Whitfield County Georgia - Honeysuckle Farm, LLC

New, Updated Military Timeline for John Bates

Following is the updated timeline of John Bates’ final years in the military. This is the timeline I’m currently working with after finding better information online than what I was working with last week.
10 Nov 1861                     Initial enlistment
19 Jan 1862                      Battle of Mill Springs (KY)
11-16 Feb 1862                Battle of Fort Donelson (TN)
March 1862                      Confederate President Jefferson Davis discusses drafting men 18- 35 years old
10 May 1862                     John re-enlists
16 May 1862                     John reported for duty/joined service/Mustered in
September 1862              Confederate Congress passes legislation requiring men 18-35 to enlist for a period of 3 years
8 Oct 1862                         Battle of Perryville (KY)
16 Oct 1862                       Battle (?)- Lexington, KY
31 Dec 1862- 2 Jan 1863 Battle at Murfreesborough, TN (Battle of Stones River?)
2 Jan 1863                          Battle (?)- Tullahoma, TN
Between 2 Jan-10 Sep 1863    Captured at Tullahoma, TN- Prisoner of War
Between 2 Jan-10 Sep 1863    POW- Rock Island Military Prison, Rock Island, IL (information obtained from the Murray County Museum, Murray County, GA. They got it from info in a book at the courthouse there. This info differs from military records.)
31 Aug 1862-18 Jan 1863     Last paid by Captain Gibbons to 31 Aug 1862 PRESENT
31 Dec 1862-30 Apr 1863     Undated/non-information military document (perhaps they didn’t know where he was?)
6 May 1863                            Unit was reorganized into Company A, 37th GA Volunteer Infantry Regt. while John was imprisoned
19-20 Sep 1863                     Battle of Chickamauga (GA)
15-25 Oct 1863                     Battle of Philadelphia (TN)
20 Oct 1863                         Captured in Monroe County, Tennessee, during Battle of Philadelphia
14 Nov 1863                       Appears on a descriptive roll of Prisoners of War at Camp Chase, Ohio from Camp Nelson, KY received by Colonel S. G. Griffin.
31 Dec 1863                       Muster Roll: 30 Apr-31 Dec 1863 dated 31 Dec 1863; last paid 30 Apr 1863 ABSENT FROM DUTY
Jan & Feb 1864                  Undated; last paid by Captain J. L. Gibbons to 30 Apr 1863 ABSENT
22-27 Feb 1864                   Battle of Dalton (GA) occurred while John was a POW.
29 Feb 1864                        Transferred from Camp Chase, OH to Fort Delaware, DE
4 Mar 1864                          Received at Fort Delaware, DE from Camp Chase, Ohio
7 May 1864                          Skirmish (?)- Tunnel Hill (GA) occurred while John was a POW.
14-15 May 1864                  Battle of Resaca (GA) occurred while John was a POW.
4 July 1864    Pay            May & June 1864; Last paid by Captain Gibbons to 30 April 1863 ABSENT
14 Oct 1864                        Admitted (notes don’t say where- maybe Point Lookout, MD?)
30 Oct 1864                        Discharged/”paroled” at Fort Delaware in prisoner exchange
31 Oct 1864                       Other record says date of arrival at Fort Delaware is 31 Oct ; Exchanged on this date.
14 Nov 1864                     John must have died en-route to Venus Point as his tombstone says this date.
15 Nov 1864                   Received at Venus Point, Savannah River, Savannah, GA from Point Lookout, MD. Delivered by Lt Col. John E. Mulford & Assistant Agent for Exchange- 3,023 paroled Confederate Prisoners of War including 4 citizens and 4 surgeons & 74 officers. W. H. Hatch asst agent of exchange. Note: Venus Point is attributed to both Jasper County, South Carolina and to Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia.

At Last!

