Images found on Civil War battlefields: Who were they?

On March 23, 1924, the Des Moines Register reported about the image a young woman
discovered by a Confederate soldier on the Winchester (Va.) battlefield.

                                      Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

For decades, the tiny photograph of the unidentified young woman charmed — and mystified — scores of visitors to the old Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.

She stared straight ahead, her hair parted down the middle and smoothed behind the ears. A watch chain double looped around her neck — the shorter one included a heart-shaped charm. She wore a black ribbon on the crown of her head. For eye appeal, the photographic artist tinted the young lady’s lips and cheeks pink.

In late-summer 1864, a Rebel soldier plucked the image — a 1/16-plate tintype enclosed in a 1.5-x-2-inch case — as a souvenir from a fallen U.S. Army soldier on a Virginia battlefield. In the late 1890s, the veteran donated the photograph to the museum, the home of Jefferson Davis while he served as president of the Confederacy.

But who was she?

Image of  Georgiana (or Georgia Ann) Oxley Secrist
 of Marion, Iowa. It was found by a Rebel 
soldier on the Winchester (Va.) battlefield.
(The American Civil War Museum collection)

During an early 1920s visit to the museum, a couple from Cedar Rapids, Iowa recognized the photograph. Months later, they provided museum archivists with details. The brother of the young lady in the battlefield photograph supplied an early 20th-century image of his sister for comparison to the museum likeness. That evidence, along with snippets of information gleaned from the Confederate veteran, convinced museum authorities of the identity of the photograph.

The image that had long captivated museum visitors was of Georgiana (or Georgia Ann) Oxley Secrist of Marion, Iowa. The fallen soldier whom the Confederate snatched the image from was her fiancé, Albert Carmichael of the 24th Iowa, Company F. At the Battle of Winchester on Sept. 19, 1864, the 24-year-old private was mortally wounded by an artillery shell that also nearly severed the legs of another comrade, according to Georgiana’s brother, James Oxley, who also served in the regiment. Carmichael’s younger brother John — a private in the 24th Iowa, Company H — was mortally wounded in the same battle.

After the revelation, newspapers throughout the country published a long feature story about the discovery of the photograph’s subject and her long-dead fiancé. "Faded Portrait in Confederate Museum reveals Romance of Iowa Lovers," read one paper’s headline. "Old Picture of Civil War Days Breathes Pathos," read another.

Georgiana later in life
(Richmond Times-Dispatch,
March 23, 1924)

Secrist and Carmichael attended school together in a small, log structure in Iowa. She was the youngest of 10 children and four years younger than Carmichael. A romance blossomed. Albert continued the relationship while he attended Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. They intended to marry and settle on a farm. But the war spoiled those plans.

Eager to aid the Union, male students at Cornell College formed a company in the 24th Iowa. Before Albert Carmichael enlisted in the summer of 1862, Secrist handed him the tintype — an image taken when she was 15 and lived in Pennsylvania. They most likely maintained their relationship through letter writing, although none are known to exist.

War rocked Carmichael’s family as it did thousands of others. At the Battle of Champion Hill in Mississippi on May 16, 1863, Albert was severely wounded. While convalescing in a New Orleans hospital, he wrote a poem that appeared in James Oxley’s journal. It included this grim reflection of the war’s cruelty:

Oh, the glorious cheer of triumph

When the foemen turned and fled 

Leaving us the field of battle 

Strewn with dying and dead 

Oh, the waiting and anguish 

That I could not follow on

 So, amid my fallen comrades I must wait til morning’s dawn

At Winchester National Cemetery, John’s remains rest in section 76, under gravestone 3545. Albert’s final resting place, however, is unknown. In 1885, nearly two decades after Albert Carmichael’s death, Georgiana married Albert Secrist, an old family friend. In 1913, more than a decade before the photo revelation, she died in Iowa. “She was a good woman,” wrote an obituary writer. 

While fortuitous, the unmasking of the identity of the photograph was not unique. Early 20th-century U.S. newspapers published accounts of at least two other, similar photographic revelations.

An image found near a fallen soldier in Virginia

In spring 1908, nearly 45 years after a daguerreotype of a young man and a girl was found near a fallen Union soldier on another Virginia battlefield, Edgar Whritenour returned the photograph to one of the subjects, Ellen “Nellie” Stowe. The New Jersey mineral water manufacturer’s effort astonished the 63-year-old woman.

“My husband is glad that I am to get [my] picture back,” Stowe wrote Whritenour. “I had forgotten that my name was in the case. Do you not believe that this is one case in a thousand — a picture restored to the original owner after forty-five years?” 

After the Battle of Chancellorsville in early May 1863, a Confederate soldier had picked up the photograph off the body of a dead Union soldier lying on the battlefield. Later, the soldier gave it to a 13th New Jersey soldier to take back north. He in turn gave it to his daughter, who married Whritenour. She gave it to her husband.

In 1875, Whritenour began a dogged search to trace the origin of the image. The names "John Rawson and Nellie Augusta Nettleton" were written on the back of the case. Also in the case were a needle, a piece of thread, and a lock of hair.

Whritenour “communicated with every Grand Army of the Republic post in the country” until he finally located “Nellie” in Milford, Conn. Rawson, a 27th Connecticut private, was killed May 3, 1863, during a desperate rearguard action at Chancellorsville that decimated the regiment. In Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory, eight of the 27th Connecticut’s 10 companies became prisoners of war. For nearly 10 years after the battle, Rawson’s fate was unknown to Stowe, believed to be the soldier’s sweetheart.

“I wish I could make good to you all the expense you have gone to find the owner,” she wrote Whritenour, who sent the daguerreotype to Stowe after he received photographic confirmation of her identity. “I am thankful that this little bit of my life's history has been handed down to me over the silence of so many years, and I admire your perseverance under such almost insurmountable obstacles.”

