book review

University of Georgia Press

Chapter Title: Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War “I Fear We Will See Hard Times” Chapter Author(s): REBECCA A. HOWARD

Book Title: Arkansas Women Book Subtitle: Their Lives and Times Book Editor(s): Cherisse Jones-Branch, Gary T. Edwards Published by: University of Georgia Press. (2018) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1vhtrh3.9

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War

7 Fear We Will See Hard Times"

REBECCA A. HOWARD

All Arkansas women were impacted by the Civil War, but northwest Arkansas women navigated its perils the earliest and the longest. Whether Confederate or Union, white or black, women in the four most northern and western counties of Arkansas faced a complex situation during the Civil War.1 For four years, they moved their families in response to battle lines or the changing military affili- ations of their men, faced violence, dared to maintain homes in the midst of a guerrilla war, and, if enslaved, endured or celebrated changes in their status and location as the war reshaped freedom and race.2 The Civil War in the Ozarks was fought around and among women, warping the structure of the society to the point that women took on roles, made decisions, and often controlled households far beyond the usual mores of nineteenth-century society.

When scholars and others consider the American Civil War, women are usually relegated to the homefront. Viewed as far from the physical battle lines, they are seen occasionally engaging in changed and expanded roles in their household, perhaps coping with societal disorder, or even struggling with hun- ger and physical hardship when their men go off to fight. If women had a role on the battlefront, it was often an auxiliary one as nurses or camp followers. Occa- sionally, women claimed more exotic roles, perhaps as dashing spies or dressed as men so as to engage in battle. Scholarship since the 19908, however, has re- vealed that these divided designations rarely held true for southern women during the Civil War.3 Across the Upper South especially, women took active roles in fighting occupation or destabilizing the Confederacy from within, even stepping into the political realm to push officials on policy.4 Near northwest Arkansas in Missouri, women even supported male relatives in the guerrilla fight, if they were not actively participating themselves.5 Women in northwest Arkansas were no different. They dealt with homefront and battlefront issues

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 73

to the point where those lines were indelibly blurred. And this confusion began early: the 1862 Battles of Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove destabilized the area and led to three years of guerrilla fighting as the Union army struggled to impose order. This conflict shaped the wartime experiences of women in the area no matter their political affiliation. Further, the isolation of the Ozarks and the relative newness of its communities exacerbated the conditions experienced by northwest Arkansas women. Most communities in the region were less than two decades old and lacked the extensive political systems and multigenera- tional kinship networks that supported women in the established communities of the eastern part of the Confederacy.

The Arkansas counties of Benton, Carroll, Madison, and Washington were in many ways a frontier in 1860. Though part of the Ozark Mountains, the rolling prairies of the Springfield Plateau gave the four counties of northwest Arkan- sas some of the best farmland in the region. This drew settlers even though travel to the state capital was difficult and the area was isolated by geography. The population of northwest Arkansas nearly doubled between 1850 and 1860. The boom was centered in Washington County, with Fayetteville as its county seat, and made the county one of the most densely settled in the frontier state by i86o.6 Bentonville, Huntsville, and Carrollton, the county seats of Benton, Madison, and Carroll counties, respectively, also saw growth during the 18508 and the establishment of rudimentary political and social systems.7 However, with little more than two decades of settlement there were few ancestral homes or holdings, no dynasties in local politics, and only a handful of families with well-established fortunes. Outside of the small number of wealthy slaveholders in the region, the Census generally reflected an intergenerational tradition of westward movement for most of the population. The oldest members of most families were born in Virginia or North Carolina. In turn, their sons and daugh- ters were born in Tennessee or Illinois, and only the grandchildren were born in Arkansas. Women made up slightly less than half of the total population. En- slaved women made up slightly more than half of the African American popu- lation, which was roughly 10 percent of the total. Women of this region were accustomed to movement and experienced in frontier survival. Every bit of that background would be put to use during the war.8

The women of northwest Arkansas experienced the Civil War as a contested yet inconclusive occupation, though "occupation" is a rather generous descrip- tion of the level of control exerted by either Confederate or Union troops. LeeAnn Whites and Alecia Long define an occupied space as one where "the home front and the battlefield merged, creating a new kind of battlefield and an unanticipated second front, where some civilians—many of whom were

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74 R E B E C C A A. H O W A R D

women—continued resisting what they perceived as illegitimate domination."9

This merging of the homefront and the battlefront is especially relevant for northwest Arkansas. No one was safe in the area as early as the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862. Afterward, law and order were gradually replaced by mili- tary rule and covert violence. By late 1864, military farm colonies established by the U.S. Army sheltered Unionist and Confederate women alike from guerrilla action.10 Like many parts of the upland South, the Arkansas Ozarks experienced numerous regular and irregular interactions throughout the war. Northwest Ar- kansas women lived with a sense of occupation even if the main armies were far away.11

The combined presence of regular and irregular troops quickly strained the region s meager sources of food and shelter and burdened the lives of any women who remained. Despite the population surge of the 18508, the region was still lightly settled compared to regions farther east, and the addition of thou- sands of troops in the area made the situation unsustainable. Many of the means for producing food, clothing, and basic farm implements were destroyed in the first year of the war. By 1863, after enduring two formal battles in the area and numerous shifts in regional control, the means for most residents of northwest Arkansas to subsist were severely depleted. First neglected by the Confederacy, then separated entirely, the only surplus food into the region came through fed- eral supply lines. Local men were involved in the fighting, either formally with one of the armies or informally with irregular bands. Even men not in service were often separated from their homes and families, on the run, or hiding out in the hills and caves to avoid conscription. As a result, independent of men, northwest Arkansas women protected their homes and farms. Many became refugees as they sought safer and better-supplied locations for themselves and their families. By the winter of 1862-1863, the women of northwest Arkansas faced violence and starvation on a scale most other southerners, even in other border areas, would not see for another year. By late 1864, troops and guerrilla bands had relentlessly ground down the residents and resources until nothing was left; no people, no crops, no livestock. Only those too poor to leave, espe- cially dogged, or under the explicit protection of the Union army remained.12

The challenge in understanding the occupation of northwest Arkansas dur- ing the Civil War is that loyalties were fluid, and affiliation shaped women's experiences. Women can generally be divided into three groups: enslaved women, Confederate-affiliated women, and Union-affiliated women. Depend- ing on who was doing the occupying and when, "occupation" meant very dif- ferent things to Confederate-identified women than it did to Union-identified women. Further, enslaved women saw the Union advance as anything but occu-

