A Family History of Alvin Brooks: Articles and Documents
The Autobiography of Norman Brooks
After years of procrastination, I will attempt to write a short sketch of history of my life as the events of it come to memory after 75 years have passed over my head.
I now regret not having written them sooner as now my memory is somewhat impaired and my eyes are dim. I am at the Soldiers Home and it is not all times as quiet as might be desired.
In writing my story, I shall go back to my earliest recollections. I was born in Erie, Whiteside County, Illinois in the year 1842 in a small log house. It has a puncheon floor- that is planks split out of logs and hewn down smooth. They made a stout floor, maybe not as nice as those of present days, but mighty strong. The roof was covered with grass, or thatched as it was called. The slew grass in those times grew as high as ten feet. It was tied in small bundles and it made a water tight roof that would last many years.
My first attempt at rambling was when I was about 2 years old. Father had drawn up a tree near the house for mother to hang the clothes on and no one had clothes lines back then. I had on a pair of buckskin moccasins and it was my delight to crawl upon o this tree top, slipping off and being hung by the heels until rescued by my mother.
A few years later I went to school. I went several times. I had one book, it was a speller, “McGuffy’s.” The lines ran from the top to the bottom of the page and there were some big words hard to spell. I was quite young but I mastered some of these.
I will give a description of the schoolhouse as I remember it. It was made of hewn logs and was about 16 x 16 feet. It had a floor of sawn boards and was sealed overhead with wide pine boards. The seats were made of slabs, holes bored in them and four wooden legs to a seat. They were ten feet long and no small boy could sit in them and rest his feet on the floor. There was one writing desk which ran the length of the room on one side. It slanted towards the wall and none but the largest scholars were allowed to take lessons in writing. The teacher would set them copies. There were no steel pens, they wrote with quill feathers from the wing of the goose or turkey and it was the duty of the teacher to make and repair all of the pens. When school would take up and the big boys and girls were in a hurry to get to their seats, they would climb over that long desk. It was just like a herd of sheep jumping over a fence. The teacher was rough. He used the whip and used the ruler and slapped our hands and often blistered them. He would often strike us in the face and knock us off our seats.
At the age of ten, my father sold out and moved to where Dixon now is and went to what is now called the “Great North Western Railroad.” After some time he left the road work and bought a farm near the one on what was called “Shiftless Street.” It was so named on a account of the general shiftlessness of the people.
I have digressed, and I will now go back a little and note my father and mother and try to name all my father’s wives and my brothers and sisters and half-brothers and half-sisters as near as I can. My father’s first wife was Sarah Carr. I can remember seeing her. By him she had three children, names as follows: Gilman, Saphrona and Elphonsa. His second wife died. By her he had one child, a girl. Her name was Ruffeliza and she died quite young. This wife’s name was Darius Barney. After her death, my father married my mother, whose name was Phoebe Freer. My mother had one child, a boy whose name was Minard Morgan. I was the first child born after the marriage and names of my own brothers and sisters are as follows:
Own brothers and sisters Half brothers and sisters
Erastus Otis Gilman D. Brooks
Eliza Ann Saphrona
Agusta Elphonsa
Dewitt Clinton Ruffeliza
Perry Leander Minard Morgan
Alvin Adelbert
My father was not a large man, only medium size and probably never weighed more than 150 pounds. He was a man with an iron constitution, very hard worker and honest. In my very young days, he was a strict Methodist but he changed his views somewhat in his last years and became a spiritualist.
My mother was a very large woman weighing about 250 pounds. She was a good mother and a hard worker but became badly broken in mind and body and before her death was quite an invalid. She passed away at the ripe age of 83.
Now I am badly at a loss for dates but it must have been somewhere about 1852 or thereabouts that we located in “Shiftless Street” in a small house. I was about ten years old and rather a delicate child. Up to that time, I had put in my time as the average boy did then—in fishing and hunting. My chances for an education were rather limited as I was a long way from a school and as I was the eldest boy it seemed to me that work came on aplenty. Part of the 80 acres had been broken the year before and the sod had to be cross plowed and I was the one to do it. Father had been elected supervisor of roads and was gone most of the time. He said, “Norman, if you plow that 30 acres I will buy you a shotgun.” I earned that gun, I can tell you. I had a team of horses and for a little fellow hardly more than 10 years old to have to harness those great big animals was no small task.
