RAMBO Family – James Tipton and Elva (Shoun) Rambo

James Tipton and Elva (Shoun) Rambo: Born in Johnson county, his family having been among the pioneer settlers of this county, coming from Virginia. He was a farmer. During the Civil War he enlisted in the Federal army, serving as a corporal in Company F, Fourth Tennessee Infantry. He married Elva Shoun, who died June 25, 1910, in a train accident, at the age of seventy-five years. She was born in Johnson county and was a member of an old family of this state. They had three children.

Isaac Stacy Rambo was born in Doeville, Tennessee, on the 24th of July, 1871 and died at his home there June 29, 1923. He was the son of the above James and Elva Rambo. He was married in Butler, Johnson county on the 26th of October, 1898, to Margaret Coffey, a daughter of Captain Thomas Coffey of Watauga county, North Carolina. They had one son, Justin C., who married Willie McQuown Sutherland of Mountain City.

Coffey Family

GENERAL JOHN COFFEE: born in Virginia, on June 2, 1772, and died on July 7, 1833

In April, 1798 he and his mother settled along the Cumberland River. He married Mary Donelson in 1809, who was a niece of Andrew Jackson’s wife. He and Andrew Jackson were in the mercantile business together for awhile but this was not financially successful and Coffee then withdrew and devoted himself to surveying.
John was with Natchez Expedition of General Jackson in 1812 where he commanded the cavalry of six hundred and seventy men.

Captain John Donelson had given Mary a farm on Stone’s River in Rutherford county where they lived . They went to Alabama, near Florence, in 1819.

Andrew Jackson wrote the epitaph for Coffee’s tombstone.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

GENERAL JOHN COFFEE

Who departed this life

7th day of July, 1833,

Aged 61 years.

“As a husband, parent and friend, he was affectionate, tender, and sincere. He was a brave, prompt, and skillful general; a distinguished and sagacious patriot; an unpretending, just and honest man. To complete his character, religion mingled with these virtues her serene and gentle influence, and gave him that solid distinction among men which detraction cannot sully, nor the grave conceal. Death could not do more than to remove so excellent a being from the theater he so much adorned in this world, to the bosom of God who created him, and who alone has the power to reward the immortal spirit with exhaustless bliss.”

FROM REGIMENTAL HISTORIES OF TENNESSEE UNITS DURING THE WAR OF 1812

By the Tennessee State Library and Archives:

COLONEL JOHN ALCORN

DESIGNATION: 2nd Regiment of Volunteer Mounted Riflemen

DATES: September 1813 – December 1813

MEN MOSTLY FROM: Davidson, Rutherford, Sumner, and Wilson Counties (Winston’s company from Madison

County, Alabama)

CAPTAINS: John Baskerville, Richard Boyd, Thomas Bradley, John Byrne, Robert Jetton, William Locke, Alexander

McKeen, Frederick Stump, Daniel Ross, John Winston

BRIEF HISTORY:

Colonel John Coffee commanded this regiment until the end of October 1813, when Coffee was promoted to Brigadier General. John Alcorn took over as colonel and the unit was incorporated with Colonel Newton Cannon’s Mounted Riflemen to form the Second Regiment of Volunteer Mounted Riflemen. The Second Regiment, along with Colonel Robert Dyer’s First Regiment of Volunteer Mounted Gunmen, formed the brigade under John Coffee. Muster rolls reveal that the regiment went by various designations besides volunteer mounted riflemen: volunteer cavalry; mounted militia; or mounted gunmen.

Many of the men from this unit were with Andrew Jackson on the expedition to Natchez (December 1812 – April 1813) and, consequently, felt their one-year’s enlistment expired in December 1813. Jackson insisted that the time not spent in the field did not apply to the terms of enlistment. Hence, a dispute broke out between the troops and Jackson late in 1813. Most of thetroops did leave by the end of that year, despite Jackson’s strenuous efforts to keep them.

The regiment participated in the battles at Tallushatchee and Talladega (3 November and 9 November 1813) and muster rolls show that practically all of the companies sustained casualties, the most being in Captain John Byrne’s company. The regiment’s line of march took them from Fayetteville (where the regiment was mustered in), through Huntsville, Fort Deposit, Fort Strother, to the battles, and back the reverse way.