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 75

pation; it was liberation delivered. Enslaved women had the least control of their circumstances. They were subject not only to the decisions of the men in their family unit but also, until emancipation, to the desires of their slaveholder. Confederate-affiliated women were known as such through the service of the men in their family or their expressed personal conviction. In northwest Arkan- sas, many of these women were among the earlier settlers in the area, wealthier, and closely tied to the slave system. Finally, Union-affiliated women, similar to their Confederate counterparts, were defined as such either through the asso- ciation of their male relatives with the Union cause or, if free to do so, because they had made their personal convictions known. Unionist women were less likely to have been members of slaveholding families prior to the war, though there were a few. Many of these women came to the Union cause over the course of the war, as men who were originally conscripted into the Confederate army became disillusioned with the cause and joined the other side, or as conditions declined in the area and necessity required Union affiliation for survival.13

Gender politics of the nineteenth century generally viewed men as the ex- clusive head of the household, but it would be erroneous to assume that all Ozark women deferred to their husbands on issues as large as secession and rebellion. "My husband was loyal at the start," Elizabeth Martin of Washing- ton County stated in her 1878 testimony to the Southern Claims Commission, "but then listened to [Confederate general Thomas C.] Hindmari s big tales and turned Rebel and went South." Martin did not join her husband. Their two sons fought for the Union. In fact, the pair remained estranged until at least the 1880 Census, where Elizabeth Martin was listed as married, but the head of her household. Reconciliation only appears to have come in death. James Martin died in 1882, and Elizabeth was buried at his side two years later.14 The persistence of their separation in life reveals the depth of wartime loyalties and the continued influence of the conflict. Elizabeth Martin received such admir- ing testimony from neighbors and authorities in the 18708 despite the fact that she disregarded nineteenth-century feminine mores. She defied her husband and perhaps even turned his sons against him. After the war was over, she lived separately from him for years. Women on a frontier like northwest Arkansas in 1860, experienced with hardship and travel, could exercise more of their own agency than modern observers might expect when it comes to analyzing the crisis that faced the nation.

Racial and political identity intersected with wartime conditions to create a vast range of experiences for northwest Arkansas women. Displacement, vio- lence, loss, and interaction with military entities were all common. Yet each experience was shaped by the circumstances of the individual woman. For

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7<5 R E B E C C A A. H O W A R D

example, displacement was common for many women, no matter their pre- war status or wartime affiliation, but race and political affiliation strongly af- fected where, when, and how a woman was displaced. Most northwest Arkan- sas women left their homes during the war years: some women moved to the safety of neighbors or the Union lines within the same area, and some traveled to different counties or states. Even fiercely independent Elizabeth Martin saw her house burned and was forced to move. For enslaved women, the alterna- tives were different: some northwest Arkansas slaveholders freed their slaves and embraced the Union, many took their slaves south, and some slaves self- emancipated and went north, especially to Kansas. In the early years of the war, many white women in slaveholding families evacuated with their families and slaves to friendlier and more secure environs, but some remained on the farm, often without men, to prevent an accusation of abandonment that could result in the confiscation of land. There were no easy choices. High levels of both guerrilla and military violence in the area and the scarcity of food in the later years of the war made departing the region an appealing option no mat- ter the affiliation of the family. Vulnerability to violence, the loss of loved ones, and formal interactions with military entities were also affected by the racial and political identity of women, creating such a complex situation in northwest Arkansas that there is simply no single Civil War experience to which one can point to understand the experiences of all women in the area. The war was a challenging and often brutal experience for all women.

African American women were the most vulnerable people in society at the outbreak of the Civil War. Violence during the war forced these women to move, often with little regard to their wishes. Further, most African Americans had been brought to the Ozarks in the 18505; emancipation freed many women to leave and at least attempt to find family and friends who had remained in the East. As a result, in northwest Arkansas, the African American population dropped from 2,502 individuals in 1860 to only 1,043 m i8/o.15 Combined with the fact that enslaved women were hardly encouraged to write down their expe- riences, there are few sources that capture the Civil War from their perspective. The best are the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers' Project in the 19308, and there are a few claims made by former slaves to the Southern Claims Commission, a federal program to reimburse loyal southerners for losses in- curred during the war, which operated in the i8/os.16 Yet the stories of these women elucidate the experience of a population often completely forgotten in most histories of the Civil War in the Ozarks.

Mary Myhand and Adeline Blakely were former slaves interviewed by vol- unteers with the Federal Writers' Project during the Great Depression. Myhand

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 77

and Blakely were young in 1860, and both had uncommonly close relationships with their owners during and after the war. Both Myhand and Blakely were in their early teens when the war broke out and were reliant on their mistresses even after emancipation. Myhand had no living parents, and Blakely at seven years old had been a gift to her mistress when she married. Their brief state- ments in the 19308 reveal youths' perspectives on the displacement and vio- lence that were inherent to the war in the Ozarks. Mary Myhand lived on a farm south of Siloam Springs in Benton County near the border with Indian Territory. She was owned by the Farley family and recalled, "I was a little tod of a girl when the war came up." No matter one's age or status in society, accu- rate information was a luxury for everyone, and rumors as much as facts often drove decision-making. Myhand remembered, "One day word come that the 'Feds' were coming through and [would] kill all of the old men and take all the boys with them." This prompted her master to take his grandson and Myhand's brother to Texas. "I was so scared," she said. "I followed them for about half a mile before they found me and I begged so hard they took me with them." Myhand was in Texas for about a year before "the Feds gave the women on our place orders to leave their home. Said they owned it now." The Farley women had arrived in Texas just as the South surrendered, and the family moved back to Benton County. Myhand lived with the Parleys for the next twenty years. For such a brief statement, Myhand revealed one of the essential ways in which gender divided the experience of war. Men were indeed in danger in northwest Arkansas, and it was not uncommon for male heads of households to take male slaves and young white boys south in an attempt to prevent loss of life and prop- erty. Women, however, were usually left behind in the Ozarks to spare them the hardships of the road and perhaps to protect the remaining physical property, with the hope that federal troops would not harass lone women. For the Parleys, this does not appear to have been effective, since Myhand noted that the house was burned and federal troops confiscated the land.17

In contrast, Adeline Blakely was enslaved by a Washington County family living in Fayetteville. Where Myhand experienced the war in a rural setting, Blakely lived in a town that changed hands multiple times during the war. Like Myhand, Blakely chose to remain with her mistress during the war and beyond, stating, "I wanted to stay in the only home I had ever known." Blakely's owner also remained in northwest Arkansas while other members of the mistress's family fled south. "The War separated lots of [white] families," Blakely ob- served, mentioning that Parks, the father of her owner, took "all his slaves and all his fine stock, horses and cattle and went South to Louisiana following the Southern army for protection." It appears from Blakely's stories about the Civil

