The Civil War Years
The Hill Family of Kingston,
Caldwell County, Missouri
From an original manuscript written in 1921 and 1929
Transcribed by Julia Slemons Harrison Riedel
Kansas City, Missouri
Donated to Stonewall Jackson Chapter,
United Daughters of the Confederacy
Section 1
(first five pages are missing and the manuscript begins in mid-paragraph)
..came to Kingston to raise a flag pole from which to fly the Stars & Bars. At the same time the Southern Company was drilling in the town, and as the town was only a small place of a few hundred inhabitants, it looked as though a conflict was inevitable. But war was new then to all these men. No blood had yet been shed on either side in this locality. And I suppose that neither party wanted to be the aggressor, and although excitement ran high, yet no open conflict occurred. I very much doubt if another similar occurrence took place at any point in the United States. That night the Company of Southern men took up their march to Lexington where the Southern forces were mobilizing under General Slack to unite with and become a part of the army of General Sterling Price.
Another brother, Torn (as we called him), was also a member of this company of Southern boys recruited around Kingston, and the two brothers were in the battles of Carthage, Wilson Creek and Lexington. After the siege and battle of Lexington, when General Mulligan's famous Irish Brigade of three thousand men held out for a week or more against the onslaught of Price's Army of twenty thousand or more and finally were forced to surrender, Brother Torn's enlistment having expired, and being tired of the army, he came home.
At this time the Union forces had complete control in this part of Missouri. So brother Torn dodged around for several months evading the Union forces by staying closely indoors in the day time and sleeping out in the brush at night. Many a night the writer slept with him in these brush thickets for company.
One day Captain Thompson, who had been a Captain in one of the companies of the same regiment to which my brother Torn belonged, whose time had also expired, and who had come home and surrendered and took the oath of Allegiance, came to our house and advised Torn to either rejoin the army or surrender to the military forces then occupying the town of Kingston, near our home. As it would likely result in his death if the military forces should find him hiding in the brush, the next day he went to Kingston and surrendered to Captain Ross, the commander of the post. He and Captain Ross had been neighbor boys before the war, so he paroled Torn right away.
Soon after this Torn went to near Hamilton in Caldwell County and went to work cutting trees for the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad then building across the state and with the exception of two years he continued in the railroad work until he was seventy-eight years old. Twenty-eight years of that time in the employ of one road, the Grand Central, as master bridge builder and which in this work he was knocked off a bridge by a fast train and severely hurt from which injury he died several months later.
His death occurred Nov. 7, 1917 at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Willie Switzer, Polo, Missouri. He was buried at Cottage Grove Cemetery beside the wife of his youth and daughter Janie, close by his father, mother and oldest sister.
One event in Torn's life I will mention. At the battle of Wilson Creek Aug. 10, 1861 he helped to carry the body of General Nathaniel P. Lyons, the commander of the Union forces who was killed there at the battle field.
My oldest brother, Livingston, was slightly wounded at the battle of Lexington, Missouri and again at Pea Ridge, Arkansas. He was promoted to a surgeon of an Arkansas regiment and remained with that regiment until his health failed him, when he resigned and went to Texas. Here he died at his uncle Alfred Hume's house near Sherman, Grayson County, Texas. The family never saw him again after he left for the army that 15th day of June, 1861.
My oldest sister Mat, as we called her married J. T. Brown. They had five children, four girls and one boy. She died when her children were all small, and close to her death her oldest daughter died also. At this writing three of her daughters, Mrs. Annie Aspaugh, Mrs. Mollie Conley, Mrs. Lizzie McNew all of Caldwell County, and one son, Quintus of California still live.
Section II
Eight years later. The above or foregoing was written in 1921 and this in 1929. I laid the above manuscript aside and neglected to finish the history of my humble life. But now at 83 years of age, and knowing that from the very nature of things, if the story is to be finished, it must be finished without further delay.
My brother Torn married his own cousin, Lou Hill, and three children were born to them, one dying when only a few years old and the other two now living at the time of this writing -- Willie, who married Frank Switzer, and Robert, both of which now live in Caldwell County, Mo.
My next brother Judson Broadus married Mary Alphin, the daughter of a wealthy Kentucky farmer. She lived only a few years after their marriage and is buried at old Concord Baptist Church Cemetery in Galatin County, Kentucky. No children were born to this union. He afterwards married Mary McNeely of Kentucky, but did not live long enough after this marriage. A daughter was born to them after his death, Juddie, who married Harvy Vest, and who died also of consumption as her father did.
My next sister, Hattie married Ryley Cheshier, and he is still living at Hamilton, Missouri. To this union two girls were born, Pearl and Comora, who live at this writing in Caldwell County. Their mother died July 14, 1928 and is buried at the Cowgill Cemetery.