A remarkable reunification

Five years after Whritenour’s search concluded, a veteran reunited another battlefield-found photograph with its subject.

In a battle near Williamsburg, Va., in 1862, William H. Dunham picked up a knapsack lying among bodies of fallen U.S. Army soldiers. Inside it he discovered a daguerreotype of a young woman along with the usual kit equipment and a fork engraved with the initials “R.C.” and “11th P.V.” After he mustered out in 1865, Dunham — a Massachusetts 5th Light Artillery private — returned home with the image and the inscribed utensil. For more than 50 years, he figured the knapsack and his war souvenirs belonged to a soldier with the initials “R.C.” in the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

In 1913, the image was published in the New Bedford (Mass.) Sunday Times and a local resident, Rebecca Randall, found herself staring at her own photograph. Newspapers reported the photograph, knapsack, and utensil must have belonged to 7th Massachusetts Private Andrew Lawton, Randall’s friend, who was killed near Williamsburg, Va., on May 6, 1862. (How he acquired the engraved fork is unknown. A Massachusetts newspaper misidentified Lawton’s death site as the Wilderness.)

During an attack near Fort Magruder, the 20-year-old — a teacher as a civilian — was struck by an artillery shell. He “lived but a few moments,” a comrade recalled, “and died regretting he could not have been spared long enough to have got just one shot at the enemy before he died.”

Lawton’s friendship with Randall never turned to love — “on her part at least,” the Fall River (Mass.) Daily News later reported. A year before her friend was killed, Randall had married. But even in 1913, 51 years after Lawton’s death, the 66-year-old woman kept a darkened photograph of her friend.

"War Time Mystery Solved," read a headline in a Massachusetts newspaper about this remarkable reunification of photo with subject. But many other images — of families, sweethearts, and others — remain shrouded by the fog of war.

A mystery image with an Antietam connection

In the 1860s, Bascom William Tell Phreaner created this image, "copied from an
ambrotype found in the grave of a soldier" on the Antietam battlefield.

In the 1860s, Hagerstown, Md.-based photographer Bascom William Tell Phreaner created cartes-de-visite — small photographs pasted to a cardboard backing — of a young woman. Clad in a plaid dress, she stared intently at the camera. Her hair was pushed back in a popular, Civil War-era style. But the subject was unknown to the photographer, who didn’t even know if the woman were still alive. On the reverse of Phreaner’s CDV appeared these words:

"Copied from an ambrotype found in the grave of an Unknown soldier, on the Battle Field of Antietam."

An unknown number of the CDVs was distributed. But the effort to unmask the identity of the woman in the image — as well as the soldier in the grave where it was discovered — proved fruitless.

More mysteries linger

Efforts to identify photographs found on Civil War battlefields continue even today.

In a feature story published in 2012, Steve Szkotak of the Associated Press wrote about unidentified images in the vast collection of the American Civil War Museum (formerly Museum of the Confederacy) — a long-shot publicity effort the museum hoped would lead to the names of the subjects. Two poignant photographs were of little girls — one with pink-tinted cheeks and hair in ringlets, the other with her hair parted in the middle. 

A CDV of a young girl found
on a fallen soldier at Gettysburg.
(Jeff Kowalis collection)

A Confederate soldier found the former photograph at Port Republic (Va.), between the bodies of two soldiers — one U.S. Army, one Confederate. Another Rebel retrieved the later image from the haversack of a fallen U.S. Army soldier on a Virginia farm in April 1865. Days later, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia in nearby Appomattox Courthouse.

The story mentioned six other unidentified images from the museum’s holdings. Some had been in its collection for 60 years or more. None included any identification. One, found by a U.S. Army soldier on the Fredericksburg battlefield, was of a couple with two young children. All these photographs remain unidentified.

In 2021, avid Civil War photography collector Jeff Kowalis shared copies of unidentified images — of a toddler, a young girl, and a woman — found by a New York colonel with a fallen U.S. Army soldier at Gettysburg. The officer believed the dead man served with the 9th Massachusetts Battery. Fred Cross, military archivist for the State of Massachusetts from 1918-38, believed the colonel was wrong. But the images moved him nonetheless. (For more on Cross, see my August 2018 story in Civil War Times).

“Who the owner was will probably never be known,” Cross wrote. “But some soldier carried them close to his heart, took them out at evening and gazed lovingly at them by light of flickering campfires, and murmured a prayer for his absent loved ones as he tenderly put them back into their accustomed place. And then came GETTYSBURG.”

SOURCES 

• Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Daily Republican, Jan. 9, 1913
• Des Moines Register, March 23, 1924
• Fall River (Mass.) Daily Evening News, Sept. 25, 1913
• Hutchinson, Nelson V., History of the Seventh Massachusetts volunteer infantry in the war of the rebellion of the southern states against constitutional authority, 1861-1865, 1890
• Los Angeles Daily News, April 10, 1924
• The Berkshire Country Eagle, Pittsfield, Mass., July 23, 1863
• The Delphos Herald, Delphis, Kansas, April 25, 1879
• Tyrone (Pa.) Daily Herald, May 21, 1908

Podcast: Historian Sarah Kay Bierle on 'Gallant' John Pelham

In Episode 41 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," author/historian/speaker Sarah Kay Bierle chats with co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan about Confederate artillerist John Pelham, who played a pivotal role at Antietam. Her latest book is Glorious Courage: John Pelham In The Civil War, published in May 2025 by Savas Beatie. 

You may not know much about "The Gallant" Pelham, but you've surely seen the remarkable circa-1858 image of him by Mathew Brady in dozens of publications. Plus, Bierle dishes on the role of "Hancock The Superb" at Antietam and more.

