INCIDENTS OF THE WAR The Civil War Journal of Mary Jane Chadick Nancy M. Rohr I nc idents o f th e W a r : T h e C iv il W a r J o u r n a l of M ar y J a n e C h a d ic k Edited and Annotated By N a n c y R o h r Copyright © 2005 by Nancy Rohr All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission by SilverThreads Publishing. ISBN: 0-9707368-1-9 SilverThreads Publishing 10012 Louis Drive Huntsville, Alabama 35803 Bibliography. Index. 1 .Chadick, Mary Jane, (1820-1905) 2. Diaries 3. Alabama History 4. Huntsville, AL 5. Civil War, 1861-1865— Narratives 6. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Personal Narratives, Confederate Women—Alabama—Diaries 7. Confederate States of America I. Nancy Rohr II. Madison County Historical Society Cover Illustration: Woodcut, taken from General Logan’s Headquarters, Huntsville, Alabama, Harper s Weekly, March 19, 1864. T a b l e o f C o n t e n t s Acknowledgments / v Editing Techniques / vi List of Illustrations/ viii List of Maps/ ix Introduction 1 Prologue 4 History of Huntsville and Madison County 4 History of the Cook Family 6 History of the Chadick Family 8 War 16 Incidents of the War 30 Federals in Huntsville April-September 1862 30 Civilians at War July 1863-May 1865 108 Epilogue 302 Reconstruction and Rebuilding 302 An Ending 326 Endnotes 332 Bibliography 358 Index 371 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This account could never have been published without the helpful and conscientious staff at the Huntsville, Alabama/ Madison County Public Library—Martin Towrey, Thomas Hutchens, John Hunt, Pat Carpenter, Bonnie Walters, Anne Miller, and Annewhite Fuller. Thank you to all the people at other archives and libraries who listened with patience to my questions and helped me attempt to find the answers—Elizabeth Dunn, Special Collections Library, Duke University; Tennessee Archives and The Nashville Room; Anne Prichard and Andrea Cantrell, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas; Cincinnati Historical Society; Fayetteville, Tennessee Library and Archives; Wilson County, Tennessee Archives, Lebannon, Tennessee; Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio; Hunt-Morgan House (Hopemont), Lexington, Kentucky; Harvard Business School, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Lil Herrin, Donna Dunham, Rhonda Larkin of the Madison County Records Center; and, Debbie Pendleton at Alabama Department of History and Archives, Montgomery, Alabama. Bob Bradley of ADHA gave me hope and confidence at just the right time to finish. Heather Cross kept me on the straight and narrow editorially. My family has been long-suffering, so I thank my husband, Steve, for trying to be patient, Vicki for researching with me, George for encouraging, Mike for explaining, Elaine for cheering on, Kathy and Jim for keeping the computer going, Alex for looking things up long distance, and Kate for letting me play with her Barbie dolls. Many friends with inquiring minds took time to share—Judge William Page, Richard Smallwood, Dot Johnson, Dr. Eleanor Hutchens, and Pat Ryan. Norman Shapiro, Brian Hogan, Morris Penny, and Librarian Ranee Pruitt—Thanks for your curiosity, passion, and stubbornness. And anyone who asked, “How is it coming along?” or, assuming I would ever finish, said, “I can’t wait to read it.” You may have had more faith than I did. Certainly credit goes to the Fordyce family for saving and sharing the original documents of their family. My personal gratitude is extended to everyone else who thought and wrote something down on paper and those who saved their priceless pages so that a more complete picture could be seen and the story told by Mary Jane Chadick about the incidents of the War in Huntsville, Alabama. Happy 200th birthday, Huntsville. v E d it in g T e c h n iq u e s The Huntsville Times first published Mary Jane Chadick’s Civil War journal in 1937. The journal was printed in serial form first in the newspaper and then reprinted in booklet form through three special editions. The series produced a wonderful response in the community, and editor Reese Amis printed a letter of thanks to the Fordyce family of Arkansas who had shared the original material. The Times presented two copies to Margaret Mitchell Marsh, author of Gone with the Wind. Her response, also printed in the Times, observed Mrs. Chadick’s work was informative and “so very human.”1 The Alabama Historic Quarterly next reprinted the work in 1947. Currently the original journal is housed at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, Arkansas, with other Fordyce related material. Mrs. Chadick reported the events as accurately as the information she knew at the time allowed. A little editing has been done to make the spelling of surnames consistent. Some errors in transcription from the newspaper account continued in the second