My next brother, Caney Baxter Hill, the next in descent after me, married Allie Cooper, two children were born to them, Clara and Tenta. Their mother died several years ago. But they lived with their father and are still living. The father at this writing is keeping a hardware store in Kansas City, Kansas.
My next brother, Fielding Wilkite Hill married Eliza Tydings and to this union five children were born, Earnistine and Claude. Their father died several years ago.
My father was a Baptist minister and pastored quite a number of prominent churches in North Missouri including Gallatin, Trenton, Liberty and others. At the time of his ministry the only mode of travel for a preacher was on horse-back and these long trips to his churches kept him away from home most of the time.
My mother was one of the finest and sweetest women I ever knew. No sacrifice was too great for her to make for her family, and one of the most pleasant remembrances of my life is her sweet, loving, gentle nature.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, and as above stated, my people were intensely Southern in sentiment, and when we lived in Caldwell County, Mo., the people were about equally divided in sentiment as the war progressed, they became very bitter against each other, and as my father was a very prominent citizen of the county, and very outspoken in his news, it was very natural as above stated, that he should incur the enmity of the opposition. Former friendships and neighborly feelings were ruthlessly swept aside, so intense was the bitterness that existed between those who espoused the cause of the South and those who held for the Union.
At this time, there was stationed at Kingston a company of Union soldiers, and it had received orders to leave that town and go to Breckenridge, a small town in the southeast part of the county. A detail of this company came to our house and ordered Pa to bring his team and wagon to town to help move their effects to Breckenridge, to drive the team himself as this was unusual, as I had always driven the team where it was commandeered to haul forage into the town from the country for the cavalry horses. The presumption was but natural, that they had some sinister designs against Pa, so he told me to hitch up the team and drive it over to Kingston, and he fearing for his life, started out a foot for the brush, and in the brush and timber he walked down into Ray County where the people were mostly Southerners, and where he was well known, as he had preached for a good many years in various portions of that conty.
When I got to Kingston with the team, and the soldiers found that Pa did not come, they let me take the team back home without using it, indicating that they wanted Pa for some evil purpose. Pa had no difficulty in evading his enemies in his stay in Ray County, where he remained until the following September 1863, when mother sold the fine two hundred acre farm for $8 an acre, and the family moved to Kentucky, Pa getting on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad at some point, I don't remember, between Hamilton where the family took the train, and Hannibal, Missouri. They went to Grant County, Kentucky arriving there sometime in September 1863.
I had given the family to understand that I was not going with them and when they got everything loaded in the wagons to take to the train and were ready to start, I went back of the old log smokehouse and brother Caney came back there to beg me to go, or to tell me good-bye, I do not remember which, but I do remember that it was one of the most trying episodes of my life to see my mother and my sisters and brothers go away to a far distant state, and I left alone at the dear old home of my boyhood years.
Under normal conditions, Mother would have compelled me to go along, but in the chaotic conditions existing in that part of the state, she thought it would not be safe or prudent to try to make me go, as by this time the country around there was in the hands of the Union soldiers stationed at every town of any importance and my neighbors knowing of my Union sentiments, would not have stood for it. At this time, I was in my seventeenth year.
One of our closest neighbors, a Mr. Spivey and family had for several years run a steam grist mill and saw mill about one half mile from where we lived. This family had been raised in Ohio, and were intensely loyal. At that time, all the flour and meal used in that part of the state was ground in local mills, and I was the mill boy. My older brothers would throw a two bushel pack of grain across a horse's back, then set me on top of the sack and start me to to the mill. Sometimes I would have a hard time keeping the sack from falling off the horse, but by constant shifting my position on the sack, I usually reached the old mill without any serious mishap.
This was the first time in my life that I was left on my own resources and no one that has never gone through a similar experience can know the struggle that comes to a 17 year old boy under such circumstances. But since the Great Healer and new experiences and new labors soon took the poignancy out of the sting and the first step had now been taken in a long cherished plan to become one of Uncle Sam's gaily apparisoned soldier boys with carbine and saber dangling at my side, and riding a spirited horse alongside the other soldiers. So I went to work for the Spiveys at the old mill some time in September, 1863, and they gave me real work, too, and such as I had not known on the old farm where there were older brothers to take the lead and do the hard part of the labor. But being pretty handy, and willing to take hold I soon learned to become quite proficient in all kinds of work connected with the old mill.
A part of this work was hauling saw logs from the timber about two miles away with a log wagon and two yoke of oxen, all by myself. Then again I would help saw these logs into lumber, and at other times I would help handle the corn and wheat that would be ground into meal and flour. Occasionally, I would be put to work running the steam engine, and I have thought a thousand times that it was a great piece of good luck that I did not blow that old boiler into a hundred pieces and kill everyone about the mill, but good fortune followed me for the three months I worked at the old "creaky" mill, and all went off fine, and pleasant. This Spivey family was a nice, moral and religious family and was good and kind to me. At this writing, 66 years later, I remember them with the kindest of feelings.