A flight over Fort Negley, Nashville's 'masterpiece'

 

A reporter in 1862 described the forts defending Union-occupied Nashville as the "most complete of the kind in the country." Fort Negley, built on St. Cloud Hill with mostly African-American labor, was especially impressive. "A masterpiece," the Philadelphia Press correspondent called it. The fort was constructed under supervision of Captain James St. Clair Morton, a 33-year-old Philadelphian and West Point graduate.

Podcast: All things Michigan at Antietam

In Episode 40 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," Brian James Egen of The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn and author/historian Jack Dempsey join co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan to talk all things Michigan at Antietam. That includes stories about U.S. Army generals Alpheus S. Williams and Israel B. Richardson, who suffered a mortal wound in the attack on Bloody Lane on Sept. 17, 1862. Plus, the Michiganders — co-authors of Michigan At Antietam — dish on their effort to place a Michigan monument on the battlefield.

Podcast: Linda Zimmerman on Antietam soldier Albion Brooks

In Episiode 39 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," author Linda Zimmerman talks with John Banks about her book, A Civil War Soldier and Me, the story of 8th Connecticut Sergeant Albion Brooks. Zimmerman devoted 30 years of research and traveled thousands of miles to learn about Brooks, who survived the bloodbath at Antietam as a teen but died at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864.

Podcast: Listener spotlight on Civil War-mad Canadian

In Episode 38 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," Canadian and fan of the podcast Devan Sommerville joins co-host John Banks (Tom McMillan was off) for a 15-minute chat about his obsession with the American Civil War. Without prompting, he mentions John's favorite spot on the Antietam battlefield and educates us about an unheralded Canadian tie to the battle.

Tales from the road: Bullets, bottles and Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie Parker's gravestone in Dallas' Crown Hill Memorial Park.

                                   Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

Near Dallas’ Love Field, where JFK’s body began a heart-wrenching journey back to D.C in November of ‘63, I hang a right into Crown Hill Memorial Park, across the way from a 7-Eleven and a Fiesta Mart.

“Where’s Section 4?” I ask a man walking in the cemetery with a young girl.

Killers Bonnie and Clyde

On this overcast Saturday morning, the goal is to commune with the spirits of two of the more notorious criminals in American history — one of whom rests somewhere in this vast sea of green, gray and white. The man has no idea about Section 4, but his eyes brighten after he receives more intel. 

“I’m looking for the grave of Bonnie Parker.”

”Oh, she’s right over this way,” says the man, a visitor from Boston in Dallas with his teen daughter.

Roughly 30 yards from the gray-granite grave of Ray Bobo sits the marker for Parker, who, along with her paramour and partner in crime, Clyde Barrow, left a trail of death and destruction in the Southwest and elsewhere before lawmen sent them to their maker with volleys of lead on a lonely stretch of Louisiana road on May 23, 1934.

”I’ll leave you here to mourn,” the man says.

”Oh, I’m not here to mourn,” I tell him while staring at Parker’s flower-adorned grave. “This woman was a notorious criminal.”

Judging from those flowers and tokens of remembrance on her tombstone, Parker seems more celebrated than vilified. Atop her slab, a step from her mother’s grave, sit nine .44-caliber bullets and a bright orange Wing & Clay 12-gauge shotgun shell. Nearby rest a travel bottle of Maker’s Mark and other liquor containers, a Bud Light can, a half-smoked cigarette and a top for L’Oreal eye shadow — perhaps used by Parker to keep herself beautiful in hell.

“As The Flowers Are All Made Sweeter By The Sunshine And The Dew, So This Old World Is Made Brighter By The Lives Of Folks Like You,” reads the inscription on Parker’s gravestone — an affront to the roughly dozen folks Bonnie and Clyde are believed to have murdered in cold blood.

Bullets atop the grave marker for Bonnie Parker.

Minutes later, I find myself in the thick of notorious Dallas traffic, a Blue Bell banana fudge ice cream commercial blaring on the radio of our SUV rental. With Clyde’s South Dallas grave outside my comfort zone, I instead make a beeline for the A.H. Belo mansion in downtown Dallas, not far from where Jack Ruby gunned down Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the police department HQ. A funeral home in the 1930s, the mansion is where thousands viewed Barrow’s bullet-riddled corpse days after his demise.

While pulling into the mansion’s narrow driveway, I spy a few feet above my ride a small drone, deployed by a wedding photographer. How surreal. Minutes later, I maneuver from an illegal parking spot and meet the actual early 30ish groom who will exchange vows inside the mansion on this very day. Amazingly cheery (he’ll learn 😳), Mr. Groom talks about marriage.

“Ever hear of Bonnie and Clyde?” his one-track mind inquistor asks.

“Sure,” he replies with a wry smile.

“Well, his bullet-riddled corpse was viewed here in this mansion in 1934 by 20,000 people,” I say almost breathlessly.

“Well, we won’t have that many today,” he tells me.

It’s probably time for me to return to normal society.

Thousands viewed Clyde Barrow's bullet-riddled body at the A.H. Belo mansion in 1934.

Podcast: Ashley Whitehead Luskey of Civil War Institute

In a mini-podcast, historian Ashley Whitehead Luskey — assistant director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College — chats with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks. On April 12, 2025, she was among the speakers at the Maryland Campaign Symposium at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. It also included historians Scott Harwig (I Dread The Thought Of The Place), Dennis Frye, Harry Smeltzer, John Hoptak and Kevin Pawlak. The podcast is brought to you by Civil War Trails.

