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Walker County Messenger,
VOLUME XXXVI—NO. 17
EARLY DAYS
IN WALKER
How The Country Settled
Up After the Indians Left
-Early Churches
By Capt. J. Y. Wood
I write without records and may
make some mistakes.
Late in the year 1836 my fath
er, Constantine Wood, settled in
West Armuchee valley. At that
time the forest abounding in trees
of immense size, was occasionally
broken by a rude log cabin. Deer,
wild turkeys, pheasants and al
most every variety of birds and
small game were abundant. The
Cherokee Indians still roamed
through the forest and procured
a meager support for his family.
It has been said that there are two
things an Indian could never
learn, to fear death or to work.
One thing however can be said of
him. He was not destructive.
With him the tribe was every
thing, the individual was nothing.
The land and all living things be
longed to the tribe. Hence tinder
their unwritten law, no one would
kill more game than satisfied his
present wants.
The beauty and fertility of the
country soon attracted settlers.
Emigrants poured in from Middle
Georgia and other states. In a few
years the scene was changed. Al
most every lot of fertile land in
the rich valleys was settled by in
dustrious and intelligent farmers
and the whole country was alive
with industry and enterprise. At
first there were many inconven
iences.
The county was organized in
1832. The first mail route in the
county ran from Chattanooga to
Rome. The first mail carrier was
Ab Wisdom. He made the trip
from—Chattanooga and _.return
once a week. LaFayette was the
first postoffice in the county. My
father at that time took a news
paper which he read and loaned
to his neighbors among whom it
was circulated until it was worn
out. Mail matter was five or six
weeks old before it reached its
destination.
'ln that early day there was a
stage line from Augusta to Knox
ville, Tenn., which carried the
mail. About the year 1840 a mail
route was established from La-
Fayette to New Town, a point in
Gordon county on the road above
named. This route was by Vil
lanow through a populous com
munity and though the mail was
carried but twice a month, was a
great convenience.
Roads were rapidly opened and
churches were organized in almost
every neighborhood. Humphrey
Posey, a missionary appointed by
Philadelphia Association to preach
to the Cherokee Indians, organ
ized Shiloh and other Baptist
churches in the county. About
1837 or 1838 Shiloh church was
organized with seven members,
Constantine Wood and wife,Thos.
Kite and wife and three negroes
belonging to Jas. Young, Abram.
Milly and Oney. Antioch, Peavine
and some other Baptist churches
were organized about the same
time, and churches of other de
nominations were organized at
the same time in almost every
neighborhood.
The first court after the organ
ization of the county was held in
a little log cabin near Chicka
mouga, at which two Indians,
Pocket Book and Cach, were tried
for murder and both w r ere con
victed and hung. In 1838 the court
house was finished and the first
court in that building was presid
ed over by Judge Hooper, who re
sided in LaFayette at that time.
The old brick academy was al
so built about the same time and
about the first school in the coun
ty was taught in it. Spencer
Marsh, John Caldwell, Samuel
Fariss and some others were prom
inent in managing the affairs of
the county. Spencer Marsh was
among the first merchant to open
a mercantile business in the new
town.
At that time dry goods were
bought in northern cities and
shipped to Augusta. They were
hauled in wagons from that place
to almost all parts of the state.
The Indians were carried from
A VIEW OF LAFAYETTE IN 1860
_,jiJ ,j . , L~ ~ .
'
From an old picture in W r hite’s 1883. To the right of the court ette.
Georgia Statistics. The large house is seen the old Globe hotel, f th Tl>rt.bytSn
building in the center is the old which stood on the corner now church, still standing, and looks
court house, destroyed by fire in occupied by the Bank of LaFay- to the south.
THE BATTLE
OF LAFA YETTE
i
A Vivid Description of the Fierce Fight Here on Friday
June 24,1864—H0w the Battle Raged—lnter
esting Incidents of the Fight
By Judge \V. M. Henry.
During tlie four years of the Amer
ican Civil War, so many battles
were fought which were of tremend
ous importance by reason of the num
ber of men engaged and the terri
ble carnage, and sometimes, by rea
son of the far reaching results, that
many of its less affairs and bat
tles are almost lost sight of and for
gotten, which, had they occurred in
any of the other wars in which
Americans took part, would have
been rated and remembered as great
battles. Os the latter class was the
battle of Lafayette, fought on Fri
day, the 24th day of June, 1864.