Now about that plow. It was a cast iron mold board 10 inch plow and it never was known to scour, so I carried a wooden paddle and would often stop and scrap off the dirt. It sure was hard work. The sod was tough and would wrap around the plow and I would have to stop and lift it out and take a new start. I had to reach up to hold the handle but I lived to finish that job at last and father bought me a gun. It sure was a dandy—cost $5.00. Geese, cranes, and ducks—there were aplenty and I got some of them, too and there never was such a gun as that before or since.
Brother Erastus and I would go to school some in the winters. The school was far away – 2 miles—and in Illinois it was so fearful cold and it was so far to go that we would forget all we had learned while coming back home. Soon I was a big awkward boy of 12. I spent whatever spare time I had in hunting and fishing and it was about htat time that I first heard about the war that was brewing.
After reading the paper, Father would say that a war was coming. He said that he might not live to see it, but we boys would be soldiers. How true was his prophecy and how soon it came true, but I will come to that later on.
About this time the scarlet fever broke out in the family and all of us children were down sick at the same time. It must have been an awful task for our parents to care for so many of us at one time but they did do it and we all recovered. It settled in my throat and I stayed with me for several years. It was always worse in the winter and it kept me from school, depriving me of the little education I might have had, but it stayed with me pretty faithfully and did not leave me until the second year of my arm service and I am of the opinion that it was the change of climate that cured me.
A few years later “Shiftless Street” got up an excitement. Grandfather Bidwell had built a great mansion, about the largest dwelling I had seen. I thought it was a whopper and someone proposed that the people all go together and have a big dance and supper in Grandfather’s big hall and apply the proceeds towards building a schoolhouse and it proved a success. In a short time a schoolhouse was erected on a corner of Father’s farm, for he gave the site to the school district. It was not a large house but it answered the purpose. I forgot to mention that I was at the ball and a big fat Dutch girl pulled me out on the floor and held me there and made me dance and the dancing mania broke out in me and after that I have danced every time and all the time I had a chance.
Those were my happy days. I got to go to school some after we got the school so near and I was then 18 years old and the little school marm was all the attraction for me. I would take her out to dances about twice a week in the summer. I had to work and was not able to go much in the winters.
Time passed swiftly and I was now about 19 and there was much talk of war, and father knew it was sure to come between the North and the South. The Northern states were opposed to slavery and the extension of slavery. The Southern states believed that it was right to keep the Negroes in subjection and to extend that into the Northern states and that was the foundation of the great Civil War that was to take place soon.
One year later, 1861, Fort Sumpter had been fired upon and the Southern states had seceded and established a Confederacy or a Confederate government with Jefferson Davis as President. War was declared and both sides were massing troops.
Lincoln was President and had called for volunteers and there was great excitement. In the new schoolhouse, which had taken the place of the little log one, all political meetings were held. They would march right in, with the fife and drum corps leading the procession and the noise was deafening. After that, a few patriotic speeches would be made and then the call for volunteers. There was much excitement. People seemed to have lost all reason. A man who did not hurrah for Lincoln was considered a rebel or a sympathizer with the South.
About this time, brother Erastus enlisted in the 34th Illinois Infantry to serve three years or during the war. He enlisted sometime in 1861 and was 19 years old. Many of the boys as young or younger enlisted and went in the same company- 34th Illinois Infantry Volunteer. The war continued and we often got letters from brother Erastus and he had been in the great battle of Corinth, or Shiloa.
In the fall of 1861, several of we boys in the neighborhood went to the bluffs after walnuts. I had a special friend with me that had enlisted and was home on a short furlough. He had told me of tales of the war until I had the war fever bad and wanted to go in the worst way. I hated to leave, as I knew I was needed at home, but yet I wanted to go. Like a silly boy (which I was), I made up my mind to slip off whilst the rest were busy with walnuts and started for Chicago where I made up my mind to enlist. Well, my friend and I started as we had planned to do before-hand and walked off without any notice being taken of us by the rest. We walked to Fulton, 15 miles off and there we boarded a train for Chicago. We stopped at Morrison to take on some passengers and as I was looking out the window who should I see but one of my brothers. As soon as he saw me, he rushed into the car where I was. He was scared to death and said, “Get out quick. Father has met with an accident. His team ran away with him and he was thrown out and his leg is broken. You must come quick.” I forgot all about the war. I just got right up, bid my friend goodbye and sent out with the boy. I mounted the horse and rode as quickly as the horse would take me. I hurried into the house to see Father feeling pretty badly about my going off like that. As I entered the kitchen, I stopped short, for there was Father sitting in his chair reading the paper. He looked up as I came in and smiled, but never said a word to me about my going neither then nor any other time.