Podcast: Jon-Erik Gilot on Maryland Campaign Symposium

In a mini-podcast, Jon Erik-Gilot — curator at the Thomas Espy Post at the Andrew Carnegie (Pa.) Free Library And Music Hall — dishes with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks on the recently held Maryland Campaign Symposium he organized. It featured historians Scott Harwig (I Dread The Thought Of The Place), Dennis Frye, Harry Smeltzer, John Hoptak, Ashley Whitehead Luskey and Kevin Pawlak. The podcast is brought to you by Civil War Trails.

Podcast: Antietam potluck with historian Scott Hartwig, more

 In a freewheeling Episode 34 — taped before an audience at the Maryland Campaign Symposium at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie, Pa. — historians Scott Hartwig (I Dread The Thought Of The Place), Kevin Pawlak and Harry Smeltzer, as well as Dana Shoaf and Melissa Hacker Winn of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Md., visit with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks. The podcast is brought to you by Civil War Trails.

Brain cancer, battlefields and lessons in life

                                 Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

The first call from my friend Nick Picerno came before Christmas, amid the joys and anxieties of the holiday. I didn’t answer, knowing that any call with “Big Nick” would require at least an hour of my time. Now I love talking with Nick, who seems to have some magical magnetic field that attracts Civil War artifacts and ephemera, especially from his beloved John Gould of the 10th Maine Infantry. But this just wasn’t that day.

Days later came another call. I answered, but part of me wishes I hadn’t. Our chat became a blur, like a conversation in a bar with Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon” playing at full blast.

“Brain cancer.”

“Months to live.”

“I wanted you to know.”

Wait… what?!

Nick Picerno (left) with Ronn Palm
(and other pals) at Palm's excellent
 Gettysburg museum in 2000. (Image
courtesy Ronn Palm)

Truth be told, I didn’t hear much more than that. My heart hurt. If you relish walking Civil War battlefields in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, yours should hurt a little bit, too. That’s because “Big Nick,” the longest-serving board member of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, has for years helped save battlefield land — places such as Third Winchester, Tom’s Brook, Fisher’s Hill, Cedar Creek and more.

In the past decade, Nick and I have had dozens of conversations, nearly all about the Civil War.

“You have something I want,” he told me over the phone a day after my acquisition of late 19th-century photos of the Antietam battlefield by John Gould’s son with detailed descriptions on the reverse in the veteran’s own hand. I had no intention of selling the images then, but that magical force field and Picerno’s remarkable Italian powers of persuasion eventually swayed me.

Two years later, I sold the images to Nick. On a rainy day on the porch of the Widow Pence farmhouse at the Cross Keys battlefield in Virginia, we sealed the deal. The date, appropriately, was Sept. 17, the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam.

Last weekend, “Big Nick” and I intended to visit Antietam, perhaps stroll about the East Woods, where Gould had fought. But it wasn’t to be. “He’s too weak,” his lovely wife Kathy told me.

And so we sat in his living room in New Market, Virginia, amid hundreds of Civil War books, artifacts and no doubt the spirit of John Gould himself. On a shelf stands a battlefield preservation award he recently received — a high and well-deserved honor. We talked for two hours, mostly about the Civil War and a little bit about life.

“Nick,” I said as he sat in an easy chair, covered by a white blanket, “I’ve never even talked with my wife for more than an hour over the phone.”

Later, I showed him my favorite photo of him, taken at Cedar Creek holding a sword of a Union officer who was wounded on that battlefield. He reminded me that the image was before “Big Nick” became “Not-So-Big Nick.” By dieting, he had lost weight. We both chuckled.

Then, after planning another trip to Antietam together, we hugged and I walked toward the door.

“Thank you so much for coming,” he said in a tone that melted my soul.

“God bless you,” he said.

“God bless you,” I told my friend.

Until we meet again this summer for that trip to Antietam… ❤️

LEARN MORE about Picerno’s Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation.

Tales from the road: Underwear, battlefields and Horse Cave

House in Munfordville built by Union General Thomas Wood's father in 1834.

                                    Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

Eager for adventure, I head north from Nashville, zooming at 80 mph by the Fruit of the Loom underwear world HQ and National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, before arriving in central Kentucky's cave and Lincoln country. My objective is Munfordville, one of those 10,000 places where the armies clashed and boyhood home of United States Army General Thomas J. Wood. On a rise behind the county courthouse, a musket shot from the Civil War mural just off Main featuring Wood's mustachioed mug, stands the house his papa built in the 1830s.

Thomas Wood appears on a
Civil War-themed mural
in Munfordville, Kentucky.

As a child in Hart County, it is said, Wood sought adventure underground with his friend, delightfully named Simon Bolivar Buckner, the future West Point grad, Mexican War vet, Rebel general and Kentucky governor. It’s a footnote that ignites a fire in some of us, until we realize, as Sherman supposedly said of war, “I am tired and sick of [it]. Its glory is all moonshine.”

Near downtown Munfordville, the railroad track and an 1,800-foot iron bridge over the meandering Green River, a 26-year-old Scotsman and Confederate colonel from Mississippi named Robert Alexander Smith fell — one of dozens of dead from the Battle of Munfordville, fought September 14-17, 1862. To honor Smith's memory, his brother commissioned a limestone battlefield monument — it stands on private property, behind a wrought-iron fence, among flags, inscribed markers and shadows. Visit it if you dare.

After exploring the Munfordville and nearby Rowlett Station battlefields, I steer south to Horse Cave (pop. of 2,300), home to Just In Gypsy Antiques and 5 Broke Girls, a favorite spot for country grub. At the corner of Main and Cave, across the street from a man sleeping in his beat-up black Chevy pickup near the “Welcome to Horse Cave” mural, I spy the entrances to Hidden River Cave and American Cave Museum. With time to spare before returning to the loving arms of Mrs. B, I venture inside. Rumor has it that the cave has a Civil War connection after all.

Hidden River Cave in
Horse Cave, Kentucky.

