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On a mild November Saturday, Tom
and Terry Ramsey and I were in the old Montevallo cemetery, pursuing our
odd hobby, "cemetery crawling." We'd already stopped by the Sandstone
cemetery to photograph the newly discovered burial place of Lt. Joe
Wood. Now Terry was photographing the gravestones of Lt. Wood's
children by his first wife, Susan.
I strayed aside to try and read
the inscription on a broken white marble slab. "Eliza A., wife of Dr.
John Li__b," I read. I called Terry over to see what she could make of
it.
She all but laid an egg. "Why,
that's Eliza Gabbert, the lady Bushwhacker!" she cried. "Of course!
She married Dr. John Lipscomb!" And so, once again, one thing had led
to another. Lt. Wood, Gen. Sterling Price's personal guide, whose true
burial place genealogist Nancy Thompson had discovered only a few weeks
before, had led us to another longlost Confederate stalwart.
We'd learned, a while back, of
Eliza's marriage to Dr. John Lipscomb, who reportedly practiced in the
Montevallo area. They had children; but the story went no further.
Dry vital statistics, however, did
turn up. Eliza Ann was the oldest child of William "Old Man" Gabbert,
leader of his own Bushwhacker band in Dover Township, and his wife, the
former Rebecca Wade. She was born Dec. 12, 1834, in Washington County,
Ind., and came to Vernon County
with her parents and their eight other children, about 1858.
One of those other children was
Martha Emeline, 18 years younger, who would marry Jesse VanBuren Thomas,
this writer's great-uncle. That's how my Grandmother Thomas happened to
have in her family album a tintype of Eliza.
Pierre Weltmer, who copied the
image, said Eliza's face appeared to be badly scarred, presumably from
smallpox. Mercifully he "retouched" the copies, a mercy seemingly no
longer available in the era of colored photographs.
Oddly, the Gabberts rounded things
out by naming their last child, like their first, Eliza! Eliza T., born
in 1858, was the only one of the children born in Vernon
County. She'd have been still an infant while big sister Eliza A. was
busy being a lady Bushwhacker.
Eliza A. (our Eliza) married John
W. Lipscomb April 12, 1868. She died June 6, 1884,
reportedly of cancer of the womb, then aged 49 years, 7 months, and 6
days.
When the Civil War broke out, in
1861, she would have been 27, by the cruel standards of those times a
homely "old maid." Her brother John married Leonora, one of the famous
Mayfield sisters, forming only one of many connections between the
Gabbert and Mayfield families, near neighbors in Dover Township. That marriage took
place Aug. 10, 1861, only a few months into the Civil War, when the two
families probably were already embroiled in guerrilla activities.
At least one other Gabbert
brother, Jefferson (Jeff), was active in his father's band.
Every Mayfield, down to infants in
the cradle, says the History of Vernon County, was a staunch
Confederate, and clearly as much was true of the Gabberts. Nothing
daunted by the violent deaths of many of their menfolk, the daughters
and sisters took up the cause in their stead. Ella Mayfield was the
most noteworthy, with Eliza Gabbert running a close second.
What a loss that none of these
women ever set down an account of her wartime doings! We have to
remember, the Civil War took place at the height of the Victorian era,
when people set great store by propriety and "respectability."
Doubtless the unconventional behavior of Eliza and company raised
matronly eyebrows at the time. Likely, when peace came, they were glad
to forget the troubled past and just get on with their conventional
lives. The things they'd done as young women they probably looked back
on as "not quite respectable." Most of Eliza Gabbert's exploits come
down to us only by implication. She gets merely three explicit personal
mentions in the county history.
In early winter, 1862, when the
Mayfield boys and John Gabbert captured, disarmed, and unhorsed 27
Federal cavalrymen going, a few at a time, to water their horses in
McCarty Creek, west of Old Montevallo, they sent their respective
sisters Ella and Eliza to the Federal camp to offer to trade the 27 for
Capt. Henry Taylor, then a prisoner at Ft. Scott. The offer being
refused, they simply released the 27, after making them swear allegiance
to the Confederacy!
This reminds us that in those days
chivalry still wasn't dead. Women came and went through disputed
territory, almost through the battle lines, in perfect safety. Vernon
County
girls innocently shopped at Fort Scott and smuggled ammunition
back to their menfolk, doubtless under their hoopskirts, safe in the
knowledge no "gentleman" would dream of searching them.
Doubtless the Feds knew perfectly
well that Eliza and Ella technically were combatants, just like the
men. But what could they do, being gentlemen? Lady Bushwhackers were
still ladies!
Eliza was one of a number of young
women who helped bury the "ghastly" gory bodies of seven Bushwhackers
killed in "the fight at Old Man Gabbert's" on May 26, 1863.
Eliza would have watched the "bluebellies" burn her family home on this
occasion.
"In August, 1862, when so many
Vernon County
men were in prison at
Springfield, captured during Coffee's campaign, Ella Mayfield and Miss
Eliza Gabbert went unattended to the prison and by their persistent
intercession with the Federal military authorities secured the release
of half a dozen or more men." The "persistent intercession" consisted
of baldfaced but very persuasive fibs, swearing to the innocence of the
men in question.
On this occasion their fate
crossed that of our other resurrected Rebel, Lt. Joe Wood, in town as a
prisoner of war. The girls found themselves unable to pay their hotel
bill till, gallantly, Lt. Wood came to their rescue.
The Col. John T. Coffee Camp of
the Sons of Confederate Veterans wonders what to do about Eliza's broken
gravestone. Surely, like the menfolk, she deserves a "veteran's marker"
of some sort, however modest!
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