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Marking Two More Confederate Graves
Patrick Brophy
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Nevada Daily Mail, Nevada, MO (reprinted with permission)
June 10
began with rainstorms; but it soon cleared up, turning into a rare June
day for the worthy task of marking the graves of two notable Vernon
Countians of Civil War times. Sons of Confederate Veterans Eldon
Steward, Jerry Fast, and the present writer were joined by Terry and Tom
Ramsey, representing the Vernon County Historical Society.
First stop was
Sandstone Cemetery, east of Milo, where just a year ago the grave of
First Lieutenant Joseph Monroe Wood had at last been located. Fannie
Lancaster Wood's monument in Deepwood Cemetery proudly identifies her as
"Wife of Lt. Joe Wood," and it was at first supposed he might be buried
there as well. Then genealogist Nancy Thompson located a brief obituary
which led to a nearly illegible old spire at Sandstone marking Wood's
true resting place, as well as that of an infant, Hallie. The Wood
family is scattered in death. Three other children, by the lieutenant's
first wife Susan, are buried in Montevallo Cemetery.
Wood was a
Montevallo livery stable operator and prosperous farmer when the Civil
War broke out. When Montevalloan Henry Taylor raised a company for the
6th Cavalry Regiment of the 8th Division, Missouri State Guard, the
30-year-old Joe Wood was elected its second in command. And Taylor's
capture soon left Wood in full charge of the some 70 men.
Officers didn't
always have full control of unruly volunteers, however. The company was
awaiting orders when an Iowa unit took over Montevallo, and some of the
company's men joined local civilians in a night attack on the Federals
in Scobey's Hotel. But Wood took no part, indeed disapproved of the
whole thing, recognizing it as militarily pointless. In the event it
only angered the Federals into burning the town when they withdrew next
morning.
During his
imprisonment Wood's path crossed that of the other recipient of a new
marker on June 10. Late in 1862 "lady Bushwhackers" Ella Mayfield and
Eliza Gabbert went unescorted to Springfield to plead with the Federal
provost marshal for the release of certain Vernon County men. Their
pleas were successful, but they found themselves unable to pay their
hotel bill! From his own prisoner-of-war pen, then, Joe Wood gallantly
rushed to their rescue.
The record is
silent, but presumably Wood, like his captain Henry Taylor was released
on his parole of honor and eventually exchanged, for in October, 1864,
we find him back in the war. As Gen. Price, with his 10,000 or more men,
withdrew back south following the great raid of that autumn, Lt. Wood
acted as his personal guide, with rather mixed results.
The general spent
the night of October 25 in a house just southwest of Deerfield. He rose
at 4 a.m. and resumed the retreat with a small escort. Weighing in at
some 300 pounds, the general was so unwieldy he frequently traveled in
an ambulance wagon, though on this occasion he was being driven in a
carriage. "Though well acquainted with the country Lt. Wood, in the
darkness, missed the Adamson Ford, where he expected to cross Big
Drywood.
"After a few
minutes of perplexed wandering," he confessed he'd lost the way. Just
then explosions were heard to the rear, and the situation seemed
critical.
"Can the stream be
crossed near here on horseback?" Price inquired.
"Certainly," Wood
was relieved to assure him. "Alighting from his carriage, the old
General called for a horse, and one was brought him which he mounted
and, following the guide, he crossed the creek without difficulty." From
Sandstone the marker installers moved on to Montevallo Cemetery, located
at the dead-end of the nearest tunnel of a lane through a veritable
jungle. By a felicitous accident Eliza Gabbert's grave had been
discovered there a few months before.
The old marble
stone at her grave was broken in several pieces, and was mostly
illegible. Since her exploits were entirely unofficial, there was no
hope of the government furnishing her a veteran's marker; but it was
felt she deserved one, and money was raised among members of the SCV,
the Vernon County Historical Society, and the United Daughters of the
Confederacy. The Brophy Monument Co. furnished a veteran's-style marker
at modest cost.
Like her friends
and inlaws the Mayfield sisters, after the loss of brothers and other
menfolk, Eliza Gabbert carried on the fight undaunted. She was one of
several women who helped bury the gory, "ghastly" remains of seven
Bushwhackers killed at her family home by the same Federal
militiamen who'd just burned Nevada, on May 26, 1863. Eliza would have
watched the Gabbert house go up in flames at their hands on the same
occasion.
The male
Bushwhackers regularly made use of their sisters to smuggle ammunition,
and also to carry on usually fruitless negotiations with their Federal
opponents. When the Mayfield and Gabbert boys captured 27 Feds on
McCarty Creek, in 1862, they sent the girls to offer to let them go in
exchange for Capt. Taylor, in prison at Fort Scott. When the offer was
refused, the 27 were released anyway. But the Feds made no move to
detain the girl intermediaries, though they must have known well all
about their doings in aid of their enemies. Chivalry still wasn't dead,
though it was dying, at least among Northerners. "Officers and
gentlemen" who at the outset of the war wouldn't have dreamt of looking
under ladies' hoopskirts, by its middle years were clapping them in the
lockup under less than salubrious conditions.
Hardened
Bushwhackers, on the other hand, persisted to the bitter end in treating
friendly or neutral women with sweeping courtesy, and enemy ones as if
they were simply invisible.
Eliza Gabbert's
sister Martha married Jesse VanBuren Thomas, brother of Richard, this
writer's grandfather. Over the years, modern Gabbert family members have
been in touch. It's a perhaps startling reminder that Eliza, and Joe
Wood, and all their soul brothers and sisters, lived their
now-almost-mythical lives not all that long ago, hardly
day-before-yesterday.
One can't help wondering what Eliza would think of a new marker being
placed over her more than a century after her death, dubbing her "lady
Bushwhacker" and summing up her faded deeds of derring-do in the terse
words "She did her part." We're afraid she wouldn't approve. She was a
"Mid-Victorian," after all. Undoubtedly it was much more important to
her to live up to her position as ultra-respectable Mrs. Dr. John
Lipscomb than to remember those eyebrow-raising indiscretions of her
youth!
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