stock of all description, and Negroes, so as to prevent further planting. If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste."
His command was followed.
Sheridan, after two weeks of torching private property, reported to Grant that his men had destroyed "630 barns; 47 flouring mills; 4 sawmills; 1 woolen mill; 3,982 tons of hay, straw and fodder; more than 400,000 bushels of wheat; 3 furnaces; 515 acres of corn; 750 bushels of oats; more than 3,000 head of life stock; 560 barrels of flour; 2 tanneries; 1 railroad depot; 1 locomotive engine; and 2 boxcars."
Although Grant did not order homes to be destroyed and Sheridan did not account for any, that was what happened, according to Heatwole's book "The Burning: Sheridan's Devastation of the Shenandoah Valley." His accounts of homes burned for spite or vengeance or through carelessness come from diaries, letters, military reports and newspaper stories.
A Pennsylvania cavalryman wrote home in mid-October: "We burnt some sixty houses and all most of the barns, hay, grain and corn in the shocks for fifty miles [south of] Strasburg. . . . It was a hard-looking sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this season of the year."
Among the unfortunate was John Alexander Herring Sr., who was ill in bed in late September when soldiers showed up at his 1776 estate, Retirement, near Dayton. The soldiers carried the owner out of the house and dumped him onto the lawn. From there, he and his wife watched as household possessions were thrown through smashed windows and the house set afire along with the barn and other outbuildings.
Some families were given a few minutes to grab furniture and clothing before their homes were set ablaze. They loaded whatever they had saved onto wagons supplied by Sheridan and joined the long line of refugees following the Union army north, camping with the soldiers for the limited protection that provided against highway robbers out to steal what little they had.
A correspondent traveling with the army wrote: "Hundreds of nearly starving people are going North. Our trains are crowded with them. They line the wayside. Hundreds more are coming; not half the inhabitants of the valley can subsist on it in its present condition."
Grant's strategy worked. The valley could no longer sustain the Confederate army or supply Gen. Robert E. Lee as he defended Richmond.
The end was just a few months away.
--(10)----------------------------------------------------
Civil War battle site proposal is unique
BILL BANKS, For the Journal-Constitution
05/06/2004
Atlanta Journal-Constitution http://www.ajc.com/
July marks the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Brown's Mill, a Civil War cavalry fight in the woods and thickets two miles southwest of Newnan.
For years, despite a 1908 monument marking the battle site, Brown's Mill seems to have been purged from local consciousness. Many have admitted living in and around Newnan for decades without knowing a Civil War battle was fought nearby.
But that's beginning to change. The past six months have produced three significant steps toward preserving not only the battlefield (or at least a crucial portion of it) but much of its intriguing history:
Last November the Jaeger Co. of Gainesville completed a master plan that could make Brown's Mill one of the nation's most distinctive Civil War parks. Planners earlier wanted to turn Brown's Mill into a passive recreation park, but public outcry caused them to change course. The new master plan details an interpretive battlefield park.
Much of this plan was designed by Anne Wilfer, a senior landscape architect with Jaeger, and Athens historian David Evans. Author of the 1996 book "Sherman's Horsemen: Union Cavalry Operations in the Atlanta Campaign," Evans had many Coweta relatives who told him war-related stories.
A particular favorite occurred the day after the July 30, 1864, fight, when Evans' great-grandfather, William Russell Evans, then 13, wandered over the grisly, carnage-strewn site, and saw chickens pecking out the eyes of dead Yankees. Evans himself grew up riding horses over part of the battlefield. As a teenager he stumbled over the 1908 monument, then overgrown with weeds and thoroughly hidden.
Therefore, the historian was thrilled when, in December 2002, the county purchased 104 acres (previously owned by a Texas timber company) near the intersection of Old Corinth and Millard Farmer roads, site of the battle's most intense fighting.
The fundamental feature of Evans' and Wilfer's design is a "regional history trail" --- a scaled-down replication of troop movements preceding and including the Brown's Mill fight. The walking trails on the grounds will represent about 250 miles of cavalry routes (chickens not included) within the 104-acre tract.
A grassy spot on the tract's east side will symbolize Atlanta. Three lines of actual railroad tracks will converge within the city (or grassy inlet), symbolizing Sherman's obsession to cut the Confederacy's remaining supply lines.
If this plan is implemented, Brown's Mill would be one of only two Civil War parks featuring a cavalry battle (Brices Cross Roads, Miss., is the other), and the only Civil War battlefield devoted to interpreting a cavalry raid, according to the master plan.
"We wanted to do something that's never been done," Evans said. "This way you won't have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Civil War buff to understand what happened. here."
The Coweta County Board of Commissioners unanimously adopted this landscape design Feb. 17. There is, however, no time frame for completing, or even beginning, this project. Coweta comprehensive planner Sandra Parker estimates that implementing the entire plan, if done today, would cost $3.5 million.
"This plan is definitely realistic," said County Administrator Theron Gay. "Everything I've heard is positive --- I know of no movement within the county against it. Let's face it, the mind-set of the county is, we've already invested a lot of money [$480,000 for the battlefield's purchase and $19,952 to pay for the master plan] without seeing the project through."
Evans believes the next step involves starting a "Friends for the Battle of Brown's Mill" collective which, among several objectives, would write grant applications for money that would finance on-site construction.
Also in February, the nonprofit Civil War Preservation Trust named Brown's Mill one of America's 25 most endangered battlefields. Other sites on the list include part of Gettysburg, Pa.; Chancellorsville, Va.; Appomattox, Va., and Harper's Ferry, W.Va.
As Evans said, "That's quite an honor, in a dubious way."
Brown's Mill was a victory for the Confederate cavalry genius Joseph Wheeler. It played, Evans writes, "a subtle but significant role" in forcing Sherman to change tactics.
Sherman wanted a quick victory and never intended to spend an extended period laying siege to Atlanta. He ordered the siege because the Union cavalry (thanks to Wheeler) failed to cut the rail connections between Atlanta and the rest of the Confederacy. Later still he employed infantry (not cavalry) to make mincemeat of railroad lines.
Besides Wheeler, the battle produced a number of compelling characters. Pvt. George W. Healy of the 5th Iowa Cavalry captured and disarmed five Confederate soldiers during the chaotic combat in the woods, and marched them back to Union lines. This subsequently earned him a Medal of Honor.
James L. Pierpont, a Northern-born Confederate, served as a company clerk in the 5th Georgia Cavalry. In 1857, while living in Boston, he composed a tune for his church's Thanksgiving program, which he named "Jingle Bells."
But Brown's Mill may have yet another verse added to its hallowed narrative.
"To get this plan up and going," Evans said, "is the only fitting effort to the men who fought and died there. It's a monument to them, but it'll also be a monument to the community for caring, for saving this land from becoming a highway or subdivision." Map BATTLE OF BROWN'S MILL
A master plan has been finished for a Civil War battlefield
Map points out the location of the battlefield. Area of detail encompasses southwest Coweta County.