{"id":4051,"date":"2022-01-21T06:27:46","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T06:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/?p=4051"},"modified":"2025-12-22T22:50:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T22:50:24","slug":"home-guards-lead-to-post-civil-war-feuds-in-fentress-county-tn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/home-guards-lead-to-post-civil-war-feuds-in-fentress-county-tn\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Guards Lead to Post-Civil War Feuds in Fentress County, TN"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dave Tabler (posted 2013)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNo section of the great Civil War suffered so enduringly as that which was the boundary line between the sections, and no part of the boundary suffered more from devastations of war in the passing to and fro of armed forces and from the raids of marauding bands, than did Fentress County, TN.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore the war the county had been sharply divided politically, and with few exceptions that alignment held. Those who were Union sympathizers went north into Kentucky and joined the Federal forces, and those on the side of the South went for enlistment in the armies of the Confederacy. The men who remained at home were compelled by public sentiment to take sides, and the bitterest of feeling was engendered.<\/p>\n

\"Champ

Samuel “Champ” Ferguson<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe raids of passing soldiers was the excuse for the organization, by both sides, of bands who claimed they were \u201cHome Guards\u201d\u2014the Federals under Tinker Beaty, and the Confederates under Champ Ferguson. These bands, each striving for mastery, developed into guerrillas of the worst type the war produced, and anarchy prevailed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike so much of the state, the Tennessee area known as Valley of the Three Forks o\u2019 the Wolf paid its tribute of blood and money. At the outbreak of the war, local son Uriah York went north into Kentucky and joined the Federal forces. Taken ill, he had returned to the home of his wife\u2019s father at Jamestown, TN, and while in bed learned of the approach of a band of Confederates. He arose and fled for safety to a refuge shack his father-in-law had built in the forest of Rock Castle. His flight was made in a storm that was half rain and half sleet, and from the exposure he died in the lonely hut three days afterward.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeanwhile, back in Three Forks, Elijah Pile\u2019s four sons were divided in their allegiance\u2014two upon each side. Two of them paid the supreme price, murdered by opposing Home Guard bands as they rode along public highways.<\/p>\n

\"Elijah

Elijah Pile\u2019s father built the family cabin in Fentress County beside a spring, now called York Spring.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cConrod Pile, like his elderly father Elijah, was a non-combatant, but sympathized with the North. In the autumn of 1863, for some cause unknown to his relatives, he was taken prisoner by Confederate troops, members of Champ Ferguson\u2019s band. As they rode along the road with him, some shots were fired. They left him there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn June of the following year, Jeff Pile, a brother of Conrod, was riding along the road beyond the mill that creaks in the waters of Wolf River. He had taken no active part in the war, but was a Southern sympathizer. Some of Tinker Beaty\u2019s men galloped into sight, fired, and galloped on.<\/p>\n

The murder of Jeff Pile threw a red shadow across the years that were to come after the war was ended.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of Tinker Beaty\u2019s men was Pres Huff, who lived in the Valley of the Three Forks o\u2019 the Wolf. It was generally believed that he was the leader of the band who had ridden out of the woods and killed Jeff Pile, as he traveled unarmed along the Byrdstown Road.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuff\u2019s father had been shot. The deed was done by a band of Confederates who had taken the elder Huff prisoner, and neither Jeff Pile nor his brothers were connected with it, except in the quickly prejudiced mind of the victim\u2019s son.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen General Burnside was moving his Federal forces southward there came to the town of Pall Mall, TN, a young man by the name of William Brooks. He had joined the Union Army at his home in Michigan. He was a daring horseman, handsome, fair and his hair was red \u2013 a rich copperesque red.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe army moved on, but young Brooks remained in the valley. He claimed that as a private soldier he had done more than his share in the conquest of the South\u2014and that the conquest that should ever go to his credit was the conquest of one Nancy Pile.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they were married, his father-in-law, Elijah Pile, gave him a farm, and he tilled it, and he smiled his way into the favor of the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe lived in the valley about two years, and a baby had been born to them. The feeling between the children of Elijah Pile and Pres Huff was silent but tense; over it there fell constantly the shadow of the murder of Jeff Pile.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeeting down at the old mill one day, Pres Huff and Willie Brooks engaged in an excited argument. Between the dark-browed, sullen mountaineer and the slender, gay young man a contest seemed uneven, and was prevented. Huff told Brooks that the next time they met he would kill him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey met next day, on the mountainside, on the road that leads by the Brooks home, on across the spring branch, up beside the York home and then up the mountain. Huff\u2019s riderless horse galloped on and stopped in front of a mountain cabin; his body lay dead in the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a hurried consultation at the home of Elijah Pile. Huff\u2019s friends, it was realized, would not be long in coming. Young Brooks went out of the house, down by the spring, and up the mountain back of it. He was never seen in the valley again.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuff\u2019s friends waited.<\/p>\n

