Butts County GaArchives History .....THE STORY OF SYLVAN GROVE 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Don Bankston digitialdog1@juno.com October 9, 2005, 1:34 am

Book Title: 

As General Sherman’s Army Marched Into Central Georgia, A Family at a 
Plantation House Prepared for the Worst…

Descendant Remembers Hearing Grandmother Tell the Tale

Jackson, Ga.

During her youth Mrs. Robert C. Edwards listened with fascination each time her 
grandmother told the story of the family’s 10 day ordeal near the end of the 
Civil War.

Mrs. Mary buttrill Watson had vivid memories of the Yankee troops’ occupation 
of the plantation house, Sylvan Grove and the capture of her father as he ws 
trying to flee to macon.

The little girl was spellbound hearing about the Union general who brought food 
to Mrs. Watson, an aunt and two servants who remained in a heavily guarded log 
cabin until General William T. Sherman’s vast army had passed on it march to 
the sea.

Mrs. Edwards, 72, the former Annadawn Watson, a retired college teacher has 
resided since 1942 in the three story 14 room house where she was raised.

Now in the Jackson cit limits, the former plantation house was built in 1830 by 
Asa Buttrill for his bride, Lucie and eight generation of this family hve lived 
here.

Mrs. Edwards showee me a beautiful silk shawl that two slaves had woven by hand 
for her grandmother’s 16th birthday.   She carefully turned pages of an 
Episcopal prayer book, printed in 1813, that her great grandmother Mrs. William 
Buttrill, used to conduct worship services in 1815-1818 for the family and 
slaves in a log cabin, Jackson’s first Methodist church.

Today Mrs. Edwards stores stacks of books and mementos of her teaching career 
in the first floor room where a Union general spent 10 nights in November 1864.

At the request of her granddaughter, Mrs. Watson in 1935 wrote in beautiful 
longhand her memories of the Civil War experiences at Sylvan Grove.   She died 
at the age of 99 in 1941.

(Her maiden name, Mary Buttrill, will be used to avoid confusion in references 
to family members.)

Her story began November 17, 1864, as General Sherman’s army advanced into 
central Georgia, and the Buttrill family tried to prepare for the worst.

The previous night Mary’s father, Asa Buttrill loaded two wagons with silk, 
other valuables, food and clothing, and left for Macon.

Her brother, Zachary Taylor Buttrill, and five other 15-year old boys in a 
Macon Calvary company arrived at the plantation that night to eat a meal and 
rest before attempting again to learn what route General Sherman was taking.

As they ate breakfast at 3 a.m. on November 17, Sherman’s approaching wagons 
were heard, and the boys left for Macon.  Zachary and his uncle, however, hid 
in an orchard to wait for Mary, her Aunt Emma Manley and two maids – Martha and 
Mandy – to finish loading a phaeton for the journey to Macon.

Mary’s father gave her the phaeton and two black Kentucky horses, Sam and 
Henry, when she graduated from Synordical Female College in Griffin with a 
degree in art.

Ben Drake, a cripple Confederate soldier nursed back to health by Mary’s mother 
was to drive the phaeton.

As Mary told her mother goodby, about 5000 Yankee troops, wearing gray uniforms 
to deceive the Georgians reached the plantation’s front gate.

A soldier told the butler Stephen to call his mistress.

When Mrs. Buttrill appeared an officer asked, “Madam, where are Forest and 
Wheeler(Confederate Calvary units)?”

“I do not know, sir” she said.

The officer responded, “Madam, don’t tell me a lie.”    

Mrs. Buttrill declared, “Sir, I’d have you to know I am a Southern lady.”

This remark abruptly ended the conversation.

Mrs. Buttrill advised Mary, Miss Manley and the two maids to be on their way, 
and the Union troops filling the grove were silent as the handsome phaeton 
passed them.

Near the Ocmulgee River, 10 miles from the plantation, the carriage overtook 
Mary Buttrill’s father on horseback beside two wagons.

