Wilkinson County GaArchives News.....THREE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF TERROR October 11 1905
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Eileen B. McAdams http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00011.html#0002655 October 16, 2004, 8:37 pm

The Augusta Chronicle

     My father, Judge J.C. Bower, was the ordinary of Wilkinson county, 
Georgia, at Irwinton, in 1864.
     The battle had been fought at Griswold, and the victory won by the enemy. 
My father and oldest brother, Oren (aged 16) had gone with others to recruit 
our army;  but we turned back near Gordon, as the enemy had won the day and 
were coming toward Irwinton.
    One afternoon, the latter part of November, 1864, two children were playing 
under a grape arbor. The leaves had formed a carpet of ocre and yellow as they 
drifted from the parent vine above. Flora was a fair, rosy-cheeked child with 
golden curls, in which Old Sol played hide and seek, as he sought his couch 
behind the western hills. Elly, her playmate, was a little negress, 
with kinky hair. A sound of martial music floated over the hills and valleys as 
the western breeze wafted it to them. Cannon gleamed in the sunlight as legions 
of soldiers and prancing steeds kept time to the music, on "Sherman's March to 
the Sea."
     Elly stood in a listening attitude, saying "Flora, what's dat" Doan' you 
hear ...Bum,, bum! Bum-de-bum!!" "Yes, I expect it's the Yankees." "Doan' you 
see all dem folks dressed in blue? Dem horses and waggins comin down de hill 
over younder on de Macon road? Let's tell Miss Marthy and Mammy."
     They rushed into the house and told the unwelcome news. "The Yankees had 
come." They entered our village late in the afternoon and pitched their tents 
on the outskirts of town to camp.
    My mother, Martha E. Bower, was attending to her evening duties, when a 
Yankee officer walked in the room where she was, ..bright light in the open 
fireplace showed to better advantage a man with a kindly face, dressed in a 
suit of blue with brass buttons. He spied a gun on the rack over the door, and 
told my mother if she wanted to keep it she had better put it away, for if 
his men found it they would take same. He also told here he would guard her 
house on the morrow, and she must put everything there she wanted.
     "Rest secure; you are safe tonight" he said, as he left the house. Mother 
took the gun, carried it upstairs and hid it in the chimney. Late at night my 
father came from the plantation and she let him in at the back door. Early next 
morning they commenced to carry everything in the house- syrup, potatoes, corn; 
everything eatable, the neighbors helping them. The back door was locked, the 
guard stood at the front door. The whole place was filled with Yankees, killing 
chickens, taking down potato hills, taking logs from corn cribs, and bringing 
scooner wagons and hauling off corn. As the Yankees would dip syrup from the 
barrel, my mother would dip and smear his sleeve, and he would curse her.
     At the plantation, one-half mile away, the Yankees were killing geese, 
hogs, chickens; and burned the ginhouse, knocked the top off the carriage, 
filled it full of sheep, hitched two steers to it, and drove past home, and 
called to papa, "Here is your fine carriage, old Reb."
     On the third day the army continued the "March to the Sea. " As far as the 
eye could reach were cannon, ambulances, wagons, cavalry and infantry, going 
toward Savannah. Some stragglers were left behind to burn the town. Two of them 
came up home and told papa they wanted his overcoat. He told them he needed it 
for the winter. They told him to pull it off, when mother took it and ran 
around the house with the coat. The Yankee started after her on his horse. She 
ran up the back steps and when she did he cursed her and pointed his pistol in 
her face and told here he would kill her if she did not give it to him. 
She threw the coat at him and said, "If it was not for my little children I 
would not care, you have destroyed everything we have."
     As he left he said, "he was coming back and burn up the house." They went 
down town and set fire to all the public buildings, and when they fired the 
courthouse, Mrs. A. Baum a jeweler lived right beyond. She was very much 
frightened, and cried, wringing her hands, "Aine Got in Himmel!" "Meeser Baum 
is gone, what is me and my children goin to do?"  "My baby is just three weeks 
old." For fear the house would burn down the Yankees put her and her children 
out in a drizzling rain, and she has been deaf ever since caused from exposure.

MRS. E. BOWER AVANT

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