How they found out I was going, I don’t know, but they must have distrusted from the start. I stayed home and worked on the farm until the next year, but in July 1862, I took the war fever for keeps and young Case, John McClery, my half-brother, and myself all enlisted. Case left his wife and three small children, and my brother had a wife and one small child. How they could leave their families is beyond all reason, but they did, and we all enlisted in Erie and our names were recorded and in a few days, two four horse wagons rode to Sterling and were there organized into companies. A regiment was formed and officers elected or chosen by the majority of men. I was in Co. I. The number of the regiment was the 75th. After a short stay in Sterling, the regiment went to Dixon.
A word about leaving home. The whole town turned out to see the boys off. Then came the tears and farewells, as fathers left wives and children, possibly forever. Mrs. Case clung to her husband sobbing out, “Oh, Charles, I know I shall never see you again,” and she never did. Lovers kissed for the last time. Fathers strained their little loved ones to them in a last embrace and blessed and prayed for their wives and spoke in whispers to them. It was sure a heart rendering scene and a sad, sad time. Soon the order came, “All aboard for Sterling” and we all piled into the wagon. The crowd-men, women and children- followed us for nearly a mile out and one man stood up in the wagon and fired six shots form his revolver as a parting salute.
When we arrived in Morrison, the colonel to be tapped a keg of beer and I sampled my first glass of beer. I did not like it. It was too bitter.
We reached Sterling all sober and tired. Supper was served in a large hall. It consisted of raw ham, bread and coffee. About 100 of us slept in a hay mow. I slept but very little, as the boys put in the night carousing and being used to the stillness of the farm, I could not rest for the noise. The next night was as bad, for they got a harvester, (it was a McCormick self-rake) and they ran it through the streets. The men and boys were mostly farmers and they were doing their last running of the harvester, for not many of that company came back.
We went back to Dixon, and went into camp, in an unfinished stone building (a factory which was never finished), and there we stayed for a few days, until our Sibley tents came. They were pitched on the East side of Rock River, below the bridge and there the regiment was sworn in and we got orders to break camp and pack knapsacks and draw rations and guns. The guns were called Belgian rifles. They were poor, light small guns and shot a large ball for such a small gun. They were little but had a mighty kick.
The regulars all boarded the cars and then there was another parting of loved ones and the long train carrying more than a thousand men pulled out, leaving pale cheeks and bleeding hearts behind. We were bound for Louisville, Kentucky. Part of the train was made of bow cars, with some cattle cars. Some of the boys were very indignant. Said it was degrading of them and soon it rained and when they got good and wet, they said how foolish they had been. Nothing curious happened on the long trip and the regiment unloaded at Jefferson, Indiana. At night, the officers and men spread their blankets on the ground near the bank of the Ohio River. The nights were getting cool. I slept a little.
The battle of Corinth or Shiloa had been fought, and General Buell’s army had just got back to Louisville, Kentucky. I soon found out that the 34th was there and a whole lot of us crossed over the pontoon bridges to see our friends and relatives. My brother was in that regiment and I sure was glad to see him. He had been out a year or more and I had plenty to tell and he to ask. The army had been on a long march and the men were all dirty and lousy and kept scratching themselves. They worked their arms so that we called them the “fiddlers” which they did not like. But the new boys, we lads of the 75th, got a supply of the varmints and took them back with us unbeknownst, in our clothes, and then our troubles began. Some of the boys were mad and took their underclothes and threw them away, but that made matters worse as they needed their clothes and the enemy stayed with them.
Now about the 1st of August 1862, we got orders to pack and each man sure had a pack. It made a load for a mule. The idea of a man carrying all his possessions on his back, consisting of two suits of clothing and a heavy overcoat, a gun and forty rounds of ammunition, a skillet and a coffeepot, a tin cup and many other things too numerous to mention, all told, the load would weigh over 60 pounds. My! How the strap of that knapsack would cut my shoulder!