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78 R E B E C C A A. H O W A R D

War that she spent the entire time in Fayetteville, since she related her mistress saving the Masonic building from being burned and her own experience of bringing a meal to a "crazy Confederate soldier" who had attempted to burn down the courthouse and had been locked up for his own safety.18

Though Myhand and Blakely had different experiences during the war, as young black women largely raised by their white mistresses, they survived it in similar ways. It does not appear that Myhand had any direct contact with federal troops, whereas Blakely lived in a town that was regularly occupied by the Union army, yet both women acknowledged that federal troops separated slaves from their masters. However, it seems that neither woman viewed the federal army as a liberating force. Myhand begged to be taken to Texas with her master, and Blakely remained in her familiar home. Some of this sentiment can be explained by the limits of the slave narratives themselves; interviewers rarely dug into the psychological motivations of their subjects, and decades of time might have smoothed memories. Yet the fact that both women chose to remain with their mistresses for decades after the war is illuminating. Young enslaved women with neither blood nor even fictive adult kin experienced the war differently than other enslaved women. Where, exactly, could they have gone on their own after emancipation? Guerrilla warfare made the region un- safe for everyone. Leaving would have meant trading known circumstances for unknown—both women had likely been raised to respond to the quirks, rules, and foul moods of their mistresses—and venturing out into a region so devas- tated by war that adult white women were starving to death was simply not a reasonable decision for either girl. Far from taking an easy or cowardly path in response to emancipation, Myhand and Blakely made choices that ultimately ensured that they survived.

Enslaved women with families experienced displacement, interaction with federal troops, and freedom differently than Myhand and Blakely did. Some sixty years earlier than the Federal Writers' Project narratives, the 1875 testi- mony of Fannie Bean Maxey in a Southern Claims Commission deposition re- vealed how a girl in a black family responded to war and freedom. Mark Bean, a planter in Washington County, owned Maxey's family.19 Caesar and Mary Bean were the parents of a number of children, including Fannie, who met and mar- ried Ran Maxey, a veteran of the Second Kansas Colored Regiment, in Fort Smith, Arkansas, after the war.20 In 1875, Caesar Bean filed with the Southern Claims Commission for reimbursement of the loss of a mule. According to Bean's sworn testimony, sometime after the Battle of Pea Ridge in early 1862, Mark Bean decided to leave Washington County and took his slaves south to the plantation of his recently married daughter near the Arkansas River in Johnson

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 79

County about one hundred miles away However, federal troops soon occupied Johnson County too, and at some point in the fall of 1863, a portion of the Bean clan moved to Texas, leaving behind the Caesar Bean family and one mule. In his first stated interaction with federal troops, Bean left his family in Johnson County in the winter of 1863 for Clarksville in an attempt to enlist in the Union army The inspecting surgeon rejected the nearly sixty-year-old Bean, and he went to work in a government sawmill instead. When federal troops confis- cated the mule, only Bean's wife and children were present, leaving Fannie Bean Maxey to later testify in the claim.21

The Bean women experienced displacement and contact with federal troops, but had a far different experience than Myhand and Blakely "The first federal troops came and occupied the county where we was living," Fannie Bean Maxey stated. "A party of 10 or 12 soldiers, as well as I remember, under a Captain Clare came to where we was living. It was in the afternoon, they passed by our house, [went] to a pasture where mule charged in the claim was running, they caught him and returned by the house where we lived. My mother told them to leave the mule that he belonged to my father, the claimant, but they refused to give him up, said they wanted him." Despite the protestations of the two women, the troops took the mule and left.22 Fear of federal troops drove Mark Bean south just as it did Mary Myhand's owner, but testimony in the Bean claim draws a clear correlation between the actual arrival of federal troops and free- dom. According to the men who testified in Caesar Bean s claim, when federal troops arrived in Johnson County, the Bean slaves started moving—not under the command of their now absentee owner, but by their own choice. Fannie Bean Maxey, however, was left on a farm with her mother and younger siblings. Freedom for her came in growing crops for the benefit of the family and in the image of her mother confronting white men about property owned, not by her master, but by her husband. Further, Maxey, ensconced in a black family unit, was not tethered to a white family for survival. The Bean family settled in Van Buren shortly after the war, where they lived in a community of former slaves, including some from the Bean Plantation.23 Instead of remaining in a white household and never marrying, as Blakely did, or delaying marriage, as Myhand did, Maxey married and had children.24 As the stories of Myhand, Blakely, and Maxey show, violence and displacement were experienced by enslaved women in the Ozarks. The conditions under which they were enslaved, however, and especially their access to kinship networks, shaped their response to that vio- lence and displacement and, ultimately, their experience of freedom.

Though the Bean women survived the hardships of displacement, not all north- west Arkansas women were so lucky. Hermannsburg in far western Washington

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80 R E B E C C A A. H O W A R D

County, on the border with Indian Territory in 1860, had been settled over the previous decade by immigrants from Germany Brothers Johann (Jean) and Karl Hermann were the leaders of the settlement and were married to sisters Nani and Lina, respectively The sisters were born in Germany and had migrated to the United States with their father in the early 18508. Their husbands also mi- grated around the same time. Germany and much of Europe had faced its own unrest starting in the late 18408, and many Germans left in search of opportunity and stability. The Hermanns found both of those in northwest Arkansas, at least briefly. By 1860, the two couples had nine children between them and substan- tial holdings in the area. Their most prosperous enterprise was a steam-powered mill, which processed corn and wheat, sawed lumber, and carded wool.25

When the war came, the location of Hermannsburg along a flatter and more accessible north-south route through Washington County, as well as its prox- imity to Indian Territory, made their situation vulnerable. After the Battles of Pea Ridge in March 1862 and Prairie Grove in December, the situation became dire. Lina recorded in her diary scavenging by "starving secessionists" at the mill and on the morning of November 15, 1862, woke to find her home sur- rounded by troops she eventually determined to be part of Hindmari s Confed- erate army. Lina Hermann was decidedly resistant to this development. "I have been ordered to cook for the soldiers," she recounted. "I have tied a bandage over one eye and tell them I am not well and will cook only for the sick and wounded. I am tired of cooking for secessionists. Nani cooks for them and out of gratitude four soldiers stole everything they could lay hands on from her."26