He continued toward Macon, while Mary’s phaeton proceeded a mile to the home of 
Stephen Johnson, accompanied by her brother and uncle, and the Georgians 
stopped to eat lunch and water the horses.

Afte lunch Mary walked into the road, glanced toward the river and was startled 
to see several hundred Yankee troops on horseback.

Her brother and uncle fled, and she pleaded with the driver, Ben Drake to take 
Henry, a saddle horse, and escape.

“No, ma’am”, he yelled as he jumped into the phaeton and grabbed the 
reins.  “If this war ever ends, you’ll see Ben with Sam and Henry drive up to 
Sylvan Grove.”

Moment later the Union troops reached the road where Mary, her aunt and two 
maids stood, and an officer asked, “Madam, where are those damned rebels that 
were here with you?”

Mary replied, “Sir, they are gone.”

Near where they stood, the road forked, the north branch going to Covington, 
the other to Macon.

One of the maids, Mandy suddenly ran up the north fork yelling, “Come back, 
Master, come back and give up.  These men are shooting everywhere.  Come back!  
Come back!

The Yankee troops rode several miles up the north fork before realizing the 
maid had deceived them.

“She surely saved her master’s life, for they were shooting as they went, 
hundreds of shots,” Mary would recall years later.

The northern troops returned and the women asked for protection.   A soldier 
offered to help them.

“If you please, take us to the highest officer for can, and ask protection for 
us,” said Mary.

The soldier led them on a mile walk through mud in the woods to the tent of 
Union General George E. Spencer on the Ocmulgee bank.

‘Our silk traveling dresses were torn in shreds by our walk through the 
woods,”  Mary said later.  “General Spencer bowed kindly to us and 
said, ‘Ladies you look as if you needed dresses as well as protection”.

She was to learn later than Yankee troops captured her father, Asa Buttrill, 
and seized his two wagons on the river flat near Nutting’s factory.

The soldiers also took her trunks and packages keeping some items and give the 
rest to factory hands.

General Spencer, who had been watching, entered the house and demanded that the 
clothing be returned, but the workers denied having it.

Saying “it takes a rogue to catch a rogue,”  the general searched the houses 
and found the women’s dresses, cloaks, shawls and other apparel and loaded them 
onto a wagon.

Then General Spencer told the women to get into the wagon, and drove it himself 
to find a house where they could stay.

Within minutes they arrived at a two-room log cabin, where a Mrs. Fears, two 
little children and an old woman resided.    The Fears family was afraid troops 
would burn the cabin if the women were allowed to stay.

The general said, “I will burn it damned quick if you don’t take them in.”

General Spencer told Mrs. Fears, “I will put a guard of 40 men around your 
home.   I will have the fire kept up day and night.  Your fowl in your chicken 
house and your two fat hogs shall not be taken.  I will feed the two ladies and 
their two maids.”

For 10 days the general  and his cook brought the four women delicious meals 
three times a day, and they wondered why he was so kind and what their fate 
would be.

After the Union troops captured Asa Buttrill and  seized his wagons they 
threatened to hang him but finally let him go.

Several times Mary heard troops ride by the cabin and yell, “That old white 
devil of a judge from Jackson is dangling from a limb over the Ocmulgee river.”

She thought he was  dead until one night at midnight when she sat beside the 
cabin window and saw an old man approach and stand in the chimehny corner, then 
suddenly drop a note into her lap.

Asa Buttrill wrotein the note, “Dear Mary, they have turned me loose after 
robbing me.   Knowing the country as I do, I will go through the woods back 
home to your mother.   I saw the advance guard of Sherman’s army coming and 
gave my watch chain and pocketbook to the old man who is taking you this note.”

Although she still was unsure of her own fate, Mary buttrill was very relieved 
to know her father was alive.

Back at Sylvan Grove, Union Gneral Blair and his staff took over the parlor of 
the plantation house, and hundreds of troops with horses and wagons pitched 
tents on the grounds.