We crossed the river on the Pontoon bridge. It was made of boats placed side by side and planks laid across. The whole regiment crossed at once and the fool boys would try to see how much they could rock the boat or the bridge. If they had broken it, nearly all of us would have drowned as no one could swim, loaded as we were. We got safely over, however, and we spent the day trampling around getting used to our loads.
Buell’s whole army was at Louisville and was moving out to fight General Bragga and in getting the army out and getting all on the move took time. We would march a short distance and then halt and stand in the road. I would place my gun behind me and prop my heavy knapsack to give my back and shoulders a rest. Finally, the whole army was on the move. About the next day, we could hear the boom of the cannon. In the evening, lines of battle were formed. Then orders were given to pile knapsacks and the regulars unloaded and a few guards were left to care for them (there were great piles of them.)
On we went, halted and formed a line of battle. The Captain said, “There is the enemy, make ready, fire!” After that order all loaded and fired at will, or as fast as they could. My! How the bullets whistled and sung around us, and I could see they boys falling on every side. Case was by my side and a ball struck him in the shoulder and he said, “ouch” and fell out of line.
The firing lasted about an hour, perhaps more, when the order came to retreat, and it was a case of every man for himself, while the battle was on, the lieutenant was wounded and I helped carry him to the rear. I took another fellow off too and during the retreat a wounded man begged of me not to leave him and I stopped another fellow in his running and the two of us carried the wounded man with us some distance till we came to a stone wall and we placed him behind it and I gave him my canteen and a hankerchief. It was all I could do.
It was dark now and I had lost the shattered regiment and my brother. I did not know whether he was dead or alive. I just kept on going to the rear. At last I came to a large house where a number of the wounded had been brought. It was being turned into a hospital. The ground was covered with sleeping men, thousands of them. I wandered about looking for my brother. At last I found him! I saw his name on a rubber blanket and I stopped and looked and it was he alright! I awoke him and he said he was not wounded at all. That was good news to me. I lay down beside him. It reminded me some of the days we had slept in one bed at home. I was fast asleep in a minute and slept till morning. I went back to the field and saw the dead and the dying. Oh sure, war is Hell, and you can’t call it anything else. I saw Lt. Blain, he was alive but unconscious. He was stripped of his boots and all of his clothes, only his underclothes left. This being the 8th of Oct. 1862, the nights were cold and frosty. The poor fellows who were half dead were worse off than those who were quite dead. They, at any rate, were quit of their suffering and the others and just commenced. This was the battle of Perryville, the first battle I was in and it seems to me I remember it today as plain if not plainer than I did that morning.
I am not prepared to say how many were killed, and how many were wounded, history can tell you that. All I know, it was aplenty. From there we went to Danville and it was there we got caught in a big snowstorm and the baggage had not caught up with us yet. We had not tents or knapsacks nor overcoats or anything, only the night and the snow and the storm. The men were suffering terribly. There was a rail fence ahead of us. We made a dash for it and just as we were coming in with the rails, General Post came up on his horse. He got in a blue rage, drew his sword and commanded us to take those rails back. Almost the whole company had gone after those rails, for we were freezing and when the order came to take them back they did so and they just kept on going till they reached their homes. I don’t know if history has mentioned this incident or not. If it has, I think it should be known as the “retreat of the rail fence” or rather “with the rail fence.”
After that, we were sent to capture Morgan, the Cavalry Raider, but after a long and tedious march, we had to give it up, as we never saw hide nor hair of him so the army returned to Louisville and camped there. It was about this time that I was taken with what was called “chronic diarrhea” and had to be sent to the hospital. I was there several months and just couldn’t get any better. I found out that there was a neighbor boy upstairs. He was too bad to come down to see me and I was too bad to go upstairs to see him so we used to write to each other. I was there when the battle of Stone River was fought. I could hear the boom of the cannon and the roar of the guns and soon the ambulances came roaring in loaded with wounded men. In a short time the place was filled. I was very anxious to hear how the 75th and the 34th came out, as I knew so many in both regiments and brother Erastus was in the 34th. He has escaped without being either killed or wounded for he came to see me in the hospital. He did not know me as I had got so thin. I was little more than a skeleton. Well, I got so I could walk around a little and I was sent to a convalescent camp. There I stayed a month or more and there I met John McClery from my hometown who was sent to the hospital I had just left and he died there. He never got home and his wife was right. She never saw him again.