\u201cWeeks afterward, Nancy Brooks, carrying her baby, went to visit a friend. She evaded the watchfulness of her husband\u2019s enemies, succeeded in crossing the Kentucky line and disappeared in the mountains to the north of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe friends of Pres Huff knew she would write home. Months elapsed, but finally a letter came, and was intercepted. She and her husband were at a logging camp in the northern woods of Michigan.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecretly, extradition papers for Brooks were secured, and Huff\u2019s former partner in a mercantile business, fully equipped with warrant, appeared with a sheriff before the door of the cabin in the Michigan woods. Brooks was brought back to Jamestown, and put into the log-ribbed jail that John M. Clemens, Mark Twain\u2019s father, had built.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there was no trial by law. The next night, through the moonlight and the pines, a little body of men rode. Up the valley, across the plateau, they went, and Jamestown was sleeping.<\/p>\n

\"Grave

Grave of William Brooks, Wolf River Cemetery, Pall Mall, TN<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cTaking Brooks from the jail, they carried him three miles down the road toward Pall Mall. Here they bound a rope around his feet, unbridled a horse and tied the other end of the rope to the horse\u2019s tail. They taunted Brooks. But they could not make him break his silence, until he asked to be allowed to see his wife and baby. Rough men laughed, and there was the report of a gun. The horse, frightened, galloped down the road, and bullets were fired into the squirming body as it was dragged over the rocks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war had steeled men for the coming of death and crime, but at the manner of the death of Willie Brooks a shudder passed over the mountainsides. To Nancy Brooks was born a son a short time afterward, and he was named after his father.<\/p>\n

\u201cA silent, broken-hearted woman, Nancy Brooks took up again her life at her father\u2019s home. To the little girl she had carried on her flight to Michigan, and to the boy whose hair had the copper-red of the father, she devoted herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe girl had been named Mary, and she inherited the piquancy and wit that had made her mother the belle of the valley, and as she grew to womanhood the mountaineers saw again the Nancy Brooks they had loved before war had come with its cold blighting fingers of death.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the age of fifteen Mary Brooks met William York, the son of Uriah York, and they were married. A home was built for them, beyond the branch, beside the spring. And Alvin York was their third son.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"William

Alvin C. York\u2019s mother and father, William and Mary (Brooks) York<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Source: https:\/\/www.appalachianhistory.net\/2013\/01\/home-guards-led-to-post-civil-war-feuds-in-fentress-county-tn.html (available via the Internet Archive)<\/p>\n

Note on original post:  Excerpt from Sergeant York and His People<\/em>, by Sam K. Cowan
\n(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1922). Click here<\/a> to read the full text transcription.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Dave Tabler (posted 2013) \u201cNo section of the great Civil War suffered so enduringly as that which was the boundary line between the sections, and no part of the boundary suffered more from devastations of war in the passing …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,20,21,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cemetery-burial-records","category-civil-war-history","category-historic-sites","category-individuals-families","category-local-history-information"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4051"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5088,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4051\/revisions\/5088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/ofp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}