A DISTANT GRAVE

Good evening, my name is Sgt. William A. Thomas. I was born in Ruthville, Weakley Co. Tn. in 1837, the descendant of fine Kentucky stock on my daddy’s side and a very long line from the Tar Heel state of North Carolina on my mother’s. The talk of secession, war and fighting got pretty strong around Ruthville by the spring of 1861.  By summer my family was pretty worked up on the subject and in early September my five brothers and I left to join the Confederate Army.  John, George and I along with some of the boys from Weakley Co. went down to Trenton to joined up with the 31st. TN. Infantry. While Charlie, Jack, and Joe hearing that General Forrest was recruiting went up into Kentucky and joined the 12th KY. Calvary.  Bud, our nickname for my brother Charlie, laughingly told me I could walk all the way across Dixie if I wanted to, but as for him, he was going to see the country from the saddle of a cavalry mount. I remember telling him, “Hell, we’ll all be home by Christmas; how far do you think we’ll have to walk in that short a time?”  Looking back, I guess we all thought the War would be over by the new year.
 
Over the next three and one-half years my brothers and I would fight in many battles together.  We were at Perryville.  It was there after Captain Hather was killed that my brother George was elected captain of our unit. Our next major engagement was at Murfreesboro. The fighting was pretty bad there. Then in July of ’64 while we were fighting side by side at Peachtree Creek, a hail of Minnie balls struck down George. Fortunately he was not killed but we had to leave him behind in Georgia when we followed General Hood back to Tennessee.
 
I never knew why we turned away from Sherman and marched back toward Nashville. I thought we should have taken him on for a fight. All I knew was that I was heading home, back home to my beloved Tennessee. By late November we were in Franklin. On the morning of the 30th, I saw my brother John across the way.  He called to me and said that he had some fresh tobacco. He asked if I wanted to share a smoke.  We smoked our pipes, we talked of home and the ones we had left behind.  That was the last peaceful time I was to spend on this earth.  Around 3:30 that afternoon, we were ordered up as part of General Brown’s Division. Being held in reserve under General Strahl, we watched as men under Generals Grist and Gordon attacked head long into the well-entrenched Federals. In a gallant charge by our men, the Federals were pushed from their trenches, but our men paid a heavy toll for their courageous effort.  I saw my comrades fall as though they were hay being garnered with a scythe.
 
After the initial push, the men under General Grist became pinned down on the banks of the outer Federal works.  At that point General Strahl stepped to our front and said that we would have to make our way to those trenches.  He said, “Boys, this will be short, but desperate.”  No one in the ranks had to ask what he meant; we knew that what lay ahead for us would not be easy.
 
As we moved forward, I saw our brigade banner starts to float slowly then suddenly snap erect as it caught the passing wind.  At first we lumbered slowly forward but within moments we were in a full run.  I felt the ground rise and fall to meet my galloping feet. My nostrils burned with the stench of expended powder.  My ears filled with the sounds of explosions and of men dying about me.  My head was spinning, as it seemed a thousand senses were fighting for my attention.
 
About that time I turned to see if my brother John was still behind me.  I had outrun him in the charge and had lost site of him.  As I turned back to face the field it seemed that all hell broke loose.  Suddenly, all I saw was a flash the brilliance of a hundred suns.  I experienced a pain that felt as though my body had been ripped in half and then turned completely wrong side out.  From guns mounted just East of the river a volley had been fired that torn through our lines.  Six of our brigade and I had been forever relieved of duty.
 
Word was received in Ruthville of my death.  My family took the news pretty hard.  It was decided that someone needed to come to Franklin to recover my body. But, with all my brothers away at war and my daddy being in ill health there was no one left to bring me home for burial …no one that is except my 16 year old sister Emiline. My family refused to let her go. But, Emmie knowing of my love for our farm would not be quietened in her insistence that she was going to go to Franklin to bring me home. As she put it, “I will never allow him to lie in a distant grave as long as I draw breath.”  Within a week of my death, Emiline started off by herself in our farm wagon.  It took her almost eight days to travel the 190 miles from Weakley County to Franklin.  She passed through Nashville just days after General Hood’s withdrawal.  By the time she reached Franklin, I had been buried on the battlefield not far from the place I fell.  Emiline was convinced by the townspeople not to remove my remains back to Ruthville.  Heartbroken, she agreed and returned home.
 
Emiline died unmarried in 1936.  Never did a day pass in the rest of her 62 years on earth that she did not think about her brother in that “distant grave.”
 
 
Sgt. William A. Thomas was my third great uncle and was the brother to my third great grandfather Charles Gatewood (Bud) Thomas. There were ten other siblings. The above story was presented as a soliloquy as I stood dressed in Confederate uniform on a marked grave for William at the Carnton Cemetery in Franklin a number of years ago. In the story I took some poetic license to embellish a true story. In truth, Emiline did in fact retrieve William’s body and did return it to the Thomas family cemetery in Ruthville. To this day I think someone else’s son is buried in the grave marked with Uncle William’s name there in Franklin.
 
During the War, Charles G., Jackson E., and Joseph V. Thomas served with Gen. N.B. Forrest in the 12th Ky Cal. William A., George C., and John F. served in the 31st TN. Inf. under Gen. Strahl. As the story indicated, many of the times these boys went into battle one could find the 31st and the 12th fighting side by side on the same field.
 
After the War, the five surviving boys returned to West Tennessee. They all took up some type of farming and all had pretty good size farms in Weakley, Obion or local Ky. counties. The oldest sibling George also served as Weakley Co. Sheriff and as the Postmaster in Martin for a number of years. He and his wife established a black cemetery in Martin as well.
 
The Thomas Cemetery in Ruthville has many family burials including the boy’s father William G. Thomas, their mother Mary Elizabeth Vincent who died during the War, three siblings who never made it past childhood, and their stepmother, Mary Franklin who had been a domestic in the Thomas house before William G. married her. All the graves in the cemetery are unmarked save the one of William. In a full Confederate ceremony we dedicated a military headstone that was placed within the bounds of the family plot somewhere close to his actual grave.
 
In 1936 the old Thomas farm wagon crossed the creek between the house and the cemetery to delivered Virginia Emiline the old maid, and by then matriarch of the Thomas clan to her resting place beside her parents, in-laws, and her brothers and sisters.  She was the last of her immediate family to pass.
 
I wish I could have met Emiline.  I have always said that she never married because no man could ever have lived with a high-spirited woman like her. This woman who at age 16, was brave enough to travel by herself ½ way across a war ravaged Tennessee to pick up her brother’s body, surely exemplifies the strong courageous Weakley county women from which we all descended.
 
Terry L. Coats