Inside the cave command center stand a few 20- and 30-somethings. Guides and staffers, as it turns out. They somehow endure a volley of questions from me.

“Didn't they hide horses in this cave during the Civil War?”

"No, not much happened here during the Civil War,” replies a long-haired, red-headed dude, instantly destroying a soul. Minutes later, he directs me to the cave entrance. At the bottom of a long staircase, a gratis view awaits.

By the yawning gap, I ponder whether Wood, Buckner or any other Civil War soldier had inscribed his name inside and consider taking a stroll across the “world's longest swinging cave bridge.” Instead, I retrace my steps, sending my FitBit heart rate into overdrive.

Upon returning to the CCC, I meet Al, a mandolin player in a bluegrass band. He’s a local who once lived in obscure places in west Tennessee. Al is a cave employee, too.

“What do people do in Horse Cave?”

"Not much besides caving,” he tells me. To catch a movie, locals visit “E-town” — Elizabethtown — roughly 40 miles away.

Then Al notices my T-shirt for Lambert's Cafe, the “throwed rolls” restaurant near Wilson's Creek battlefield in Missouri. In 15 minutes, we bond over memories of heaps of food at Lambert’s, bluegrass star Bill Monroe and Abe Lincoln, born over in Larue County, several hundred thousand roll tosses distant. Before my departure, Al waves me over to the front counter and signs off on a tour ticket for two, a $50 value. I’d use it today, but alas, those loving arms await.

Let’s keep history alive. 👊

My new pal Al, a Hidden River Cave guide and mandolin player in a bluegrass band.

Podcast: Antietam hero Rufus Dawes of the Iron Brigade

In a freewheeling Episode 33 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," podcast hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks discuss Iron Brigade officer Rufus Dawes, who endured despite losing his best friend at Antietam. Plus, Tom dishes on his upcoming book, The Year That Made America, and John talks about staring into Ben Franklin's privy in Philadelphia and a post-Gettysburg battlefield tramping massage in Biglerville.

Tales from the road: A soldier's death near Cotton Grove Road

The Battle of Salem Cemetery resulted in few casualties.

                                     Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

To get to the Salem Cemetery battlefield near Jackson, Tennessee, I hang a left on Cotton Grove Road to an area first settled in 1819. This swath of rolling land probably doesn’t look much different than it did in 1821, the year they began planting cotton seeds here in the loamy soil. Then I go past the Fraternal Order Police gun range and a Woodmen Of The World memorial for a man named E.E. Brooks before parking in a small gravel lot near a state historical marker.

Adam Huntsman's grave
in Old Salem Cemetery.

“No metal detectors,” reads a sign steps from a cannon and a covered wayside exhibit. 

Among those who rest in remote Old Salem Cemetery, the second-oldest cemetery in Madison County, are Susan H. Person, who, according to her broken tombstone, “departed this life Oct. 27, 1842,” and a colorful, one-legged pol/lawyer named Adam Huntsman, who sent Davy Crockett packing for Texas after defeating him in a congressional election in 1835.

After stepping from my SUV, I wonder: “How’d this battlefield almost become an industrial solar farm?”

Gloomy-gray skies threaten rain, but they’re mostly bluffing. So, too, was Nathan Bedford Forrest on Dec. 19, 1862, when “The Wizard of the Saddle” sent soldiers barreling into Midwesterners in and near the cemetery. The frigid, unforgiving night before the fighting and killing, Union soldiers spied campfires of Forrest’s soldiers off in the distance — a large, brown and white historical sign marks that area — so their commander forbade fires.

“Mortified,” 43rd Colonel Adolph Engelmann, a Bavarian-born Mexican War veteran, wrote later about his order.

The Confederate cavalry’s attack, a feint by Forrest because he had more important business elsewhere, came at daybreak the next morning.

“With loud cheers they charged upon my center,” Engelmann wrote. “As they approached they were received by a well-directed fire, some of the foremost horses falling and obstructing the road, those immediately behind came to a halt, while half a dozen riderless horses rushed madly through our lines.”

The broken grave of Susan H. Person in Old Salem Cemetery.

After the four-hour fight, Engelmann’s outnumbered soldiers retreated toward Jackson. The Battle of Salem Cemetery, of course, was no Antietam, Gettysburg or Cold Harbor. Casualties numbered perhaps 20 killed, wounded or missing on the Rebels’ side. The U.S. Army, meanwhile, suffered six wounded and two killed. But mommas and poppas — from Tennessee and Mississippi to Illinois and elsewhere — mourned just the same.

11th Illinois Cavalry private Adam Kehl of Company A, a blacksmith before the war, was among those killed that wintry day. He was the unmarried son of Rosina and Sebastian Kehl, who hailed from Hesse, Germany and settled in Peoria. Adam paid for his parents’ passage from the Old Country. A bullet to the chest sent him to his grave before they arrived in America.

“They came to the United States with the expectation of receiving assistance from their … son,” a friend of the family noted.

I don’t know where Private Kehl rests today. Perhaps he has a marker in the national cemetery in Nashville — the U.S. government recovered thousands of remains of Union soldiers following the war. Or perhaps his bones lie in an unmarked grave in a field or woods near Cotton Grove Road.

A grave for an unknown Confederate soldier in Old Salem Cemetery.

---

SOURCES

— Adam Kehl mother’s pension file, National Archives via fold3.com (WC140043)
— Official Records, Volume X Chapter 32, Pages 555-556

Tales from the road: I scored Lincoln bust, battlefield horsehoe

Glenn (left), a distant relative of Robert E. Lee, and Charles, the propietor of an
 antiques store in Eagleville, Tennessee.