Earlier in that month, a Brigade
of United States Cavalry, consisting
of the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh
Kentucky Regiments, and under com
mand of the senior Colonel, Louis D.
Watkins, encamped at Lafayette,
Georgia. The strategic purpose
of this, I do not know. It was prob
ably in part execution of the Fedoral
plan of warding off attacks of the
Confederates upon the Western and
Atlantic Railroad, which connected
General Sherman with his base of
supplies at Chattanooga.
General Gideon J. Pillow, who in
Mexico, eighteen years before, had
won fame and honor as a brave and
skillful officer, leading his Brigade
of Tennessee Volunteers at the bat
tles of Cerro Gordo, Contreras and
Churubusco, and at the storming of
Chapultepec, was now a Major Gen
the state in 1838. They were all
collected in this section and
guarded in a fort a short dis
tance northwest of LaFayette near
where the Union Cotton Mills
now stand. My father and moth
er had some warm friends a
mong them and took their little
family and went to bid them fare
well. These poor children of the
forest were grief-stricken at the
thought of leaving their native
hills. When the last hand-shak
ing took place all parties gave ex
pression to their grief. Many fell
prostrate on the ground and beg
ged the soldiers to shoot them
that they might be buried jn the
land of their birth. The line of
march to the west was marked by
their graves.
LAFAYETTE, GEORGIA, FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 1912
eral of the Confederate States Army.
About the midddle of June, 1804, at
or near Oxford, Alabama, he collect
ed a force consisting of two small
Brigades of Cavalry. One of these,
commanded by Col. Armistead, was
composed of the Eighth Alabama and
the Twelfth Mississippi Regiments,
and Lewis’ Battallion of Alabama
Cavalry. The other, commanded by
Col. Neely, was composed of the
Twelfth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Tennessee Regiments.
With this force, on Monday, June
20th, General Pillow moved ‘‘toward
North Georgia, the rear of the ene
my’s position,” with the purpose of
‘‘interrupting the enemy’s line of
communication with Chattanooga—hit
base of supplies.” Before reaching
Georgia which he entered at Alpine,
he learned of the presence, at LaFay
ette, of a force of Federal Cavalry.
He at once determined to move on La
Fayette, by a force march, and to
surprise and capture this force be
fore passing on to the railroad. Col-
Watkins and his force seem to have
been in total ignorance of the ap
proach of any enemy in force, until
3:30 o'clock on the morning of June
24th.
General Pillow, approaching LaFay
ette by the Broomtown Road, divid
ed his force where that road forks
near Trinity Church, about seven
miles to the south. Neely's Brigade,
accompanied by General Pillow, mov
ed on LaFayette by the direct or eas
tern road, by what is now the coun
ty farm, so as to strike the town on
the south. Armistead’s Brigade ad
vanced by the western road, byway
of the Burnt Mill, so as to approach
the town from the west, by the Cove
road.
I then lived with my parents one and
one-half mileß west of LaFayette and
about two hundrend yards south of
the Blue Bird Gap road. I was
a small boy. But, with the experi
ence and training of the preceding
year or two, among warlike move
ments and incidents, 1 was capable
of seeing and understanding, as well
as remembering, much that transpir
ed that day.
Friday, June 24th, was an ideal
early summer day. The morning was
clear and still. About an hou*-y>e
fore the early dawn, our faqdtf|||fe
awakened by the barking of our
brave and alert old watch dog, Nero,
and by the hoof beats of horses. We
at once discovered a body of horse
men, probably a score of them, turn
ing out of the road, Just at our
house, into a lane. This lane led
to a dim roadway through the for
est which we often used in going to
the village, and which terminated In
the lane or alley which now passes
Just south of the residence of Hon.
B. F. Thurman, and, at this corner,
intersects Chattanooga street a short
distance due west of the railway
depot In LaFayette. It will be re
membered that that splendid little
city was then only a small village,
of a few hundred Inhabitants. Prob
ably less than a half dozen families,
all told, lived west of the “Big
Spring Branch” in what is now
known as West LaFayette and Lin
wood.
The court house, built about 1838
or 1840, and destroyed by fire in
1883, stood Just where its success
or now stands, in the center of the
square. It was a large brick building
nearly square, two stories high, and
entirely covered and finished, on
the outer walls, in white stucco. The
court room occupied the entire first
floor, while on the second floor a
hallway ran through the building
from north to south, and the offi
ces and jury rooms on each side of
this hall.