Lina resisted the occupation by feigning sickness and shared a number of in- cidents in her diary that asserted she was not cowed by the presence of hostile troops. The men of Hermannsburg soon left to find protection with the Union forces, and Lina and Nani both indicated this was the safest option, noting more than once their relief that the men were not around when Confederate troops arrived to scavenge. The women debated for nearly a month how long their hidden supplies would last, their chances for survival on the road, and the ad- visability of staying at Hermannsburg. They wrote in their diaries nearly every other day, always mentioning scavenging and confrontations with occupying troops. Political or military affiliation mattered little as they noted theft and violence from Confederates, Cherokees, and Unionists alike. On December 18, 1862, their brother Fritz Wilhelmi arrived with a military escort of a hundred men to take them to Union general Francis Herrori s camp. "How glad I will be to leave here," Lina stated.27

Reflecting on the journey out of northwest Arkansas, Karl Hermann later noted of the Christmas Day they spent on the road in 1862, "The Christ-child

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 81

had lost its magic that day. Satan was ruling the land."28 It was a common prac- tice by General Herron to grant protected passage out of northwest Arkansas to Unionist refugees, but the journey itself was fraught with hardship. The Her- mann group, numbering nearly twenty, was granted permission to travel with a Union commissary train to Rolla, Missouri. Johann Hermann took ill before leaving Arkansas and spent most of the trip prone in a wagon. It took the family four months to get to Washington, Missouri, outside of St. Louis. There Nani died, leaving behind five children under the age of ten. Johann, her husband, wrote the final entry in her diary: "Here ends the diary of my beloved Nany [sic]. At her request I am adding the conclusion. On the 3oth of April at 8:30 o'clock in the morning my poor wife died after six days' illness. She called me to her bed and said: 'Jean, tell me the end—I cannot find the words for the end— bring my diary and my pen and ink—you write the end.'"29 Despite the loss of Nani, the Hermanns' journey did not end in St. Louis. Some members of the family went back to Germany to wait out the war. The Civil War had ended the hopes of their small German community of making a new life in the Arkansas Ozarks. Only a few would ever return to Arkansas, and none on a permanent basis.30 Despite the fact that the Hermann women had achieved the highest level of security available to women in the nineteenth century—they were edu- cated, married, and ran two of the most prosperous households in northwest Arkansas—even they were not safe from the hardships of war.

Displacement was a nearly universal experience for northwest Arkansas women, and in most cases it was precipitated by violence, either the presence of fighting nearby or specific violence against and the loss of loved ones. Because of the destruction and massive movement of people during the Civil War, it can be difficult to determine who was killed, where, and why. The Southern Claims Commission documented a surprising number of incidents of violence against Unionists as individuals sought to prove they had maintained their loyalty to the United States during the conflict. These claims were made in the 18708, and a number were made by women. They tell stories of murder and movement, loss and hardship. Margaret Champlin and Elizabeth High of Carroll County, Jane Lewis of Washington County, and Eliza Buttram of Benton County all testified to the murders of their husbands in front of them, either on their property or actually in their home. Champlin's husband was killed by rebels in front of her in January 1864, leaving her widowed with four children under the age of twelve.31 High's husband was killed by "rebel bushwhackers" in 1863 in the family home in front of her and her sons, ages eight and ten. She remained on their farm, located near the Missouri line, even after her husband's death, until January 1865, when she sought refuge with federal troops at Cassville, Missouri,

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some forty miles away. "My reason for moving to Missouri," she stated, "was that the rebels had robbed me of about everything I had to live upon and I was compelled to leave to procure subsistence and I also went for the protection of the federal forces as I feared personal violence from the rebel bushwhackers."32

For women in these areas, gender offered only dubious protection. On the night of October 5, 1864, Jane Lewis's husband, who had been released from Union service due to an injury, was dragged from their home in Washington County and killed by rebels in front of her and their nine children. The Con- federates then threatened to burn the house down with the children inside, but left with a warning for the family to leave. Lewis packed up her family and moved closer to the Union lines near Mt. Comfort, outside of Fayetteville.33

Eliza Buttram's husband, William, was "murdered at home in July 1862 by the Rebel Bushwhackers because he was [a] Union man, and they told me they killed him for that reason, and him a laying a corpse in the yard where they shot him down." Buttram quickly left for Missouri with her two small children and father-in-law.34 The contested, occupied space of northwest Arkansas was not just a place of resistance to an illegitimate military, but truly a place where the homefront and the battlefield merged. What that meant for many northwest Arkansas women, no matter their status before the war, was violence, death, and loss. These men did not die on a faraway battlefield. These women abruptly lost the heads of their households in their very presence. They had to adjust immediately and decide if, when, and where to move their families. Many had the support of extended family networks, but even that could not make up for the sudden loss of their husbands on the homefront.

While violence led many women to leave northwest Arkansas, another por- tion of the population experienced displacement through their connection with the Union army. Women with husbands, fathers, or brothers in Union service in the Ozarks often moved inside the federal lines, and subsequently fol- lowed the troops as they moved around the region. Toward the end of the war, however, with the establishment of military farm colonies by the Union army, even Confederate-affiliated women, including the widow of one of the larger slaveholders in Washington County and four women with sons or husbands in Confederate service at the Union Valley Colony, were under the protection of federal troops.35 Polly Clark and Nancy Carlisle, both of Madison County, were two women who traveled with Union troops as the wives of soldiers. Polly Clark was married to Reuben Clark and often took care of him and his fellow soldiers at a home in Fayetteville.36 Nancy Carlisle married a soldier from Madi- son County at Cassville, Missouri, a wartime refuge for Arkansas Unionists, and resided with him in Fayetteville until his discharge. Clark and Carlisle prob-

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 83

ably knew each other: they were from the same part of Madison County their husbands were childhood friends, and both men served in the First Arkansas Cavalry Polly Ann Clark left no diaries or letters, but she did provide testimony in a number of pension files after the war. Injured veterans were eligible for a federal pension, and Clark's presence with the army, as well as her wartime care for the injured in her home, made her an ideal witness. Clark provided specific testimony about the health conditions of a number of men, and more than one mentioned their preference for her care over that of the hospital, as one was more likely to survive the former.37 Clark's own husband was injured during a skirmish with Benton County guerrillas.38 Her testimony illustrates her wartime experience: caring for soldiers in her home and moving with the First Arkansas between Missouri and Fayetteville as seasons and conditions changed, and later evacuating to Kansas with others from Madison County.