                                       Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

At 8:35 on a sun-kissed Saturday morning, I plop my heinie into the shotgun seat of battlefield tramping pal Jack's fancy SUV for our ride into the Civil War wilds of Middle Tennessee. We're rambling southeast to Shelbyville and points unknown.

Pal Jack holds my Lincoln bust.

At our first stop, an Eagleville antiques store that once served as a combo bank/dental office, we meet a retired railroad worker named Glenn, a distant relative of “Marble Man” Robert E. Lee, and the proprietor named Charles, a former Bible salesman and a friend of country star Marty Stuart who charms me into forking over 40 bucks for a circa-1940s typewriter and another 40 smackers for a plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln that is sure to cause a rupture in my solid-gold, 32-year marriage to Mrs. B. (Apologies to all English teachers for the length of the preceding sentence.)

While I suffer from buyer's remorse on our way to Shelbyville — site of a major cavalry battle on June 27, 1863 — we pass the delightfully named Morning Glory Catfish restaurant and a creamery where they serve midnight chocolate ice cream that’ll put a smile on your mug. Then, as we enter unincorporated Rover (population 357 hearty souls), master of historical trivia Jack poses a question. 

“Do you know the name of President Lincoln's dog?”

“I have no idea.”

“Fido.” (Amazingly spot-on!)

Fired bullet unearthed at Liberty Gap.

In Shelbyville — described by Union soldiers as “Little Boston” for its Unionist leanings — we don’t find the cavalry battle site. But we admire a Ms. PacMan video game ($2,200) in a collectibles shop and the dazzling inventory next door in the baseball card/sports store. (My gosh, they even have a Stan Musial glove in its original box.)

Back on the Civil War trails, we stop along the Liberty Pike, a few miles from magical Bell Buckle, where we meet my new pals Chuck and Perry next to their green pickup. 

With permission, they hunt for battle relics on farms at Liberty Gap, where the armies clashed in an unheralded Tullahoma Campaign battle from June 24-26, 1863. It's hallowed ground, unmarked and largely forgotten — one of those 10,000 places deep-voiced historian David McCullough told us about on Ken Burns' epic “Civil War” doc decades ago.

Under a cloudless, deep-blue sky, Perry and Chuck have had a good day. They show off their finds: bullets, a horseshoe and other detritus of war. 

Later, these good-hearted souls hand some of their haul to Jack and me. The horseshoe is destined for a place of honor in my office shelf; the bullets — one dropped and two fired — will go to our young friend Taylor, whose great-great-great-grandfather fought at Liberty Gap.

“Maybe his grandpappy fired one of 'em,” Perry tells us.

Battlefield horseshoe

Soon, we head deeper into the Civil War wilds. 

In Chapel Hill, we briefly visit the site of the birth of Nathan Bedford Forrest, “The Wizard Of The Saddle” himself. Then we venture on narrow, snaky back roads — passed a drooping “God, Guns And Trump” sign, empty fields and rickety barns — before arriving at the boyhood home of “The Wizard.” A locked gate prevents our entry to the site, but does it really matter?

If we set aside the near-removal of my fingertips on Jack’s car window (long story), we’ve made excellent memories overall. At a small, off-the-beaten path farm cemetery, a final stop, daffodils poke through the sod and an American flag flaps in a gentle breeze. In the back of my ride rests a rusty typewriter and Honest Abe, comfortably under wraps. At my feet sits an old horseshoe. It’s all plenty good enough.

Monument denoting birthplace of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Chapel Hill, Tennessee.

Tales from the road: 'Is this the Liberty Gap battlefield'?

Perry Sanders stands where he unearthed a cannon ball on the Liberty Gap battlefield.

                                      Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

At 10:15 Sunday morning, I streak down Liberty Pike, a couple miles from Bell Buckle, Tennessee — home of an annual MoonPie Festival and the Bell Buckle Cafe, one of the best restaurants in America for country cooking and stellar conversation. Then I spy two gents standing by a farm gate and an ancient, green pickup, metal detectors dangling from their hands.

“Is this the Liberty Gap battlefield?” I ask the pair after rolling down my window. I know the answer to my own question, of course, having explored this area roughly a half-dozen times. My question is simply an icebreaker.

New pal Perry Sanders and I at Liberty Gap.

After small talk, I introduce myself to Perry, a 71-year-old retired plumber from Shelbyville, and Chuck, a 60ish dude and Perry’s longtime pal. Based on my extensive gabbing with relic hunters over the years, I expect an earful about their latest finds and the unmarked Liberty Gap battlefield. Neither disappoints.

“See that field over there?” says Perry, pointing to an expanse as flat as the backside of a skillet. “500 bullets found over there.” From June 24-26, 1863, out here in the wilds an hour’s drive southeast of Nashville — “God’s country,” Chuck calls it — the armies clashed in a Tullahoma Campaign battle that gets stiff-armed in the history books. Few casualties resulted — perhaps no more than 75 Confederate dead and 60 prisoners. The Union Army suffered fewer casualties.

“The affair at Liberty Gap will always be considered a skirmish,” Union Brigadier General Richard Johnson wrote, “but few skirmishes ever equaled it in severity.”

With a farmer’s permission, Perry and Chuck have hunted this portion of the Liberty Gap battlefield many times.

“I found a cannon ball over there near that fence post,” Perry tells me. He gestures toward the near distance and then proudly shows me a photo of the hefty find on his phone.

Liberty Gap battlefield from the air

Beyond a herd of cows in the far distance, a steep, heavily wooded hillside looms below a deep-blue sky.

“Best view of the valley from up there,” Chuck says.

I secretly hope that’s where 49th Ohio Sergeant Jonathan Rapp — a great great great grandfather of a young friend of mine — wrote this wonderful entry in his diary after fighting at the Gap:

Bullets -- one fired, one dropped -- unearthed
 at Liberty Gap.

