contributed 13 March 2000 by Willie L. Robinson

Included on Tennessee Colored Pension Applications for CSA Service is the name Toney CHAPMAN. Toney was a Black man born in or near Farmington in Marshall County, Tennessee, on June 18, 1849. His master’s name was B. F. Farmington. Toney was only about twelve years old at the outset of the Civil War in 1861, but two years later in 1863, he went into service of the Confederate States of America with his master, willingly, or otherwise. After all, young Toney was a slave and he mostly had no choice in the matter of serving with his master in battle.

Toney and his master served with Company A of the 4th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment under the leadership of Col. Baxter Smith and Capt. Davis W. Alexander. Although the exact date of his departure from the army is not known, Toney was discharged from service near Raleigh, North Carolina. After his discharge, the teenager returned to Marshall County and lived there with his master for several more years.

Toney filed the “Colored Man’s Application for Pension” with the State of Tennessee on June 18, 1921, his seventy-second birthday. The application shows Toney and his wife had a combined estate worth $250, and their combined gross income for the previous year, 1920, was $857. W. W. Walker and Scott D. Davis, both of Lewisburg, Marshall County, Tennessee, signed the application as witnesses for Toney.

On September 27, 1923, Toney died in Marshall County at the age of seventy-four years, three months, one week and two days. A search of records at the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville, has failed to yield a death certificate for Toney.