As soon as aroused by the passing
of this body of horsemen, we discov
ered that a large force of mounted
men was moving towards La-
Fayette along the Blue Bird Gap or
Cove road. My father, who, though
born in 1810, had had some experi
ence in the military service of the
state and the Confederacy, at once
decided that this movement towards
Lafayette, at this hour, was a hos
tile one.
The Federal picket post was at or
near the residence of Mr. Jack Car
roll, which stood a half mile
from the court house, a short dis
tance from the Cove road, and near
ly opposite to the place where the
Union Cotton Mills now stand. The
small body of horsemen which first
attracted our attention, was under
the command of Lieutenant McLe
more ot the Eighth Alabama, whose
conduct that day won for him spe
cial mention and commendation from
his commanding officers, in their of
ficial reports. His purpose was to
pass in between the sleeping enemy
and the picket post, and to surprise
and capture the pickets before any
alarm was made.
Some fifteen or twenty minutes af
ter we saw these men pass up the
lane, we heard, In the direction of
laiFayette, the sharp but strong re
port of the military role or carbino
of large caliber, then In use. This
4m* followed by a number of others,
in quick succession.
After this, all was silent for prob
ably half an hour. It seemed to me
longer, when with the first streaks
of dawn, there came a perfect roar
of crackling reports from rifle and
revolver, accompanied with the gen
uine “Rebel Yell.” This battle shout
beginning at the village, rolled, like
a wave, out west along the Cove
road, past our house, where the rear
of the colmmn still was, and also
south, for probably a mile or more,
down the Broomtown road. This
gave us our first information that a
force was moving on the town, by
that road also. After a while, the
shouting ceased, and the firing slack
ened to only an occasional shot.
Again came the fierce rattle of the
firearms and the battle cry which
made the cheeks, of even a child, tin
gle.
These charges, with their rattling
fire and thrilling shouts, with con
siderable intervals, during which the
firing was only desultory, continued
till about ten o’clock A. M. Then
came firing so fierce, rapid and sus
tained, that it seemed to me none
could survive it. After a short time,
all again grew still. In a little
while, gray clad men began pouring
out by the roadways, and through
forest and field, sometimes only kwo
or three together and sometimes in
larger groups. I saw more than one
of these men toss Into brush pile or
bramble, his rifle, the most impor
tant thing in the personal equipment
of i fighting man. Then, child as I
was, I knew that the battle was end
ed and lost. My high hopes, amount
ing to absolute confidence, of the
early morning, for a splendid victory
for the men in gray—our men —were
destroyed. I knew that, instead of
victory for them, it was defeat.
About one or two o’clock that day,
with others, I went to the village.
Everywhere in the town were the sad
and often bloody evidences of what
had occurred, a battle between large
numbers of strong, brave, determin
ed Americans. Saddles, guns, sabers,
and other articles of soldiers equip
ment, were scattered everywhere. The
old court house had received on its
walls thousands of bullets. Each of
these pitted and marked the stucco,
till, looked at from a little distance,
each of the walls strongly suggested
a humin face badly marked by re
cent smallpox.
The Presbyterian church, then hav
ing an enclosed front yard, had
been converted Into a field hospital.
Just inside its wide double door,
were placed a number of long tables.
Upon these, a number of surgeons
were treating the wounded of both
armies. Just outside the door, and
on the South side of it, was a great
heap of mangled and bloody frag
ments ot humanity. This consisted
of hands and feet and arms and legs,
which, when amputated, were thrown
out there to be afterwards buried.
Where the Federal dead were laid,
I did not know. But, inside the
three sides of the churchyard fence,
each with his head to the fence, and
with something thrown over his face,
lay the Confederate dead, number
ing, as I remember, a few more than
twenty.
Time can never efface from my
memory those sights, and the events
of that day. The men in blue were,
of course exultant. Some twenty
five hundred strong, they filled the
town. Everywhere they recounted
and discussed the history and inci
dents of the day. Listening with
alert ears to them, and from remarks
of the retreating Confederates, as
weli as from what I saw, and what
I then and soon afterwards heard
from people who were in the village,
1 learned what occurred.