Imagine the opening words of the song At Last sung by Etta James.
“At last…..”
You know you’re singing it. Go ahead and listen to it if you need to get your fix before you continue reading.
At long, long last, I finally know what happened to my Confederate soldier John C. BATES. I can write the end of his story. This has been a 3-decade-plus search but I was in it for the long haul and what a reward! I wanted so much to tell you the full story right away but it is taking considerably more research time than I anticipated. So today I will give you a timeline of where he was during the Civil War and I will expand on that timeline in the coming weeks. I want to make sure I get the story right.

John BATES, 4 Sergeant (and former Captain) of Company F, 3rd Confederate Cavalry

John Bates is my maternal 3rd great grandfather. In January of 2015 I made a last-minute change of blog topics so I could write about an exciting new discovery about John that I had made the night before. In June of 2106 my cousin wrote a guest post about his visit to Rock Island and the veteran’s cemetery there. He learned that if a prisoner of war died en route to the Rock Island military prison the soldier’s body “was unceremoniously dumped off the train” and that in some of the communities the train went through, the people there would bury the unknown Confederate soldiers. We had never been able to locate a grave for John. No family stories had been passed down about where he was buried either. So, since June of 2016 I have believed that it was likely that John had been dumped on the side of the train tracks and buried as an unknown soldier in a location no longer remembered or recorded by anyone and that made me sad. In September and October of 2016 I was able to spend a few weeks in Georgia doing some genealogical research. Exactly one year ago today, I wrote another post about John that detailed some of the documents I found on that trip. The research I did on location in Georgia led me to John’s parent and grandparents. Despite all these great discoveries, I still didn’t know about the end of John’s life. I still believed he had probably been dumped off the train at some unknown location to be (hopefully) buried by people who had no idea who he was.
Fast forward to this week. I have discovered the rest of the story and I want you to know about the end of John’s life and where he is buried so that no one has to wonder anymore.
Some things to remember before you start reading the story:

I couldn’t always follow Company F (or Company C) so I will sometimes revert to giving you the location of the 3rd Confederate Cavalry as a whole with the understanding that it is possible his Company was elsewhere at the time.
This new information was given to me by other researchers and I’m in the process of verifying what I can.
I may add to this timeline as needed and when needed if new information is found.
I’ve done the best I could with the resources available to me to compile an accurate account of John’s whereabouts during the final years of his life. If you have different information, I would love to be corrected on this. I want an accurate account of his life.
Remember that today is just a timeline and I will flesh out the story in the weeks to come.
Some of the information may change over the next few weeks as I continue to research. Please keep coming back so you have the full story.

November, 1861- John BATES enlisted, Company C, 3rd Confederate Cavalry, Whorton Brigade, Army of Tennessee
March, 1862- Confederate President Jefferson DAVIS discusses a draft of men ages 18-35
May, 1862- John C. BATES enlists in Company F, 3rd Confederate Cavalry, at Spring Place, Georgia
September, 1862- Men ages 36-45 are required to enlist
September-October 1862- possibly had a base camp at Shelbyville, Tennessee during this period
December, 1862 through early January, 1863- Battle of Stones River
Late January, 1863- marched to Fort Donelson, Tennessee
Early April, 1863- skirmish near Liberty, Tennessee
Late April 1863- stationed at Varnell, Georgia
September, 1863- Battle of Chickamauga
October, 1863- Battle of Philadelphia (Tennessee)
20 October, 1863- John was captured and taken as a prisoner of war
March, 1864- John was received at Fort Delaware (Delaware)
October, 1864- John was part of a prisoner exchange and was “paroled” at Venus Point, Savannah, Georgia
14 November 1864- John died and was buried in Savannah, Georgia.
So there’s the timeline we’ll be fleshing out. I chose to space out the story because I felt like I was having to choose between giving you a marginally researched story versus taking my time and giving you a solidly researched story. I am erring on the side of solid research since I hope this blog will be on the internet for many years to come. In the near future I’ll be telling you about the locations John was at and what he might have experienced. I’m hoping to come up with even more information than I have now. Stay tuned!
Until next time,
Lisa @ Days of Our Lives

Happy Anniversary, Lum and Mary

Today’s blog post is about George Columbus BATES and Mary Ann SEELY, my maternal 2nd great grandparents. They were married on this date (13 January) in 1880. If you’d like to review what I’ve already written about George, you can find posts about George’s apple orchard here and I mentioned George in this post, too.