Mrs. Buttrill was safe in her room, but eh yanke troops destroyed everything in 
the other rooms, throwing furniture and clothes out of windows.

“He (the general) let my life work of art be destroyed”, mary Buttrill 
said, “The parlor walls were covered with my paintings, oils, water colors, and 
India ink.

“Not one was left.  My mothers’s loyal colored women were in her room with 
her.   Mother looked out her window and said, “Rose, it is snowing”.

Rose replied, “No Mistis.  The men upstairs ripping open your pillows and 
feather beds to see the feathers fly.”

The soldiers burned the cotton and gin house and killed hogs, sheep and cows, 
on the plantation, and in Jackson, Union troops burned the courthouse, jail, 
mercantile ouses and farming implements and took what they wanted from ouses.  

From Jackson to the Ocmulgee River, the soldiers killed several hundred horses 
and livestock and burned wagons and buggies.

“While at Sylvan Grove, they took from my mother’s little 5 year old adopted 
daughter the only article she had that belonged to her dead mother, a handsome 
ebony work box fitted with solid gold accessories, “ Mary Wrote.

“Though Katie pleasded for it, a roughg man snatched it from her arms, dashed 
it against a tree, breaking it to splinters”.

The soldier put several gold articles into his pocket and walked away.

In the log cabin where they hd been kept under guard for 10 days, the women saw 
Sherman’s army pass, and General Spencer, his buggy and driver at the door, 
visited three hours.

“We were so alarmed wondering what it meant,” said Mary.  “He gave us a 
beautiful horse to get home with, and when he rose to go he offered to shake my 
hand.’.

“And he said ‘Madam, I was captivated at first sight.  Your aunt is the most 
charming, beautiful lady I ever met’.  He asked Auntie if she would answer his 
letters. She said she would.

“He wrote her for two years begging to come to see her, sent her lovely books 
and flowers, but he neve won her,”

Soon after the general left, a Georgian named Captain Watson, wounded earlier 
in thewar, arrived in an ox cart from his plantation on the river to take the 
women home.

“We gee-hawed for seven miles over dead cows, horses, sheep, goats, hogs lying 
in the road”, wrote Mary.  “At the end of seven miles, we met two Confederate 
boys who were home recuperating and had hidden out and saved their horses and 
buggies and were hunting for us..

“They wer Dr. Tip Wilkerson and Wiley Goodman.   We bade Captain Watson goodby 
with thousands of thanks and were soon at home at Sylvan Grove”

Mary Buttrill was saddened to observe the Yankee soldiers had burned the barns, 
cotton houses, stables, cribs and fences, and they had destroyed all furnitured 
except that in her mother’s room and the parlor where General Blair stayed.

“No beds, no cover, no dishes, no cooking utensils, all broken and lying in the 
yard,” wrote Mary.  “We had no things to eat for the next 14 days except scraps 
of potatoes picked up in the Yankee camps by the faithful servants and washed 
and roasted, and a little corn.

“The gardener, Uncle Mose, dug dirt up from the meathouse ground, boiled and 
strained it until he got a little salt.  At the end of 14 days an uncle from 
Heard County came with privisions.   Friends who had escaped the invading army 
helped”

Mary Butttrill learned later that her brother, Zachery, and the other five boys 
arrived in Macon to find the city in Yankee hands.

Zachry said, “Boys, you can do as you like, but no Yankee willl ever take me 
alive.”

The six youth groomed and rested their horses, then managed to ride safely out 
of Macon and sped back to Sylvan Grove.

For two weeks members of the Buttrill family sat by the fireplace day and night 
and took turns resting in three chairs and a sofa that the Union general spared 
in the parlor.    Asa Buttrilll had come home unharmed and the family was 
reunited.

Years later, Mary was to write, “Our good servants lived and died with us.  A 
big number of young men went with Sherman’s army, but after arriving at 
Savannah, wrote back to father, “Please Master, send us money to come home.”


Printed in the ATLANTA JOURNAL

										
				


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