A unique story is Nancy Carlisle and her marriage, or perhaps "marriage," to Elisha McGinnis. In an attempt to gain access to the funds available in the pension system, Carlisle filed a fraudulent widow's pension claim after the war. She was denied when the Pension Office realized that McGinnis was still alive and filing an application of his own.39 In June 1880, Nancy Carlisle McGinnis Kimball—she had accumulated a number of surnames—filed her claim. On the form, she stated she was married to Elisha McGinnis, formerly of Com- pany L, First Arkansas Cavalry. She requested a pension for herself and her daughter Mary. The claim was "rejected on the grounds soldier is living and an applicant for pension."40 Five years later, a special examiner sent to gather testi- mony on McGinnis for his claim of an injury during the war, as well as to clear up the issue of the fraudulent claim, spoke with Nancy, who by this time was Nancy Fox.

Nancy Carlisle Fox testified, and the Census corroborates, that she and Mc- Ginnis grew up near one another in Madison County.41 She stated that she mar- ried him "in the winter or fall of 1863" at Cassville, Missouri. Many northwest Arkansas residents went to Cassville either to enlist or to seek aid throughout the war. Carlisle, however, was probably there because her father, formerly the captain of Company A of the First Arkansas, had been discharged from ser- vice for illness a year earlier. Ill former Union officers were wise not to return to northwest Arkansas, as Jane Lewis's experience illustrates. It is not unlikely that Carlisle and McGinnis could have been married at Cassville, though the two-season range she gave seems quite vague for an event as important as a marriage. Carlisle appears to have traveled with her husband to Fayetteville and lived there with him until he was discharged with a disability in the summer of 1864. She and McGinnis, along with a number of Madison County families,

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including the Clarks, then evacuated to Kansas. There, McGinnis "left her for another woman" in the winter of 1864-1865, and she "heard he obtained a di- vorce from her" sometime in 1865.42 McGinnis married Reuben Clark's sister Catherine in 1867. Carlisle provided no documentation of either the marriage or the divorce. She was never charged for filing a fraudulent claim, perhaps be- cause of her story that the man she was living with at the time had threatened to whip her to death if she did not file it.

These stories of Polly Clark and Nancy Carlisle reveal the experiences of women who are often lost in the usual historical record. They were in their late teens and early twenties at the time of the war, newly or recently married, and did not have established homes and families to maintain or protect. Both women were displaced by the conflict; they each mentioned living in at least three different places during the course of the war. Reuben Clark may have felt enlistment was the best way to feed and protect his family as conditions dete- riorated in northwest Arkansas. Elisha McGinnis was already a soldier when he married Carlisle at Cassville in 1863. As a result, the women's experience of the war was shaped not just by displacement or violence, but by a direct relationship with the military—and in a typical northwest Arkansas fashion, both the Con- federate and U.S. militaries. Reuben Clark and Elisha McGinnis were originally conscripted into the Confederate army. At some point in 1862, Clark left Con- federate service. He enlisted with the First Arkansas Cavalry in Benton County in October of that year. McGinnis, who had agreed to one year of Confederate service in November 1861, left his Confederate unit on the march to the Battle of Prairie Grove in December 1862 and enlisted at Fayetteville with the U.S. Army on the tenth of that month. The two men received disability discharges from federal service on the same day in March i864.43

As the wives of soldiers, Polly Clark and Nancy Carlisle McGinnis experi- enced occupation and war in a distinct way. For most of the war, their lives were controlled directly by Union commanders. They moved in relation to where their male relative chose to enlist and, later, in response to orders their husband received or because he was injured, discharged from service, and escorted to safer environs. Even after the war, the federal service of their husbands con- tinued to shape their lives. Clark spent years testifying for men she had cared for during the conflict as well as fighting the pension system on behalf of her husband. Even divorced from McGinnis, Carlisle was drawn into the pension system and interacted with government authorities years after the war ended.

Women with sons in military service also had a distinct experience of the war, whether they were Unionist or Confederate. These women were in their late thir- ties or forties during the war and had homes and families to consider. The service

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 85

of their sons was known in the community, although with the divided loyalties of the Ozarks, that could be a double-edged sword. Amanda Braly was a widow re- siding with her children in Newburg near Boonsboro, now known as Cane Hill, in Washington County Her son William Carrick Braly served in the Confederate Thirty-Fourth Arkansas Infantry Lucinda Sawyers had three sons serving in the Union army Her eldest son, John, did not serve but was married in 1861 to Mary Jane Martin, daughter of the previously discussed Unionist Elizabeth Martin. The Sawyers family lived on a farm in Billingsley, Arkansas, about five miles from Elizabeth Martin and about ten miles east of Cane Hill and Amanda Braly44

Braly's correspondence with Carrick, her eldest son, shows the experience of women among the upper class in the Ozarks. Braly's perspective is also interest- ing because she lived roughly ten miles east of the Hermann families, yet as a native-born, Confederate-affiliated woman, her experience was vastly different. Carrick Braly saw action outside of northwest Arkansas, but fortunately was able to keep his mother's letters safe during his service. The Braly Family Papers include extensive correspondence between the pair. A number of issues are relevant to Amanda Braly's perspective on conditions in northwest Arkansas. First, she was widowed in 1856, not during the conflict. While certainly missing the contribution of her eldest son, it was not an entirely new circumstance for her to act independently during the war. In terms of how she related the news and information about conditions at home, the fact that she was writing to her twenty-year-old son colored her tone and perhaps affected the type of informa- tion conveyed. She often expressed that she missed Carrick and requested visits along, of course, with motherly admonishments to write more often, but she rarely demanded aid and appears to have minimized the danger in northwest Arkansas. Despite these caveats, the Civil War experience revealed by her letters is a wrenching one.

Braly's early letters conveyed wartime information but more about the reality of running a home and farm. In an October 1862 letter, she mentioned her work on securing proper clothing and supplies for Carrick and told of speaking to a neighbor about gathering corn and sowing wheat.45 By November 1862, at the same time the Hermann women noted the hostile presence of Hindman's Confederate troops, Braly related the first movements of federal troops in the area and expressed concerns about the food supply and theft. "If the army does not come up soon," she worried, "I fear we will have nothing left."46 Yet in early 1863, by which time the Hermanns had evacuated the area, she reported that things had calmed with the passage of the federal troops and the family was well supplied. Throughout 1863, however, as the fighting season wore on, conditions in Braly's area became more unstable. In nearly every letter, she mentioned the

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destruction of homes, barns, or churches, as well as the deaths of neighbors and friends. This too resonates with the experiences of the other women I have discussed. Yet, as late as June, she still spoke of an adequate food supply and a variety of crops.47 She specifically noted the fact that a number of the fed- eral troops appeared to be Arkansans, an important observation of the divided nature of the area. In August 1863, she lamented the return of federal troops and stated, "I fear we will see hard times."48 She was correct.