1860-1869

George Columbus BATES was born in December of 1856 in Dalton, Whitfield County, Georgia, to John C. and Mary Jane (MOBLEY) BATES. George went by a shortened form of his middle name- Lum – and that’s how I’ll be referring to him here in this blog post. By 1860 (4 years after Lum’s birth) he was living with his family in Fancy Hill, 1013th Georgia Militia District in Murray County, Georgia. Hiram GARRETT (possibly SARRETT) was the census enumerator that year and he came by the family home on a Wednesday- 1 August 1860. Lum would have still been a few months shy of his 4th birthday at that time but he is enumerated as 4 years old in the census. His father, John, was a farmer. John valued his real estate at $800 and his personal estate at $1000. These amounts were about “middle of the pack” in comparison the other families censused on the same page.
In 1860, Lum’s older brother, Greenberry BATES was living with the family. Green was 18 years old and was a farm laborer. Just a few years later Green would be serving in the Civil War for the Confederacy.
Mary was born on Sunday, 6 June 1858 in Lawrence County, Missouri, to Charles and Synthia (FOSTER) SEELY. In 1860 Mary and her family were living in Mount Pleasant, Mount Pleasant Township, Lawrence County, Missouri. Their census enumerator that year was John W. PAYNE who came to enumerate the family on Saturday, 16 June 1860. Mary was 2 years old at the time. Living in the home were Mary’s parents plus four of her older siblings including Elijah, William, James, and John. In addition to these older siblings, she had an older brother who died as an infant. His name was George. In the years to come, Mary would help welcome two younger siblings- Elzora Josephine and Charles Harvey. Mary was living right next door to her maternal grandparents, Frederick and Mary (BURNETT) FOSTER. Mary’s dad was a farmer. Charles valued his real estate at $400 and his personal estate at $700. These values were toward the lower end of the spectrum in comparison to the families censused on the same page as Charles.

1863: A Difficult Year

In July of 1863, Lum was 6 years old. That year both his dad and his older brother were fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War. John (his dad) was fighting at Tullahoma, Tennessee when he was taken prisoner and transported to Rock Island. Rock Island was the Yankee version of Andersonville Prison. It wasn’t a place you wanted to go. In July of 1863 John died. I blogged a little about John’s military service and death here and my cousin did a guest blog post for us here.
Lum’s brother, Green, was taken as a prisoner of war at Missionary Ridge in November of 1863. He was initially sent to Rock Island but was transferred to a different military prison a couple of weeks after his capture. Green survived the war. I’m sure it was a pretty rough year for the whole family. If you want to read more about Rock Island and our part in the Civil War you can follow the links above that discuss John’s service. You can view the Missionary Ridge battlefield here. You can view a dramatic skit that explains the Tullahoma Campaign here. I also recommend Wikipedia for a brief, to-the-point overview of any topic.
Other known siblings of Lum’s were an older sister Martha, an older brother Washington who I think died in 1860, and a younger brother Henry Franklin who wasn’t yet born in 1860. In 1868, Lum’s mom got married again. This time she married Paul E. BRINEGAR.
Side note:
The best I could tell, this was the location of John and Mary (MOBLEY) BATES’ homestead in Georgia. They had a nice view of the mountain.

