Tales from the road: A massacre site at Sinking Cane

The long-abandoned home of William and Cynthia Officer.

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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.

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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.