From the convalescent camp, I was detailed to guard a rebel prison hospital. The guards had tents and we slept on the ground and took turns guarding. My old complaint still hung on me and I was subject to pleurisy. I had a bad attack and was taken to the hospital among the rebels and there I remained for some time. After a time, I got so that I got around without falling down every few steps and then I was sent to helping two Negro girls wash dishes. I don’t know that I felt highly honored, but it was all in the day’s work and I tried to do the dishes as well as I could. Seeing that I made a good dishwasher, I was promoted to nursing.
My first job was to clean up a poor rebel captain’s leg. It was amputated above the knee and he was crazy with it. He slapped me in the face when I went to do it and he had the bandage off and the big stump all bleeding. I started in to clean and dress that leg. I got so sick I had to lay down before I was half through, for I thought I was going to faint. Seemed to me that I must be a pretty poor sort of soldier not to be able to dress a poor rebel’s wound, so at it I went again and this time I made a good fob of it and after that I dressed many a one and I never minded it at all. I nursed those poor rebels for a month or more then one day the one-legged rebel Captain begged me to give half of his whiskey to another fellow and the doctor found it out and raised all sorts of a row and said he would send me back to my regiment. I told him that would suit me all right so he gave me a note to take to the headquarters to get my transportation to my regiment, but when I went the boss said he could not send me as I was not fit to go and if he sent me he would get the blame. I told him I wanted to go the worst way as I had been in the hospital a long time and I thought it might do me some good. He said he would send me but I was sure to be sent back when I got to the front. So I got to the front. I was glad to see the boys and be back with them—those that were left at any rate. And were they glad to see me! They called me “skeleton.” There was another fellow in the same regiment that was as bad looking as I was and the boys were and hunted him up and said they wanted to see they two skeletons wrestle. So they brought him up to me and told us to “go to it,” and we went to it and I downed him and they were satisfied. We were living in cap in Stevenson, Alabama, and I attended doctors’ call every day. The doctor used to make fun of me, I was so thin. He told me he didn’t know about making a soldier, but he thought by the looks of me I would make a good preacher. I told him how long I had been in the hospital and how the chronic diarrhea hung on to me and kept me from getting better. He said I had taken enough medicine to kill or cure twenty men and he would write me an excuse from duty for three weeks and that I was to go out and forage every day. Forage for blackberries and eat all I could get my hands on and at the end of three weeks I was to report to him again. I did so. I ate berries raw and berries cooked and fruit in every shape. It was my entire living and I got well and when the regiment moved I was able to march on the long dusty marches.
At that time the army was moving from Stevenson, Alabama, in the direction of the Chattanooga. We had several skirmishes but no battle of any importance until we reached the Chattanooga. But it so happened that our regiment was the rear guard for a wagon train and so we were not actively engaged in this battle. The 75th claimed the honor of being in the fight but none of us were killed our wounded.
Before the battle, we returned to Whiteside Station and only broke camp once and marched to Buzzard Roost, where we had a skirmish and a few of the boys were wounded. While there I took the pleurisy, and the doctor bled me and dosed me and put me in the ambulance… I was more dead than alive. I just lay there and only woke up when some shell would burst near me, when I would think someone was speaking to me and opened my eyes to see who it was.
Finally the team came to a stop and I felt someone and I opened my eyes to see my brother trying to get me to speak to him. He said, “wake up Norman. We are at home.” And I looked out and found we were back again at Whiteside Station to our old quarters and in a short time we were fixed up just as we had been before.
I got a pass and went to see Erastus, who was in Chattanooga with the 34th. His regiment was camped on the West side of the Tennessee River at a place called Morganson’s Point. This was on January 1, 1863. It was a bitter, cold New Year’s Day and I stayed overnight with him.
Next day I started back and the pontoon bridge had gone out so I got a man to take me over in his boat. There were several of us and we all got back safely. At that time, Chattanooga was held by the Federals and the Confederates nearly surrounded the city. My regiment camped in the city during the siege and it was rather a starvation time. I was hungry all the time, never got a full meal, never enough to satisfy my appetite. In the spring of 1864, the army moved out of Chattanooga. My regiment was on the west side of the river and we crossed over on the pontoon bridge and soon began the ascent of Lookout Mountain and with Joe Hooker, the famous “Battle above the Clouds” was fought.