1870-1879

On Tuesday, 26 July 1870, census enumerator Robert M. ROMBERT visited the BATES family. By this time Lum’s dad, John, had died as a prisoner of war at Rock Island prison and Lum’s mom had remarried to Paul E. BRINEGAR. The family consisted of stepdad Paul E. BRINEGAR, mom Mary J. (MOBLEY) BRINEGAR, younger half brother Franklin (later enumerated as ‘Henry’). In 1870, Paul was farming and he valued his real estate at $850 and his personal estate at $200. If I were to judge based on the information given by other respondents on the page, Paul was in the middle of the pack as far as money and possessions owned by the people in his area. Mary Jane was “keeping house” as were the majority of women that I’ve encountered on older census records. Lum was a farm laborer. Franklin was only 2 years old. He was not working or in school.
On Thursday, 23 June 1870 enumerator John H. STROUD visited the SEELY family. Parents Charles and Sinthia were living in Bentonville, Osage Township, Benton County, Arkansas with their children, James, John, Mary, Elzora, and Charles. The elder Charles was a farmer and valued his real estate at $500 and his personal estate at $250. If I were to judge based on the information given by other respondents on the same page, Charles more well off than most of the people around him. Sinthia was keeping house. Despite their ages, the older children (ages 20 and 17) were not working – or at least no occupation was listed by the census enumerator.

1880

Sometime between 26 July 1870 and 28 June 1880, Lum and Mary met each other and fell in love. I wish I had stories to tell you either from records or family stories passed down through the years. Sadly I don’t, so we’ll skip right to the month of the wedding.
On Wednesday, 7 January 1880 it was warmer than usual in Benton County, Arkansas. The weather was described as “too warm for overcoats and fires”. (Arkansas Democrat, 7 Jan 1880) That was the day that the license was issued for George Columbus BATES and Mary Ann SEELY to marry. The wedding didn’t happen until Tuesday, 13 January 1880. By then, it was “decidedly cooler”. (Arkansas Democrat, 14 Jan 1880) Lum (George) was 21 years old according to the marriage license although other official documents have put him at age 24 at the time of his marriage. (My personal belief is 24 years old.) Mary was 20 years old according to the marriage license.
The first record I have that was dated after the wedding is the 1880 Federal Census. On the Monday, 28 June or Tuesday, 29 June 1880, census enumerator John M. CLAYTON arrived at the newly-married couple’s home. They were living in Dickson Township, Benton County, Arkansas. He was listed as being 23 years old and she as being 22. They lived next door to Lum’s now-widowed mother, Mary and Lum’s half brother who is now listed as Henry. Living on the other side of Mary was her older son Berry, now married and with his own large family. Lum was farming and Mary was keeping house.

A Good Stopping Point

If you work on your own family history then you know that most of the 1890 census was destroyed. So, unfortunately it’s hard to know what Lum and Mary did in the 20 years between the 1880 and 1900 censuses. One thing I do know they did was have babies. Starting with Albert (my great-grandfather) in 1881 and continuing with Charles in 1887, Herman in 1891, and Vesta in 1894.
It is at this point that I’m going to stop their story. I’ll finish it during the year in other blog posts about Lum and Mary as I celebrate their births and write about their deaths.
Until then,
Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

Not Breaking, But Succeeding- Lum’s Apple Orchard

Come, Let us Watch and Walk

I’ve talked before about my 2^nd great grandpa, George Columbus BATES, but not in much detail. George went by “Lum”, just like my grandfather Troy Columbus BATES did.

Photo of Lum and Mary Seely Bates with their 3 youngest children Charlie, Herman, and Vesta.
Lum had an apple orchard when he filed his homestead land entry paperwork. David COOPER and William T. LUCAS- a couple of his neighbors- were witnesses for Lum saying that Lum’s land was “rough timber land”.

Photo of David and Nancy COOPER. David COOPER was a farmer and ran a mill near Hiwasse, Benton County, Arkansas. He also had a supply store on the bank of the river there. He later became Superintendent of Schools for the Hiwasse/Dug Hill area.

The witnesses stated Lum settled on his acreage “in the latter part of September or first of October 1896” (Mr. COOPER) and “on or about October 1^st 1896” (Mr. LUCAS). They testified that Lum had resided continuously on the land since he first got it and that he had not been absent from the property since he first made homestead. When the men were asked how much of the homestead Lum had cultivated and for how many seasons Lum had raised crops on the land, Mr. COOPER said, “It would average about 8 or 9 acres for 7 years” and Mr. LUCAS said, “He has cultivated 7 acres for 7 seasons”. Mr. COOPER gave details about the improvements Lum had made to the property saying, “1 box house, 3 rooms. 1 log house, 1 smoke house, 1 cistern, small orchard, perhaps 100 trees- $300”. Mr. LUCAS gave the following details about improvements Lum made, “1 3-room box dwelling, 1 smoke house, 1 log house, about 13 acres in cultivation, small orchard, 1 cistern, 1 chicken house- $300.”