From the fall of 1863 onward, Braly chronicled the harassment and violence of both federal troops and Indians. The family made it through the winter of 1863-1864 but dealt with searches and the scavenging of supplies by federal troops. In the summer of 1864, she tempered her usual request for a visit with the admission that she would not be able to rest if her son were present in the area. "It is awful to think how this war is carried on here," she stated.49 In November 1864, she related the worst news to date: "Our dear old houses are burnt to ashes." The family spent two days and a night in the open air.50 Even a woman of Braly's means faced displacement and hardship. She interacted with troops, both friendly and unfriendly, as the situation demanded. She expressed both frustration and resignation about her situation, but above all, she managed the survival of her family despite the conditions. While Braly had the means to maintain herself and her family, other women relied on the financial support of their sons. Carrick Braly survived the war and returned to Washington County to help his mother rebuild.51 Lucinda Sawyers, however, would face a loss that ultimately threatened the livelihood of the family.

While Sawyers was of more modest means than Amanda Braly, she and her husband, James, owned their farm and did well. But James was in his fifties and may have been in ill health; they relied on their sons' assistance.52 As Union sol- diers, the Sawyers sons, Henry Addison (known as Add), Jeptha Jefferson (jj), and Alonzo, often sent a portion of their pay home to their parents. In May 1864, Add was shot in the left wrist by Confederates near Little Rock, nearly severing his hand.53 In June of that year, Lucinda Sawyers received a letter from j j from Van Buren, Arkansas. "Dear father and mother," he began, "I this morning take the opportunity of writing you a few lines to let you no [sic] that I am well at present. I just got here last night. Add was doing as well as could be expected. I think he will get well pretty soon. I am going to try to come home when we draw money. You said you was coming down here, we wrote for you to come, you needant come till we draw money."54 This letter highlights two subjects impor- tant to many mothers of soldiers. First, it is clear that Lucinda Sawyers already knew of Add's injury before June 10, when j j wrote, so communication was not severely hampered by the war, at least not for those on the Union side. Further,

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 87

that j j told his mother to stay in Washington County at least until they got paid, indicates that travel was possible for civilians. Second, some sons were sending a portion, if not all, of their pay to their parents, suggesting that the monetary situation for the family back in Washington County at least in part relied on the boys for support. Unfortunately, it is unclear if Lucinda ever saw j j again. He was captured by Confederate guerrillas and found shot in the back of the head on August 11, 1864. The war left Lucinda Sawyers with one son disabled and another murdered. Alonzo was the only one who survived the war physically unscathed. She eventually applied for and received a mother's pension from the federal government as compensation for the lost support of jj.55

Though the outcomes were different, the stories of both Braly and Sawyers illustrate that the concerns of many northwest Arkansas women were focused not simply on the volatility of the Ozarks homefront but also on the experience, safety, and support of their sons directly participating in the war effort outside the immediate area. Furthermore, Braly and Sawyers were older than Carlisle and Clark and lived on well-established farms. They were not destabilized by the abrupt loss of the head of their household, like High, Harris, Lewis, and Buttram, nor were they faced with the quandary of freedom in the middle of a war, like Myhand, Blakely, and Maxey. Braly and Sawyers, as white mothers, represent yet another way the experience of northwest Arkansas women was shaped by the nuances of their identity and means.

Twenty-first-century observers, enmeshed in a culture at least slightly more advanced in terms of equality of the sexes, may too easily take for granted that women could and did face the hardships of war with independence and strength. The viewpoint of a male contemporary of these Ozarks women, however, shows how extraordinary their actions were to some people in the i86os. Confederate sympathizer Robert W. Mecklin of Washington County chronicled the experi- ences of the Confederate-affiliated women in his neighborhood in letters to his sister in 1863 and 1864. Mecklin was sixty-eight years old in 1863 and, except for his slave Wesley, was surrounded by women in his area of Washington County near Mt. Comfort.56 Women, in Mecklin s view, were compelled to execute too many decisions with limited and often-contradictory information. His wife and daughter interacted far more often with those who stopped by their farm than he did. Upon hearing men in the yard one day, his daughter, Louisa, "ran to her room, stuck her hatchet in her belt and was back by the time they had reached the north window," before recognizing the visitors as friendly.57 In another inci- dent, Mecklin related how robbers went through the area and took items from a number of homes, including his own. But at the McCormack place, where four men had stopped for the night on the way back to Cincinnati in the western part

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of the county, the robbers were confronted by the woman of the house as she pro- tected her visitors. "Miss Margaret... placed herself between [the visitors] and the muzzle of [the] robbers' pistols . . . sprang to the middle of the pallet, claimed the soldier's blankets as her property and dared them to touch them, brandish- ing her fist in the faces of those who approached and set the hair of one of them on fire with her candle. They left, carrying off what they had already gotten.... Hurrah for Miss Mag."58 Mecklin was proud of what women did to ensure their survival and protect their homes. His observations illustrate the extreme circum- stances under which Ozark women abandoned nineteenth-century social mores. The war created a space for white women where previously unadmirable, if not completely unacceptable, behavior was suddenly valued. In the final assessment, that a nineteenth-century patriarch had such a positive view of that change, going so far as to credit his survival to women—"perhaps to their wise coun- sel and kind care I am indebted for the safety of my own noggin from Federal sabers and balls"59—reveals the remarkable situation in the Arkansas Ozarks.

Whether occupied by outside troops, threatened by guerrilla fighters, facing constant news of, if not direct experience with, the deaths of friends and family, or welcoming emancipation and the possibilities of freedom under the pall of war, all northwest Arkansas women faced challenging experiences. As a result, for a brief time, the war created a space where the usual expectations of gender and race were in flux. The conflict ultimately left their homes, lives, and com- munities transformed and left the women with the challenge of determining how much of their changed status to take into rebuilding war-ravaged north- west Arkansas in the years to follow.

NOTES

1. For the purposes of this chapter, northwest Arkansas is defined as Benton, Carroll, Madison, and Washington counties as they existed in 1860.