“In the valleys of Liberty Gap, the great mountains all covered with green trees. They lift their proud head so near to the sky. The rich valleys just ready for harvest; the wheat which is in abundance just ready to reap; the cornfields so green and so fine, just ready to shoot forth into blossom, but now are all trodden down by the soldiers of liberty.”

While Chuck waves his magic wand over hallowed ground, I swap Civil War stories with Perry, an unforgettable character.

“Where’d you get that earring?” I ask, gesturing to a small silver loop in his left ear.

“Had that since 1966,” he says.

Then Perry recounts a dizzying array of relic hunting finds and a long-ago encounter with one of the finest people our country has produced. “I met Coretta Scott King,” he says of the wife of Martin Luther King, the slain civil rights leader. “I gave her a hug. It was like meeting Jesus.”

Before going our separate ways, Perry and I also embrace. Until next time, my new friend.

Podcast: Antietam guide, artillery expert Jim Rosebrock

On Episode 32 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," Antietam battlefield guide and author Jim Rosebrock — a retired U.S. Army officer and Department of Justice employee — talks with co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan about all things artillery at the Battle of Antietam. Plus, he dishes on two seldom-visited sites on the field and shares an unforgettable story about the horses of Antietam and ... oats! 

Tales from the road: A massacre site at Sinking Cane

The long-abandoned home of William and Cynthia Officer.

                                      Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

Following a dandy visit to a train depot/museum where host Dale regaled us with tales about a ghost named “Whistling Willie,” we depart Monterey, the town where a massive mural proclaims the “hilltops touch the sky.” Our next stop out here in the chilly wilds of the Middle Tennessee is an abandoned plantation house, the site of a long-ago massacre. “Sinking Cane,” some call the sparsely populated area deep in the woods outside of Monterey.

Guide Craig Capps, a Tennessee law
 enforcement officer, at the Officers' house,
site of an 1864 massacre.

At the home of William and Cynthia Officer on March 12, 1864, United States soldiers serving under 5th Tennessee Cavalry Colonel William Stokes shot and killed six Confederates. The Union men gunned down the suspected guerrillas in the kitchen and finished one off outside, near a fence post, with a volley of lead. You can inspect that bullet-riddled relic for yourself in the museum in Livingston, 20 miles north as the crow flies.

“You ought not to do this,” that poor Rebel soldier supposedly said before his execution in the Officers’ yard. “I have never done anything but my sworn duty.” Mrs. Officer herself suffered a bullet wound during the massacre — collateral damage from Upper Cumberland warfare that still resides in the shadows of history. The Officers’ own son, John, a Rebel soldier visiting his momma and papa, somehow escaped the massacre.

Stokes, who died in 1897, didn’t go down in history as a glorious figure. It is said that decades after the war, children spat ice cream on his gravestone in Alexandria, an hour’s drive west. Of course, I’m a firm believer in this old journalism maxim: “If your mother tells you she loves you, get another source.” So let’s reserve judgment on that ice cream spitting story.

This wallpaper capivated me.

Guide Craig Capps in the room where U.S. cavalrymen are said to have shot the Confederates.

Unoccupied for years, the Officers’ house must have impressed visitors during its heyday. But, oh my, how this once-mighty place has tumbled from its pedestal. Outside, stucco clings precariously to wooden siding while ancient outbuildings barely hold on to life.

Inside, leaves lay scattered about. Steps from an open door, a rust-coated stove sparks images of bacon sizzling and eggs cooking in pans on frosty winter mornings. On display in Dale’s museum/train depot over in Monterey, you’ll find a cedar baby cradle from the Officers’ house — one of the few relics remaining from its 19th-century days.

An ancient stove

“Look up there,” says guide Craig, pointing to floral wallpaper in an upstairs room. “That’s original.” The shades of pink charm at least one visitor.

Near a fireplace, one of several original to the house, Craig tells of the Saturday morning massacre of 1864.

​ “Stokes’ soldiers burst through that door right there,” he says. We five visitors gaze toward an entryway, apparently nailed shut.

For a few moments, I imagine shots reverberating in this confined space, boots stomping, gun smoke drifting, sickening screams of anguish and blood pouring from bullet wounds onto a wooden floor.

Later, we bound along a deeply rutted, serpentine backroad — past decrepit barns, a satellite dish or three and a sign that reads “Christ Over Politics — until we reach a cemetery near the edge of a wood. Those six Confederates who Stokes’ soldiers killed rest here in a common grave under markers adorned with Rebel battle flags. 

A few steps away, near remains from a recent snowstorm, stands Cynthia Officer’s broken tombstone. In the far distance, beyond a large field of stubble, snow coats wooded hillsides.

“What a place to spend eternity,” I say to no one in particular. The 21st century (thankfully) seems so far away.

The massacre victims rest in a common grave in a cemetery near the Officers' house.

---

Like this story? Check out many more in my book, A Civil War Road Trip Of A Lifetime. Email me at jbankstx@comcast.net for details on how to get an autographed copy.

'The Antietam And Beyond Podcast' hub

 

Find all episodes here, from author/historian Scott Hartwig to battlefield guides Jim Smith and Jim Buchanan.

Podcast: Rich Condon on Emancipation Proclamation, more

On Episode 31 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," historian Rich Condon — editor of the Civil War Pittsburgh web site — talks with co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan about Robert Gould Shaw's role at Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation and another terrible event that occurred Sept. 17, 1862. Plus, he dishes on Robert Smalls, whose life story merits a Hollywood-produced move. (Are you listening Steven Spielberg?) | Visit Civil War Pittsburgh here.

Podcast: Grammy winner Taylor Agan on Antietam, ancestors

On Episode 30, 2025 Grammy Award winner Taylor Agan, who has, like, one billion Civil War soldier ancestors, talks with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks about his deep interest in the Civil War period and researching his ancestry. 