Example of a corn crib from Homesteader Wannabe blog.

Example of a late 1800’s smoke house from Smoking Meat Forums.

Example of a circa 1900 log house from Discovering Russellville Arkansas blog. I imagine the “3-room box dwelling” looked very similar to this building.

Example of a large cistern under construction from Wisconsin Historical Society blog.

Example of a circa 1900 chicken house (with modern updates) from Leelanau Conservancy blog.
Mr. Cooper said the land was more valuable for “agriculture” and Mr. Lucas added it was more valuable for “orchard”. Both men testified that Lum had not mortgaged, sold, or contracted to sell any portion of the homestead land. Both men testified that they were not personally interested in Lum’s claim and that they believed Lum had acted in good faith in perfecting the homestead land entry requirements. There were additional witnesses- H. N. WILLIAMS and J. E. FERRELL, both of Hiwasse, Arkansas. Their testimony was not included in the file I received.

We Had Long Collected, Saved, and Harbored Old Memories

In Lum’s testimony he stated he was 46 years old and lived in Hiwasse, Arkansas. He stated he was born in the state of Georgia.

Lum’s birth certificate.
He stated he was the same George C. BATES who had made homestead entry #22919 at the Harrison, Arkansas land office on 17 September 1896 and a true description of his land was “NE quarter of the NE quarter of Section 32, Township 21N, Range 31W”. He stated he built a house on the land and established residence there about 1 October 1896 and had built a 3-room box house with 1 room being 15×16 and 1 room being 14×15 and the third room being 12×14. He stated he had built a log house sized 16×16, 1 smoke house, 1 crib, and 1 cistern. He had 13 acres in cultivation, 100 apple trees set, and an estimated value of $250 for his improvements. I must say, I’d love to have all these improvements for $250!!
Lum listed his family members living on the property as himself, his wife, and 3 children. His wife was Mary Ann SEELY BATES.

Marriage record for Lum and Mary BATES.
On 28 August 1903, the children that would have been living at home would have been the 3 youngest children- Charles Leroy, Herman Luther, and Vesta Josephine. The oldest child (my great-grandfather), Albert Lewis, had gotten married and moved out the previous year.

Another Season’s Hundred Days of Toil

Prior to completing the application process, Lum had to run a notice about the homestead claim in the Benton County Democrat weekly newspaper for 6 consecutive weeks.

Newspaper ad photo.

By Not Breaking, But Succeeding

And so, for the sum of $6 (plus a $1 “testimony fee” for his required testimony- gotta love the government, right?!) he completed his homestead application process for 40 acres in Benton County, Arkansas on 28 August 1903. The homestead was finally approved on 16 June 1904 and patented on 26 August 1904 and just like that Lum was the proud owner of 40 acres in Benton County, Arkansas.

Photo of certificate
On a day when I have more bandwidth or faster internet I will post a photo of where his land was in Benton County, Arkansas.

Silently Growing to Bear Fruit

About the time Lum started his apple orchard, the Arkansas Black apple was being cultivated. So in mine and my husband’s orchard, we planted an Arkansas Black in memory of Lum. It’s producing apples this year and we’re excited to be able to taste them. Maybe I’ll make an apple pie in honor of Lum and Mary and all they did and all they sacrificed to give me the life I have today.
By the way, I’ve been making plans to visit a distant cousin from the BATES family. I’m meeting with her soon and she says she has a photo of Lum standing in front of a wagon full of apples. I’m so hoping she can find it and bring it so I can have a copy. What a treasure! I think I’ll frame it and hang it in my kitchen. I sure am looking forward to apple season…
Until then though, take care of yourself and remember- an apple a day keeps the doctor away!
Lisa @ Days of Our Lives

Category: Whitfield County Georgia