Biographies: "Uncle Bill" Jones, 1958, Winn Parish, LA Submitted by Greggory E. Davies, 120 Ted Price Lane, Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** From: May 29, 1958 Winn Parish Enterprise News-American (H. B. Bozeman articles reprinted with permission granted me by Mr. Estes Bozeman) Winn Parish As I Have Known It by H. B. Bozeman Article No. 86 The recent death of Matt Jones Dodson, a respected colored woman who lived all her life of 85 years in Winnfield, has brought back memories to me of many other colored men and women of Winnfield during the past 50 years. Her parents, "Uncle" Bill and "Aunt" Emma Jones from Civil War days until their deaths, lived useful and honorable lives that commanded the respect from both white and black here in Winnfield. "Uncle" Bill Jones during the Civil War served with the Confederate army. This was rather unusual for a Negro slave. However, he was as proud of his Confederate army service as any white Confederate veteran. "Uncle" Bill Jones was always on hand for the annual Confederate reunion of the Winn Parish veterans every year. What "Uncle" Bill's actual status in the Confederate army was, I don't know. He said he was a 16 year old boy when he went to the war as 'body servant' for his master, who was a captain. He said after the Battle of Mansfield and the Confederate forces were pushing the remnants of Banks' defeated army back down the Red River valley, on both sides of the river, his captain "got short handed" for soldiers. Bill said one day the captain said, "Come here, Bill," then he walked up to a supply wagon and told the driver to come off the seat, handed him a musket, saying, "If you don't know how to shoot it, you better learn quick; Bill you know how to drive and take care of a team. Get up there and don't let nothing happen to the team, wagon or what you're hauling. Iff'n you do, I'll break your damn neck." "That's how I got 'mustered' into the Confederate army." To the best of my memory that's how Bill Jones told his story. A year or so after the end of World War I "Uncle" Bill Jones met with a handful of the fast dwindling ranks of Confederate veterans for one of their last get-togethers here in Winn Parish. That afternoon, "Uncle" Bill was sitting by the stove in the J. M. Hyde's store telling a group of listeners about his Civil War experiences, especially about the Battle of Alexandria and Pineville. "Uncle" Bill said he was right in the middle of the battle. That he was driving a wagon loaded with corn he had picked up at a place up on the Darrow with orders to deliver it to the Confederate forces, "in the back of the old schoolhouse, where the Yankee General Sherman used to be a school teacher," he said. He said he had just turned off the old river road in what is now Pineville up into the hills when "all hell" broke loose, Yankee soldiers coming up from the river from towards Alexandria shooting and Confederate soldiers coming out of the hilly woods shooting. He said he was right in the middle of all this shooting ruckus, his team trying to run away, when a bunch of Confederate soldiers ran up and the officer in command ordered some of his men to grab the horses and get them and the wagon load of corn into a nearby two story barn. "Uncle" Bill said, "Jes as I drive in the hallway of that big barn, a cannon ball from one of them Yankee gunboats down below the falls busted through the roof, making a hole as big as a flour barrel." Continuing he said, "No more cannon balls hit the barn, but them ole minnie balls kept on peppering the top of the barn jest like a big hail coming down for I don't know how long. Me and the men helping me held the horses were all scared jest about as bad as the horses. After awhile the shooting stopped and everything got quiet 'cept for the hollering and groaning of them what got shot and weren't already daid." About the time "Uncle" Bill Jones was winding up the details of the carnage of the Alexandria-Pineville Civil War battle a recently returned World War I veteran who had seen service on the battle fields of France, asked with feigned seriousness, "Uncle" Bill, did anybody really get hurt or killed in that battle?" "What are you talking about, kilt or get hurt!" snorted "Uncle" Bill. "Boy! Ain't you never seen that big brick walled graveyard right there in Pineville, with all them rows of tombstones. Thems all daid Yankee soldiers. You don't think they killed themselves, do you?" The World War I veteran said he did not see how either the Confederate or Yankee soldiers ever killed anyone with muzzle loading cap and ball muskets. That it was hard to "knock off" the enemy in World War I with rapid firing rifles, hand grenades, and machine guns. "Uncle" Bill ended the war talk by saying, "Boy, an ole minnie ball will kill you just as daid as a steel jacket machine gun bullet, if you get in front of it. Them Johnny Rebs and Yankee boys knowed how to hit what they shot at. They sure killed a lot of each other." According to Mr. George E. Smith, now one of Winnfield's oldest citizens, the marriage of Matt Jones to Joe Dodson was quite a gala affair. He said the Bill Jones family then lived out on Huckleberry Ridge, near where Judge Harwell Allen and retired Congressman A. Leonard Allen now live. Mr. George E. Smith said the wedding took place some time back in the 1890s before any railroad had come to Winnfield. He said a lot of the white people then living here attended the wedding. Mr. Smith said the wedding ceremony was held outdoors with the Hon. C. M. "Pete" Bevill, then local justice of the peace, performing the ceremony. He said a wedding feast was served after the wedding with special tables for the white guests. Mr. Smith said no one at the wedding feast performed any miracle of changing water into wine, but that the late Frank L. Shaw, Sr., furnished two pints of good whisky, when converted into "toddies" livened up the spirits of those attending the festive occasion.