2. Northwest Arkansas is part of a broader region that scholars define as having experienced guerrilla warfare—conflict among civilians, irregular troops, and formal armies—for much of the Civil War. The critical role of guerrillas and guerrilla warfare in the Civil War has been well estab- lished. Though much of the scholarship has been focused on Appalachia, one of the earliest and most influential works is Michael Fellmans exploration of violence and hardship, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri during the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), which examines the war in the nearby Missouri Ozarks. Fellmans work was one of the first studies of the Civil War to see irregular warfare as just as critical to the final outcome as the tra- ditional battles between the major armies. By the late 19905, several similar studies had followed. Most crossed the border, however, and combined studies of Unionism in Confederate states with examinations of the irregular fighting that aberrant affiliation inspired. Examples include Brian McKnight's Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia (Lexington:

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 89

University Press of Kentucky, 2006); Jonathan Dean Sarris's northeast Georgia study, A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006); John Inscoe and Gordon McKinney's examination of the mountains of North Caro- lina in The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); the east Tennessee study of Noel Fisher in War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee, 1860-1869 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); and W. Todd Grace's Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860-1870 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999). Combined, these works brought guerrilla warfare, and often southern Unionism, to the forefront of scholarship on the Civil War in the upland South. This trend culminated with the publication of Daniel Suther- land's award-winning Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). The book won acclaim because it com- bined a synthesis of two decades of scholarship on guerrillas, irregular warfare, Unionism, and civil- ian suffering with Sutherland's own research and analysis to make the provocative and ultimately convincing argument that guerrilla warfare was not merely a sad and brutal subset of the broader fight; it was the fight. Guerrilla fighting shaped all aspects of the Civil War and was essential to its end result. That could not be truer than in Arkansas.

3. LeeAnn Whites, The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995); LeeAnn Whites and Alecia P. Long, eds., Occupied Women: Gender, Military Occupation, and the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009); Victoria Bynum, The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) and This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2008).

4. For more on the political influence of southern women, see Stephanie McCurry Confederate Reck- oning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

5. Joseph Beilein, Bushwhackers: Guerrilla Warfare, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2016).

6. "U.S. Demography, 1790 to Present," Social Explorer, https://www.socialexplorer.com/a9676d974C /explore (accessed October 5, 2017).

7. Berryville became the county seat of a newly drawn Carroll County after the Civil War. 8. Examples of these family settlement patterns can be found in a number of northwest Arkansas

townships in the 1850 and 1860 Censuses, such as the Clarks and Drakes of Richland Township in Madison County or the Cartwrights and their neighbors in Brush Creek Township in Washing- ton County. Statistics about the enslaved population were drawn from manuscript Census returns. See U.S. Census, 1860, Slave Schedules, Washington County, Ark.

9. Whites and Long, Occupied Women, 3. 10. Michael A. Hughes, "Wartime Gristmill Destruction in Northwest Arkansas and Military-

Farm Colonies," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 46 (Summer 1987): 180-86. 11. For more on guerrilla fighting in Arkansas, see Wendell P. Beall, "Wildwood Skirmishers:

The First Federal Arkansas Cavalry," MA thesis, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 1988; Robert Mackey, "Bushwhackers, Provosts, and Tories: The Guerrilla War in Arkansas," in Guerrillas, Union- ists and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 171-85 (and the entire volume edited by Sutherland); Jay A. Prier, "Under the Black Flag: The Real War in Washington County, Arkansas, 1861-1865," MA thesis, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 1998.

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12. For more on material conditions in the area during the war, see John F. Bradbury, "Buckwheat Cake Philanthropy, Refugees and the Union Army in the Ozarks," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 57 (Autumn 1998): 233-64; and Hughes, "Wartime Gristmill Destruction," 167-86.

13. For more information on the phenomenon of shifting affiliation, see Rebecca A. Howard, "Civil War Unionists and Their Legacy in the Arkansas Ozarks," Ph.D. diss., University of Arkansas, 2015, ch. 2.

14. Elizabeth Martin (Washington County, Ark.), claim no. 10861, Settled Case Files for Claims Approved by the Southern Claims Commission, 1871-1880, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, 1775-1978, RG 217, National Archives and Records Administra- tion (hereafter N A R A ) , reproductions at www.Fold3.com (accessed January 1-7, 2013) (hereafter Settled Case Files); manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1870, Population Schedules, Washing- ton County, Ark.; manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1880, Population Schedules, Washington County, Ark. The inscription on James's headstone indicates he may have been ill before his death, so perhaps the couple reconciled when he returned home to the care of his family. Maybe they never reconciled, and Victorian era propriety overrode private squabbles and placed them side by side. It is worth noting, however, that an archaeological survey of the cemetery documented a child's grave between the two headstones. See John Riggs, field notes from the investigation of the Bryant/Martin Cemetery (3WA1468), 2010, Arkansas Archeological Survey, Fayetteville.

15. "U.S. Demography, 1790 to Present." 16. Both of these sources have their weaknesses. The slave narratives were recorded seventy years

after the Civil War, which makes accurate details hard to come by and difficult to trust. However, the first-person impressions of the war offered by the interviewees do reveal a personal side to the conflict. In claims with the Southern Claims Commission, the individuals are trying to convince the federal government to give them money, which may have tainted some testimony.

17. "Mary Myhand, Benton County," in Bearing Witness: Memories of Arkansas Slavery, Narratives from the 19305 WPA Collections, ed. George E. Lankford (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003), 45. Myhand did not list her owners nor her maiden name in her narrative. She stated only that she stayed with her previous owners on the southern border of Benton County for more than twenty years after the war, before moving to Clarksville, Arkansas, where she was interviewed. A widowed Mary Myhand appears in the Census in Johnson County in 1900, living with the white Dunlap family as a servant, and in 1920 living with an elderly black man as a "helper." A woman by the name Mary Farley married Dan Myhand on May 6,1891, in Johnson County, where Clarks- ville is located. In the 1870 Census, Mary Farley is listed as a housekeeper in the home of Eliza Farley, seventy years old, in Flint Township on the southern border of Benton County. In the 1880 Census, Mary Farley appears in the home of William Farley as a servant, along with Eliza Farley, seventy-nine years old, in the same area. Eliza Farley was married to W T. Farley and appears with him in the 1860 Census, when they were both about sixty years old, again in the same area of Benton County. Also listed in the home that year was a William Farley, twenty, and James Farley, fifteen. James Farley could have been the owner's grandson whom Myhand mentioned when describing her master's evacuation to Texas. William Farley served in the Thirty-Second Regiment, Arkansas Infantry (Confederate). No Parleys in Benton or Washington counties are listed as slaveholders in 1860. However, Mary indicated in her narrative that there may not have been a large number of slaves in the household since she and her siblings appear to have lived with their owners in the same dwelling. Work with the 1860 slave schedules for northwest Arkansas has revealed that it was not uncommon for enslaved children to go uncounted. Myhand spoke with great affection for her mis- tress. Considering Eliza Farley's advanced age in 1880, it is probable that Eliza's passing precipitated

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Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War 91

Myhand's move to Clarksville. Manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1900, Population Sched- ules, Johnson County, Ark.; manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1920, Population Schedules, Johnson County, Ark.; "Mary Farley Marriage to Dan Myhand," in Arkansas Marriages, 1851-1900, comp. Jordan Dodd, reproductions at www.ancestry.com (accessed October 22, 2013); manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1880, Population Schedules, Benton County, Ark.; manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1870, Population Schedules, Benton County, Ark.; manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1860, Benton County, Ark.; William Farley, private, Thirty-Second Regiment, Arkan- sas Infantry, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Arkansas, RG 109, N A R A , reproductions at www.Fold3.com (accessed June 2012 and August 22, 2015) (hereafter Civil War Service Records).

