I have no idea how she really felt about either husband No. 1 or No. 2. She died when my grandmother (child of husband No. 2) was only six years old. Her second husband was Tom Sharp, a native of Weakley County who moved to Texas when he was about 16. I have seen an old picture of her -- very solemn face, hair pulled back in a bun, a plain high-necked dress. I don't think she would have expressed her feelings very much. But maybe she thought them, to herself, something like this ---

Written and submitted by Joan Rose

I reckon I am going to wed him, Will. He is a good man, and he will be a good Pa to the girls. It hasn't been easy for him, Will, not fer him or fer me. He watched his brother die, Will, you remember, you was there. He told me how the two of you held him up, and tried to give him water, when y'all were slogging it out in the bayous of Arkansas.He said as how the two of you got real close then, when his brother died. And how glad he was Thaniel was already dead before ya'll had to surrender to  those Yankees at Arkansas Post. He told me about that hell hole prison camp up in Illinois, how cold it was, and how you sat around a little old fire, the only light through the long  winter nights. And then how you got sick, just like "Thaniel," and they, the guards, would not let your brother come in because he was an officer. Tom had tears in his eyes when he told me, Will. He said you talked about how you wanted to come home to me and the our younguns, little Mary and the baby named for you, the baby you never seen. How you said you wisht you'd never left our farm down in Texas, and how worried you was that I would not be able to manage.

It wasn't easy, Will, but we was doing all right  - for awhile..With the help of that nigger boy of the Thomases, Maw and I got the corn shucked and took to the mill and ground. We got the garden crops in, and we canned enough for the four of us through the winter. And I birthed little Willie, a little mite of a thing, she was, Will, with black hair just like yours. But then Maw got the miseries something awful, and in not two days she was dead, and I didn't know to do. The babies were croupy, and I was weak and teary, and I wanted you, Will, oh Lordy, how I wanted you back. And how I hated that war that took you off, that you just couldn't wait to be a part of.

A part of fightin and killin, Will, when you should of been at home with me and watching our babies and our crops grow. Jest like we had dreamed, setting out there on the porch, watchin the moon shinin over the old live oak tree.

Then the Comanches came, and I was scareder than ever. They didn't hit our  place, but I feared every night for weeks. They fired several cabins not two hills away from us.  The Smiths, the folks that came with Maw and me from Kentucky, they got burned out. I was never so glad, Will, to see your Pa drive up that day in his old wagon. He came in, bundled up the girls' clothes and told me just to lock up, he was taking me back with him. He didn't get no argument from me. I was glad to go.  I reckoned I would feel closer to you, Will, at your old home, with your folks and all.

Your Pa was a good man, Will, and worried about his boys. And rightly so, I  reckon. You died there in that prison camp, and the joy went out of him, and then your brother, the captain, died, in that fighting in Georgia, and your Pa jist didn't want to live any more So he died too. I think his heart jest broke.

So there were jist women on the farm, to plow the dirt and tend the stock and the chickens. Jist women, your Ma, your sisters, James' widow and all their younguns. It was not a happy place then, Will. We could remember too well all you tall  black-haired Bennett boys, with your wide grins showin off  your strong white teeth shinin in your dark faces, so full of life and laughter and teasin. Dead. Gone.

Even when we heared the war was over, it was not a joyful place for us. For the Bennett sons would not be comin home.

That's when Tom Sharp rode up on that old mule that was all the Sharps had left.  He came to see me, Will, because he had promised you iffen he made it home and you didn't, he would see after me.
He has been kind to us, Will. He don't laugh very much, not like you.. He limps, because he still has that minie ball in his hip he got before Atlanta. And his eyes are tired. You can see the sorrow in them. He seen too much. He watched too many friends, his brother, his cousin, all die. He was in prison camp twice hisself. He was with you in Camp Douglas, and then he and all the company were exchanged, and they got sent to Tennessee to fight some more.

His other brothers got it at Corinth, and at Shiloh and at Tunnel Hill. He don't talk much about it. He wants to fergit. When some  of his buddies who  made it back start talking, the funny sounding names fall out. Chickamauga and Resaca, Missionary Ridge and Pickett's Mill.

All acrost Tennesee and Alabama and Georgia they fought. They were raggiedy and sometimes bitter cold and sometimes sweaty hot and hungry and sick. They told  them to take that hill, or hold that road, and they tried to. They were tired, sometimes without sleep or jest layin on the ground. And the noise. He said the noise, the cannons and the muskets and the yellin and the moanin from those who got hurt.

Tom got separated then from the company, after your brother was killed, and he got sent down to the water, to Mobile Bay. He was in the last bunch of Southron boys to fight, and to be took and even after Ole Lee had give up, he was still a-fighting afore he was closed up in prison camp again. They let him loose and he started walking home, he said.  With lead in his hip, limping on a big stick for a crutch, he jest headed home. He was skinny and his hair was long and he swam in muddy rivers to git clean and he begged meals from farm houses, where they didn't have hardly no more to eat than he did. And iffen their men hadn't come home yet, or wasn't ever comin home agin, he helped them best he could to do up around the place.

He said he seen a lot of niggers on the road too.  Jest wanderin'. No place to go. He was over four months gittin' home, Will. His ma and his sisters were all a-feared that he was a goner, too, just like his brothers.

And then he came to see me, Will. To tell me about you. To see if I needed anything. And I did. I do. I reckon I need a man, and Tom Sharp will do. He's buildin' me a house,  Will, no bigger than our cabin at Florence. He has his share of the land from his Pa, and he ain't scared to work. So I reckon this really is good-bye, Will.  It's Christmastime, a good time to be wed. It's a new year ready to start.

Tomorrow the girls and I will have a new name,  and we will be a new family. I don't feel that excitement inside my heart,  that set me afire when I first laid eyes on you, ridin that big old roan that day we came into town for Ma to settle up my step-papa's affairs. But I feel good. It feels right. It feels like finally the fightin is over, and the loneliness and the scaredness. He will take care of me. And of the girls.

Goodbye, Will. I loved you, more'n you ever knowed, or you wouldn'ta left me.
Tom won't leave me. Not never again.