The rebels retreated during the night and our regiment slept on the mountain, about half way up. The next morning I beheld the grandest sight I ever saw. The whole Federal army was moving towards Missouri Ridge and the sun was shining down on their guns, their flags were flying and I could hear the music of their bands as company after company went by. I tell you that was a sight that a man could never forget. The ridge was high, steep and rocky. It was held by the Confederates but the Federals fought all along the whole length of it and they climbed that steep ridge (how they did it I don’t know) right in the face of the enemy and got on top of the ridge and drove the enemy off. At this time, Hooker’s men left the side of the mountain and crossed the valley and got on the ridge and marched towards the North. Here we met with Breckinbridge’s brigade. They did not do much firing. They saw there were too many for them, so they just fell down and were taken prisoners. The rebels were all gone from the ridge at this time and e camped on it until morning. The Rebels had retreated to ringfold and we followed them there and had quite a battle and there I saw the 13th Illinois Infantry badly slaughtered.
About this time, Sherman commenced his famous March to Sea, and skirmishing and fighting were continuous. All went well with me until we got to Resaca, Georgia, on the 14th day of May 1864. There the enemy made a stand and the battle commenced. We were near a rebel battery and the colonel ordered us to lie down. I had just dropped down by the side of the sergeant and the bullets and shells were coming thick. A shell burst about 40 rods in front of me and I saw a fragment of it coming our way. It was coming in haste and I knew it had a message for us. Sure enough! It came right on, and hit the sergeant on his hip and just smashed him up. Then it came to me and hit me just above the knee and broke the bone badly. My brother was near me and he ran up to the captain and asked if he could go for a stretcher and take me to the rear. The captain told him to do so bur to take the sergeant first. My brother did so and all the time he was gone I was just sitting there holding my leg for the pain was more than I could bear. They got back and my brother got a Negro to help him and they put me on the stretcher and started back. A shell burst nearby and they ducked and came near to spilling me out. Finally they reached a hollow and my brother left me near the sergeant and death and there were about 40 of us wounded in that hollow. Some ambulances came along and the sergeant and myself were loaded into one with some others. The ambulance men were sort of choosey on who they took. They would look at a man and then say, “no use bothering with that him; he’s dying already,” and so a lot of them were left to die or to be picked up later. They took us to a field hospital and spread my blanket on the ground near the sergeant—he was not able to speak and soon was dead. I was on the ground and at my feet was a table. Here doctors were cutting off legs and as soon as they took them off they would throw them as far as they could. The doctor that was doing the amputation was drinking plenty of whiskey. They partially chloroformed the men and some of them would sing and some of them would pray and some would curse as they were being cut up. As I lay there the doctor told me my turn would come soon and not to fret. As I told him nix. They did not do anything to me and I was there only a few days when orders came to move. I knew we would have to ride and it would be a hard ride and cause me more suffering than I could bear as there was a mile of corduroy road to go over. A corduroy road is one made with rails and lots laid close together to keep the wagons from getting too deep in the mud and it is not good driving for a wounded man. So I commenced to study how I could make it easier for my poor leg. I got a boy to make me a box out of a cracker box to put my leg in and then I put all the cotton and rags around it to keep it from jolting too much and it proved of great help as the road was awful rough and some of the poor fellows screamed with the pain of the jolting. We stopped near a railroad and they carried me into a big ten and left me there. I had an iron bunk, a straw tick and plenty of blankets and fared pretty well. This was about 15 days since I had been wounded and nothing had been done for my leg. I kept on telling them that it was broken but they would not bother with it and all this time I had had my pants on. I told the doctor I just must have that leg looked at and dressed as the maggots and lice were eating me up. He looked at me through a glass as he was afraid to come near me. He told a steward to take that leg out of the box and see what was the matter with it. The nurse cut off my pants and lifted the leg out of the box and such a sight! I don’t want to see. The whole side of my leg fell out and about a pint of maggots and lice. The nurse said he would fix them so he got an old fountain syringe and filled it with something and shot it into my leg and he sure killed his millions. He splattered it all over my leg and whatever it touched it blistered and that was all that was done for me for several days.