18. "Adeline Blakely, Washington County," in Lankford, Bearing Witness, 387-81. 19. Bean owned forty slaves, making him one of a few northwest Arkansas slaveholders with planter

status. Manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1860, Slave Schedules, Washington County, Ark. 20. Ran Maxey (Crawford County, Ark.), claim no. 16328, Settled Case Files. 21. Caesar Bean (Crawford County, Ark.), claim no. 17418, Settled Case Files. The story of the

removal of Mark Bean and his family and slaves to the Arkansas River is also related in the slave narrative of Joe Bean. He recalled that the war caused them to move around and that the "first move" was to Dardanelle on the Arkansas River, which is the same general area related by Caesar Bean. Joe Bean never said what the subsequent moves were. "Joe Bean, Washington County," in Lankford, Bearing Witness, 382.

22. Fannie Maxey testimony, Caesar Bean claim, Settled Case Files. 23. Manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1870, Population Schedules, Crawford County, Ark. 24. Manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1880, Population Schedules, Crawford County, Ark. 25. Manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1860, Population and Manufacturing Schedules,

Washington County, Ark. 26. W J. Lemke, "The Romantic Story of Old Hermannsburg, Now Dutch Mills," Flashback 9

(July 1959): 3- 27. Ibid., 5. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., 6. 30. Clarence Evans and Karl Friedrich Hermann, "Memoirs, Letters, and Diary Entries of Ger-

man Settlers in Northwest Arkansas, 1853-1863," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 6 (Autumn 1947): 225-49.

31. After her husband was murdered in 1864, Margaret Champlin married W. Harris in 1866. Margaret M. Harris (Carroll County, Ark.), claim no. 18085, Settled Case Files.

32. Elizabeth High (Carroll County, Ark.), claim no. 21769, Settled Case Files. 33. Jane Lewis (Washington County, Ark.), claim no. 9626, Settled Case Files. 34. Eliza Buttram (Benton County, Ark.), claim no. 5780, Settled Case Files. 35. Hughes, "Wartime Gristmill Destruction," 183; Destitute Roll of Union Valley Colony, n.d.,

signed by Captain J. R. Rutherford, Rutherford Collection, Special Collections, Mullins Library, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

36. Soldier's Certificate no. 361530, Reuben Clark, private, Company L, First Arkansas Infantry, Case Files of Approved Pension Applications of Veterans Who Served in the Army and Navy Mainly in the Civil War and the War with Spain (Civil War and Later Survivors' Certificates), 1861-1934, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Pensions, 1849-1930, RG 15, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, 1773-2007, N A R A (hereafter Pension Files).

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37 Elisha McGinnis, deposition, Soldier's Certificate no. 366430; Elisha McGinnis, private, Com-

pany L, First Arkansas Calvary, Pension Files.

38. Reuben Clark, deposition, Reuben Clark file, Pension Files.

39. Elisha McGinnis file, Pension Files.

40. Nancy Kimbali's denied widow's claim was eventually combined with McGinnis's approved

pension file. Nancy Kimball, widow's pension claim, to Pension Office, June 16,1880, Elisha McGin-

nis file, Pension Files.

41. Manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1860, Population and Manufacturing Schedules,

Madison County, Ark.

42. Nancy Fox, deposition, June 23,1885, Elisha McGinnis file, Pension Files.

43. Reuben Clark does not appear in Arkansas Confederate service records, but he mentioned

his prior Confederate service in his pension file. McGinnis's Confederate service record is brief: a

one-year commitment that began on November 22,1861. His departure from Confederate service

and subsequent enlistment in the Union army is related in his pension file. Elihu [sic] McGinnis,

private, Company G, i/th (Griffith's) Arkansas Infantry, Civil War Service Records; Elisha Mc-

Ginnis deposition, Elisha McGinnis file, Pension Files; Reuben Clark, private, Company C, First

Arkansas Cavalry, Civil War Service Records; Elisha McGinnis, private, Company L, First Arkansas

Cavalry, Civil War Service Records.

44. Amanda Malvina Fitzallen McClellan Braly Family Papers, 1841-1920, Special Collections,

University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville; Henry Addison Sawyers, private, Company L, First

Arkansas Cavalry, Civil War Service Records; Jeptha Jefferson Sawyers, private, Company A, First

Arkansas Infantry, Civil War Service Records.

45. Amanda Braly to William Carrick Braly, October 1862, Braly Family Papers.

46. Braly to Braly, November 15,1862, ibid.

47. Braly to Braly, June 8,1863, ibid.

48. Braly to Braly, August 16,1863, ibid.

49. Braly to Braly, August 20,1864, ibid.

50. Braly to Braly, November 21,1864, ibid.

51. The Braly Family Papers indicate that Carrick returned to northwest Arkansas after the war,

rebuilt his mother's house, and took up the life of a country gentleman. He was named a trustee of

Cane Hill College in 1873 and was elected to the state legislature later in the 18705, going on record

as a critic of the high level of public debt left over from "carpetbag rule." Fayetteville Democrat,

December 28,1920, and August 12,1876.

52. Manuscript Census returns, U.S. Census, 1860, Population and Manufacturing Schedules,

Washington County, Ark.

53. Henry Addison Sawyers, private, Company L, First Arkansas Cavalry, Civil War Service Records.

54. J. J. Sawyers to Lucinda Sawyers, June 10,1864, and Mother's Pension Certificate no. 245021,

both in Lucinda Sawyers file, Pension Files.

55. Jeptha Jefferson Sawyers, private, Company A, First Arkansas Infantry, Civil War Service

Records.

56. W J. Lemke, ed., "The Mecklin Letters Written in 1863-64 at Mt. Comfort, by Robert W Meck-

lin, the Founder of the Ozark Institute," Washington County Historical Society Bulletin 10 (1955): 10.

57. Ibid., 7,12.

58. Ibid., 41-42.

59. Ibid., 7.

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