At the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, John Francis Agan of the 23rd Georgia — Taylor's great great great grandfather — was captured near the Sunken Road/Bloody Lane. Plus, Taylor dishes on That's My King, the Grammy Award-winning song that he co-wrote, and two other of his remarkable Civil War ancestors. | LISTEN to "That's My King."

The new (and perhaps most remote) Civil War Trails sign

Jason Saffer of Civil War Trails levels the new sign in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

                                     Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

As regular readers of this page know, I am a huge fan of the Civil War Trails program. A birdie recently revealed to me a new CWT sign — the first in Virginia Beach, Virginia. You’ll probably need to burn off calories to reach it, because it’s six miles beyond a parking lot, over a dune, past a primitive campground and within eyeshot of the breaking surf.

Per Virginia State Parks, “Visitors who hike or bike to the location will be standing in the footsteps of over 70 [Confederate] prisoners of war who managed to land right there in 1863.”

Park manager Austin Monnett and chief
ranger Rachel Harrington help install
the new sign.

Fellow blogger Phil Gast (The Civil War Picket) dived into the story of the new CWT marker at False Cape State Park.

Per Gast, "Not everyone breaks a sweat to reach the marker." A tram goes fairly close to the site of the landing and informs participants of the Civil War history. 

"The Civil War episode took place in June 1863," Gast recently wrote, "when 97 captured Rebel officers were being taken on the vessel Maple Leaf from Fort Monroe, Va., to Fort Delaware, then to a Northern prison camp. They quickly took control of the transport ship from 12 soldiers carrying unloaded muskets. They did not have enough coal to flee to the Bahamas and after sailing south for about 30 miles some 70 officers decided to land small boats on what is now the state park.

"The soldiers split up and headed toward friendly lines in nearby North Carolina," Gast continued. "Despite heavy Union cavalry pursuit and the challenges of the Great Dismal Swamp, they rendezvoused in Weldon, N.C., before taking a train to Richmond, Va. Local sympathizers gave them a hand during their odyssey."

You can also read more about this episode in Chesapeake Bay magazine.

Podcast: Author Chris Bryan on 12th Corps at Antietam

On Episode 29, Chris Bryan — author of Cedar Mountain to Antietam: A Civil War Campaign History of the Union XII Corps, July-September 1862 — dives deep into the corps' role at Antietam with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks. Bryan dishes on General Joseph Mansfield, right flank-left flank aspects of the fighting on Sept. 17, 1862, and on his dog, Harlon Boone. | Purchase Bryan's book on the Savas Beatie web site. 

Tales from the road: His love for history knows no bounds

Glen Echo on the Battle Ground Academy campus.

                                     Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

My history-minded pal Jack reminds (loosely) of Mikey from the old Life commercial. Showing the same enthusiasm as that little kid lapping up that cereal, he embraces almost any Civil War excursion, no matter how out of the way or bizarre.

Jack and I recently visited the Snow Hill
battlefield 45 miles east of Nashville.

On a recent weekend, we reveled in a trip to the obscure and unheralded Snow Hill battlefield in the wilds of Middle Tennessee. Several years ago, we two history nerds looked at each other, gobsmacked, while examining documents from the 1859 John Brown trial in archives in Charles Town, West Virginia. And, of course, the piece de resistance of our Civil War adventures was that time he put me under a hypnotic spell at dawn at Fort Granger in Franklin, Tennessee.

“Don’t come back clucking like a chicken,” Mrs. B told me that morning at 5 from under the comfy confines of warm blankets. Mrs. B, of course, desperately hopes some of Jack rubs off on me. He’s a neat freak like my dad, “Big Johnny.” (R.I.P.) I lean toward slovenly behavior. The technical word for this condition is “slob.”

Glen Echo historical marker

Anywho, on Saturday morning, following a hearty breakfast — Jack didn’t pay this time, so it didn’t taste as good as one when he does — we went on a whirlwind, 4 1/2-hour history tour. All of this immersion came within 10 or so square miles north of Franklin.

After examining some rando historical markers, we explored an antebellum mansion called Glen Echo in the middle of the Battle Ground Academy campus. “Look here,” Jack says, thrusting a finger toward a historical marker in front of the impressive, two-story brick structure.

“In 1862, General Don Carlos Buell’s Federal Army could be seen from the back porch as it marched to Shiloh,” reads the sixth sentence. For us, this was a moment worthy of a half-dozen goosebumps.

Prehistoric Native American mound in Primm Park in Brentwood, Tennessee.

Then we visited the 1864 Hollow Tree Gap battlefield — a “battlefield of the mind” smack-dab among apartment complexes, retail and other suburban schlock. Next, we explored log slave cabins on the old Primm farm, a circa-1832 schoolhouse, a prehistoric Native American mound and two brick slave cabins on the Ravenswood plantation.

Restored slave cabins on old Primm Farm.

During these history excursions, Jack often dispenses, scattershooting style, historical facts and figures, a small percentage of which are actually useful. When he does, I typically look at him as you may look at someone while listening to Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon” under the influence of THC gummies.

“Did you know that if the Spanish Armada hadn’t happened the world would be so different?” he blurted (I think).

Of course, we completed this sojourn with visits to a farmer’s market, where I briefly considered the purchase of (funny) mushroom-infused coffee; an Amish store, where the owner showed us a “slave wall” bordering a creek; ANOTHER battlefield (Knob Gap); and a tony residential neighborhood where the Union Army constructed massive earthworks.

Oh, we also stopped at ANOTHER rando historical marker, this one for “Wheeler’s Raid Around Rosecrans.”

Thank you, Mikey… err … Jack for your enthusiasm for history. Let’s keep it alive.