We got orders to move again and I was taken and put on board of the train and shipped to Chattanooga, unloaded and put in the hospital and there I had very good care. The doctor looked at my leg. I told him it was broke and it had begun to knit together. But he wanted to be sure and so he had to twist and twist until he nearly broke it again and he hurt me horribly. Then he dressed it and shot a few more maggots and put plaster around it and here I remained a few more days.
Then we had orders to move again and they took me out on a stretcher and all that were able to be moved they took and loaded them into an ambulance to be taken to Nashville, Tennessee. As they were going to put me in the ambulance, the manager saw that I had nothing on but a bit of a shirt and he said that I could not go like that so I was put back in the hospital. I had no pants and could not have put them on if I had, so they came in again and took me. I supposed there would have been some sort of accommodation made for the wounded man—perhaps a hospital car with bunks and bedding, but there was nothing at all. I was put into a cattle car, with rough boards run from side to side, and I had the soft side of a rough board to lie on. All I had on was a bit of shirt and after lying there several hours the train started for Nashville. I sat up as best I could and held my leg and kept people from rolling on it or kicking it. It was a long ride and I was not able to sit up and I will never forget the agony I suffered on that cattle train.
I was just alive and nothing else when they took me out and put me in a stretcher and carried me through the streets of the city. I had no covering—nothing but that little bob of tailed shirt and they took me to #1 hospital. It was a big church. Two men carried me up a long flight of stairs on the outside of the building. I had my arms over their shoulders and hopped along on my one leg. I must have been a pretty looking sight and I have no doubt there are people in Nashville yet that remember me after these fifty years. We stayed there a few days and were sent to Jeffersonville and I was taken to the Joe Holt Hospital. There I met with a bad accident. It was the fourth of July and I took a notion to go and see a boy I knew whose bed was across the room. I borrowed a pair of crutches and started off. All of a sudden I lost my balance and party fell. A nurse caught me and my leg broke as my foot hit the floor. I fainted and they put me back to bed and there I stayed. This happened ten weeks after I had been wounded. The doctor came in that evening and I told him what had happened and he said he was glad as now he could set it right and pull it to its natural length. So on the 5th of July in the afternoon he came in. He had several nurses with him and two ropes. He said he wasn’t going to hang me but he was going to pull that leg out as long as the other one. So they roped me like a Texas steer, put one rope across me under my arms and tied on to my foot and there were six men pulling on me in two different directions. Now there was a collar formed around the broken bone and when it pulled apart it nearly killed me. Then the doctor wound all my toes with bandages and bandaged my leg up to the trunk but left the big sore uncovered so that it could be dressed. Then he put a board on the inside of my leg running the whole length and one end of it was fastened to my foot. I remained that way for a long time. Then gangrene got into the wound and I was taken to the gangrene hospital on the bank of the Ohio River. They burned it out with what was called “Bromane.” This medicine burned like fire for 24 hours, then they put on a poultice and left it there for 24 hours and then took it off and it left the wound nice and clean and all the gangrene was gone so I was moved back to the hospital. The hole in the side of my leg was about as big as a saucer and a finger length deep and to keep it off my bed so it could be dressed they got a rope and a pulley and swung the leg up and there it hung for several months. The doctor would come every morning and say I was doing fine- just to keep on taking the medicine and I always took it and put it down a knothole that was handy. I never took any of it; I lay in that cot nine months. One prescription that the doctor gave me was a quart of beer every morning. That did not go down the knothole!
Finally, I could go on crutches and one day my crutches slipped and I came near to breaking my leg again. Then I got brads and put in the ends of the crutches so they would not slip and then I got along alright.
