Jasper County GaArchives News.....Bicentennial Bits - Life on a Jasper County Farm During the Civil War 1970's
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Suzanne Forte suzanneforte@bellsouth.net July 2, 2004, 9:53 pm

Monticello News
BICENTENNIAL BITS

BY

JOHN HARVEY

Life on a Jasper County Farm During the Civil War


	Recently a clipping on the memoirs of Maggie Ridley has been passed on 
to us. 

	Maggie Ridley was a 14 year old girl in 1861 attending school in 
Franklin, Tenn.  Her father, Samuel Jones Ridley was born on the old Ridley 
homestead near Hillsboro but had gone to Mississippi where he had become a 
prosperous planter.  After the death of Maggie's mother he had sent her to the 
girls school in Franklin.

	When the War broke out in 1861 she left school, going to her 
stepmother's family in Nashville.  This is the beginning of the odyssey that 
took her and her stepmother from Nashville to Mississippi, across Alabama and 
Georgia to a farm between Hillsboro and Juliette. 

	She was not quite 14 at the start, and her family was well-to-do.  When 
it was over she was eighteen, an orphan, and a veteran of a struggle for the 
bare necessities.  Years later, at age 64, she wrote it all down saying, "It 
has been a vivid memory all these years". 

	When war was declared, the ladies of Franklin and Nashville gathered 
together to sew clothes for the department boys in gray.  She saw many go off 
to war and among many who would not come back were a double cousin, many 
friends, and her father. 

	Her father, when he had to go, came to take her and her stepmother back 
to the family plantation in Madison County, Mississippi.  He then went off to 
serve as a captain of artillery in the 1st Mississippi Regiment.  Within two 
years he was killed at the Battle of Bakers Creek not 60 miles from home.  "We 
could hear the guns of battle", she later remembered. 

	SHE LEARNED AFTERWARD that when his company was about to be cut off, 
her father had sent his men back.  They thought he was with them, but he had 
stayed with the guns and continued to work them himself.

	What happened next comes from a battle report by Gen. McPherson of the 
U.S. Army.  He reported that he saw a Confederate soldier firing his gun alone 
and thought him too brave to die.  As he was hurrying to save the soldier 
(Capt. Ridley) six bullets made his attempt futile.  Maggie Ridley said, "My 
father...died rather than surrender.  He had said he would rather be killed 
than captured". 

	His Negro servant, Burrell, who had joined the army to be with him, 
found the body, saw that it was buried and then went home to tell the family.  
Maggie' stepmother, a woman of action, went back with Burrell and had the body 
dug up and brought it home for burial in the family cemetery. 

	The wild grape were blooming then, Maggie said, and ever after the 
smell of grape blooms reminded her of that sad trip to the cemetery.  Shortly 
after the funeral word came that the Yankees were coming and her uncle sent 
her, her stepmother, some of the slave women and the overseer and his family up 
the Pearl River until they had passed through.  He thought it would be for no 
more than two weeks, but they soon found themselves trekking across Alabama and 
then Georgia, always just ahead of the Yankees. 

	Maggie recorded that she suffered a two week fever in Alabama, but it 
cured her of malaria attacks which had always followed her visits to 
Mississippi.  They carried $4,000 in gold which an uncle had given them to 
protect them when they left Mississippi. 

	When they reached Monticello they sent the overseer to rent a farm 
above five miles south of town.  While living on this farm they buried the gold 
for safe-keeping.
	 




Additional Comments:
Transcribed by Suzanne Forte (suzanneforte@bellsouth.net) from copies of 
articles contained in the Monticello News. There articles were prepared by Mr. 
John Harvey and published in this newspaper during the 1970's time frame.  
Permission has been granted by Mr. Harvey for use of these very valuable and 
informative articles

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/jasper/newspapers/gnw189bicenten.txt

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