General Pillow's plan was that his
two Brigades should attack the town
simultaneously, the Alabamians and
Mlsslssippians, under Col. Armistead,
from the West and the Tennessee
ans, under Col. Neely, with whom the
commanding General rode, from the
South. This was to be done so sud
denly und at to early an hour, as
to take the enemy by surprise. And
the surprise was complete. The
Kentuckians knew nothing of an ene
my’s approach till the firing of
their pickets. This was at-least thir
ty minutes, probably more, before
the first streaks of dawn marked the
eastern sky. It is almost certain
that more than ninety-five in every
hundrel of them, officers and men,
probably all of them except a few
pickets on the various roads, were
not only undressed and without their
arms und accoutrements, but were
wrapped In the sleep that comes to
ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR
healthy young men, In the latter
| part o f ,t short summer night.
The small detachment of Confed
eral es, led by Lieut. McLemore,
passed in between the Federal army
and Us picket post. As soon as the
pickets discovered them, they fired
on the Confederates, and, being cut
off from the town, fled byway of
the “Big Spring'' and toward Chat
tanooga.
f'n the 23rd Colonel John T. Crox
ton, afterwards a Brigadier General,
with ihe Fourth Kentucky Veteran
Infantry, Mounted, had started from
Chattanooga to Hesacca, Georgia, by
way of Ship’s Gap and Snake Creek
Gap. That night, he camped at Rock
Spilng Church, eight miles north of
LaFayelte. On the morning of the
24th, about six o'clock Iheße pickets
gailnppcd into his camp and reported
that Wsi'kins had been surprised, sur
rounded, and, as they supposed, cap
tured. Croxton at once mounted his
Regiment, and hurried towards La-
Fay ette.
That day, I heard it repeatedly
staled that, after those pickets had
given the alarm and fled, General
Billow sent to Col. Watkins a formal
sui> mons to surrender; that Watkins
asked thirty minutes to consider this
and that, at the expiration of that
time, he peremptorily refused to sur
render, the Kentuckians, in the in
terval, having all been aroused, dress
ed, put into fighting trim, and mast
of them, rushed Into the court house,
jail, and other brick houses, the
doors of which were strongly barri
caded. But none of the official re
ports of the battle, by officers on
either side, so far as I have seen,
mention this formal summons to sur
render But, In any event, there was
a half hour's delay, or more, In
making the attack, after Watkins was
apprised of the presence of the
Confederates. This was clearly due
to some mistake or blunder, perhaps
mole than one. One of these seems
to have been that, as he states In
his official report, Col. Armlsted for
want of accurate Information as to
his distance from the town, dismount
ed his Brigade more than a mile
from it, and then, after double qulck
lng that distance, attacked on foot.
But notwithstanding this, and the fact
that from Trinity Church, the road
by wl-.fch he marched was longer
than i that traveled by Gen. Pillow
and Col. Neely, Armlsted had al
ready attacked, and had either cap
tuu-d the Federate or had driven
them into the strong houses, and
had furiously, but unsuccessfully,'at
tacked the court house itself, before
Neely came Into town at all.
Thl* attack on the enemy, by Ar
mlsted’s Brigade, was just at day
light. They assailed the enemy lu
his strongholds with splendid spir
it. But the Kentuckians met the
attack with equal spirit. Then it
was that we heard the first terrible
firing, mingled with the “Rebel Yell."
Unable to capture or dislodge the
enemy, In this attack, and having
suffered greater loss than the ene
my, by reason of their muclt more
exposed position, the gallant Com
mander, Armtstead, himself having
been severely wounded, the Confed
erates fell back to reform, availing
themselves of such protection as
other buildings afforded them. About
this time, Col. Neely's Brigade came
into action. Again the Confederates
assailed the strongholds, with no bet
ter success, and again fell back.
This was repeated several times be
fore nine o’clock, in the morning,
both sides, in the Intervals, keeping
up a desultory firing.
By that hour, the attacking force
were discouraged by the failure of
their every effort, so gallantly made,
to dislodge the enemy. Perhaps
they felt too, that “someone had
blundered.''
The Regiment, under Col. Croxton,
moving from Rock Bpring, approach
ed LaFayette about nine o’clock, or
soon after that hour. Deploying on
the outskirts of the town, they mov
a dforward and furiously attacked the
Confederates on the north. The lat
ter alreudy weary and discouraged,
were surprised by the appearance
and the onslaught of this fresh force
the Alabamians and Mlsslsslppians.
of foer of unknown strength. But
now commanded by Col. Ball, since
Col, Armlstead was shot out of
action, bravely met this assault. Col-
Watklns troops, encouraged by the
opportune arrival of this reinforce
ment, poured out from the brick
buildings, behind whose stout walls
and barricaded doors, they had been
(CisinwJn lati •/ thu morn)