The time came to go and I was put on board a hospital steamer and there were bunks and nurses and all went well. In the night the steamer stopped and I heard a volley of guns, the lights were all put out and we moved quietly down the Ohio River. The shots came from the Kentucky side of the river and none hit the boat and no one was hurt. We went down around Cairo and then up the Mississippi to Quincy and stayed there a few days and got 30 days furlough. Now I had never ridden on a steamer and took deck passage. I had no blankets, no extra covering of any sort and it was May 1865 and very cold. I lay under the boiler with some of the others to keep warm and at last landed at Albany and went to my half-sister’s and stayed there overnight. The next day I rode home with an old neighbor, Thomas Freek. Now I was home again, after nearly three years absence, and what changes I saw! My brothers and sisters had grown out of recollection and when my poor mother saw me coming on crutches she broke down and cried. I had not been at home long before an order came to report to Camp Butler. I was still in bad shape to travel but went. I went by way of Chicago and got there all right but very tired. Everything was strange to me. I was met at the depot by a man whose business it was to meet all trains and look after the soldiers coming in and take the sick ones to the hospital in the city. I told him I was ordered to Camp Butler and I had several days yet to report in. He said I had better go with him to the barracks nearby.
I did so and stayed there two days and then on to Camp Butler. There I was sent to the hospital and had pretty good care for a few weeks. Then I was taken with kidney trouble and could not get relief so I called for my discharge. The doctor told me that I ought to stay there until I was better but I wanted to go home, as I thought I would get better there and I was pretty sick of hospitals. So! I took my discharge and started for home. My suffering was just terrible. When I got to Morrison, 12 miles from home, I met a doctor whom I knew and he gave me something which brought me relief and I got a ride home.
I was discharged in May 1865 and in September 1866 I thought I would go to Kansas and take a homestead of 160 acres. I had a brother there and though I had to go on crutches, for my leg was not healed, I thought I would chance it. I went to Geneva and by rail to Rock Island and from there by boat to Quincy, Illinois. From Qunicy to Atchison. There I met my brother and we put up at Farmers’ Hotel and stayed overnight. The next day I loaned my brother $25.00 to buy a load of apples. He had a pony team and covered wagon and we started for home—150 miles west on the Republican River, now Washington County.
The first night we camped out on the roadside on the Otto Reservation. It seemed to me I was in wild country and to camp on this Indian territory was dangerous. I awoke in the morning and found no one hurt and after breakfast we resumed our journey and met the grasshoppers by the million. At night they would get into the wagon, maybe to keep warm and as we drove along the wheels would crush them and load up like going through mud and by day they would fly off the sunflowers and hit the horses in the eye and nearly blind them. I asked Brother where Clifton was. He said, “Don’t you see that object way of on the hills? That is Clifton.” The object he pointed out was just one log house and that log house was everything in town. It was the Post Office, and the store and the saloon and the church and any old thing. We finally arrived at my brother’s home, which was to be my home until I could provide a home for myself. All the money I had when I crossed the river was $25.00 and I had loaned it to Brother.
At his home, I met his wife and two children and the way they ate apples was not slow. His house was a hewn log, all in one room. It had an old fashioned fire place and a cook stove and brother wore buckskin breeches and everything reminded me of the wild and wooly west.
Soon after we got there Brother said he would tell me about six men who were killed by the Indians. He said he did not tell me before, as I very likely would have been afraid, so he waited until we got home.
It seemed that the town was out of meat and so a hunting party went out to get some. They would not have to go far as the buffalo were all over the prairie. But one of the men (and he must have been a mighty big fool) said he was going to shoot the first Indian he saw. Well, it seems they had not been out long when they saw some Indians riding towards them. They were quite peaceable, but this man outs with a gun and bang! Down goes an Indian. The others galloped back to their tepees and in a few minutes about a thousand come out. Came out to kill! Then there was a running fight across the prairie—1000 to 6. The white men were driving a wagon and as they came to a ditch the horses sprang across, the wagon broke and the Indians were upon them. Every one of the six were killed and scalped right there and my brother found them after some days had passed. When they did not return, he started out to look for them. Well, they took out coffins and all that remained of them were buried in the Vining Cemetery. They were the first to be buried there.
I passed the winter with my brother, and I was now able to get around very well. I could take my gun and shoot prairie chicken and wild turkey. I sure had good hunting there.
In the fall of 1866 Brother took me to Junction City. There I took up my homestead of 160 acres in the bottom land near Clifton and late in the winter I got out my logs for the house and there it stood all through the summer of 1867.
In the Spring of ’67, I rented Brother’s farm. He had 30 acres under cultivation. He furnished two teams and feed and my room and board and I was to pay him one third of what I made off it. Brother was a well digger by trade and could make a good deal more money at that than by farming.
Index | Family Histories | Photo Album | Articles and Documents