publication and neither attempted to identify the names or clarify the events of Mrs. Chadick’s story. Every effort has been made to locate information about the people and episodes which she mentioned. This publication is not intended to show the total picture of the American Civil War but rather the circumstances and events of the War as viewed and recorded by Mary Jane Chadick in Huntsville, Alabama during those years. While grateful to Mrs. Chadick for the very act of recording the incidents, there is presumably further information yet to be discovered. Much of this edition’s annotated information has been gathered by use of an early Huntsville city directory and the federal censuses, adjusted for the year in which the person was noted in Mrs. Chadick’s journal. For instance, the 1860 Madison County Federal Census gave the age of Martha Bradford as 42. When Mrs. Chadick wrote about her in 1862, Mrs. Bradford would be about 44 years old. The census material combined with information from the Williams’ City Directory for 1859, which often listed the occupation and the location of the home, offers a different representation of families. Now the reader knows Mrs. Bradford lived on the south side of Randolph Street with her sons Fielding and Joseph B. Bradford, what each of these people did for a living, age, where they were born and the value of their real estate and personal property. No husband was listed with Mrs. Bradford, and she was likely widowed. Using the 1850 Census, one knows Mrs. Bradford’s husband’s name, age, place of birth, occupation, estimated worth, and the names of their other five living VI children not noted (for various reasons) in the 1860 census as being with her. This helped considerably with the identification of many of the names. The Censuses and the Directory will not be cited again after the first endnote. The 1861 Hartley and Drayton map of Huntsville helped locate actual households geographically. Most of the information about individual soldiers, of both sides, was obtained from the web site maintained by the National Park Service. Any person or event not annotated, after many hours of research, simply could not be identified. Mrs. Chadick’s entries are written in italics and annotations are below that day’s passages in Times New Roman with endnote references. There has been no attempt to correct Mrs. Chadick’s spelling unless it involved a place name or surname. Every effort has been made to identify these events and people. The text has not been altered, even though she uses terms considered offensive or degrading today The material is presented just as Mrs. Chadick wrote it: day-by-day and, sometimes in moments of alarm, written almost hour-by-hour. vii L is t o f I llustrations Huntsville Female College 6 Mary Jane (Cook) Chadick 7 William Davidson Chadick 9 General Robert L. Caruthers House 10 First Cumberland Presbyterian Church 11 Huntsville Female Seminary 13 Dr. Thomas Fearn House 14 Lt. Colonel William D. Chadick 22 General Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel 27 William McDowell House 28 Leroy Pope Walker 32 Memphis & Charleston Railroad Depot 34 Mayhew House 37 John Hunt Morgan 40 General Leadbetter’s Forces 43 Burning the bridge over the Tennessee River near Decatur 44 Huntsville Roundhouse 49 James Laurence Watkins House 53 Robinson House, Oaklawn 60 Samuel Matthews House 61 Huntsville, Alabama - Harper s Weekly engraving 65 Judge George Washington Lane 70 Jeremiah Clemens 75 William B. Figures House 80 Captain Frank Gurley 88 East Side Square 98 Mrs. John H. Lewis House (Later Clay House) 100 Bell Factory 109 LeRoy Pope House, Fisk drawing 116 Captain Samuel Wesley Fordyce 130 Harper’s Weekly engraving of Huntsville 133 George P. Beirne House 134 First Methodist Church 143 Downtown Huntsville, photograph 145 Major Milus “Bushwhacker” Johnston 152 The Grove 154 Northern Bank of Alabama 157 First Brigade Band of Brodhead, Wisconsin 163 Soldier’s Ball in Huntsville, engraving 169 viii L is t o f I llustrations (C o n t’d) Lieutenant Henry Figures 172 Weeden House 187 U.S.S. Stones River 195 Greenlawn 199 Colonel David C. Kelley 205 Court House 251 Colonel Lemuel Mead 252 Big Spring 285 Thomas McCalley House 310 Pope House 311 Susan Elizabeth Chadick Fordyce 318 L ist o f M a ps City of Huntsville - 1861 21 Huntsville during the War - Merrill Map 229 Huntsville - Bird’s Eye View, 1871 313 North Alabama - Cincinnati Historical Society 369 Note: All illustrations are credited. Most use one of the following two sources and are abbreviated using an acronym. Huntsville Madison County Public Library - HMCPL Alabama Department of Archives and History - ADAH ix Introduction “How many weary days, weeks, and perhaps months will lapse before we can know who of our friends are among the slain!” Mary Jane Chadick asked her journal on June 29, 1862.