In the old town of Kingston near which I lived, and where I attended school, there also attended a boy some older than myself by the name of Rice A. Dunn, who early in the Civil War enlisted in the 6th Missouri Militia Cavalry and in the winter of 1863 while his regiment was stationed at Springfield, Missouri, he came home on a recruiting furlough for thirty days. He enlisted a neighbor boy and school mate of mine and myself - swore us into the service of the United States Army and we three were to start for Springfield on the first day of January, 1864, and this day ushered in as the coldest day ever known in the history of the state.
The soldiers of the Regiment at that time were required to furnish their own mounts and received as pay $25 a month. When that day arrived, I had not secured a horse; just being a boy of seventeen years with no money except the few dollars I had received for my three months work at the mill at $8 per month, so Rice Dunn, then a sergeant, and Sam Wheeler started early that morning on their long journey to Springfield, leaving me almost heartbroken behind.
During the forenoon of that day, several of the prominent business men of Kingston hurriedly got together and decided to stand good for a horse for me, and as I had a horse already spotted that I could buy for $80, I hastily secured the horse by giving my note with some five or six of these men signing it to be paid when I drew wages from the government for my services. It so happened that it was nearly a year before I was paid, and my wages were enough to pay for the horse and have a nice little sum left. I expressed the money to Captain Strutor, who was a Captain in another regiment from Rolla, Mo.
So about noon I was off to Springfield, Mo. A 17 year old boy who had never been farther than a few miles from home, and in the coldest weather ever known in Missouri, with about a foot of snow on the ground. I spent the first night at Richmond in Ray County with a cousin and his family, Tom Bohanan. The next morning I was off early, hoping by riding at a good pace, I could overtake the boys, but at Lexington, there were two roads leading to Springfield, one via of Warsaw which the other boys took, while I took the one going through Warrensburg, Clinton and Osceola. Therefore I did not come in touch with them until I reached Springfield.
The Missouri River was also frozen solid, and I rode across it at Lexington on the ice. The first night after leaving Richmond, I stayed at a farm house somewhere in Johnson County, and as I now remember, and the next night somewhere in St. Clair County near Osceola. There were but few houses along the road after passing a few miles from the towns but many stone chimneys standing as mute sentinels of the ravages of war. The animosities were so bitter between the Union and Southern forces that the buildings one side would spare the other side would burn, leaving the country bare of improvements and inhabitants.
On this day I rode well into the night without finding any place where I could put up and I though I would surely freeze to death on the bleak snow covered prairie, but without chart or compass, I rode on and on, not knowing in what direction I was going, but finally I saw a dim light in the distance and I reigned in my faithful horse, now almost exhausted from traveling all day through some twelve or fifteen inches of snow, in the direction of the light. As I got nearer and nearer the light, I thought I never saw anything shine with greater brilliancy.
I rode up to the door and asked if I could stay over night and was told that I could, so I dismounted and the man of the house helped me to care for my horse, and when I went into the house, I found that this man and his little daughter were the only occupants of the little rude one room log cabin, but this cabin seemed a palace to me and the rye coffee and corn bread the little girl prepared for my supper seemed as sumptious a meal as I ever sat down to, and fit for a king. I had wandered quite a distance from my course, in following the line of the candle light in this log cabin, but for that light but I perhaps would have succumbed to the cold in these bleak prairies.
The next morning, after the same kind of food for my breakfast, I rewarded them liberally for night entertainments, and resumed my journey. During the day, I crossed the Osage River at Oceola on the ice, and during that day I fell in with several soldiers of this regiment that were returning from a furlough. These lived in Harrison County, Missouri, and we made the remainder of the trip to Springfield to-gether.
At this writing, sixty seven years later, it seems to me almost a miracle that I, a green country boy of only seventeen years, in the coldest weather ever known not only in Missouri but throughout the entire country, could have made that trip and arrived at any destination without any serious mishap.
When I arrived at Springfield I found my neighbor boys Rice Dunn and Sam Wheeler had arrived there a few hours before I did. They were both surprised and glad to see me.
On the 8th day of January 1864 I was mustered into the service and assigned to Company "E" 6th Mo. State Militia and laid aside my citizen's clothes and donned a full suit of United States uniform, and drew my accoutrements which consisted of one of the old time long barreled muskets with bayonets so rude in construction that you could hardly hit a barn door a hundred yards distant with one of them, a Remington revolver, and a belt and cartridge box, that would old twenty-four cartridges consisting of one large ball and three buck shot, and powder enough to send these for quite a distance.
With my new uniform on with its glistening brass buttons and the golden colored stripes around the color and cuffs of the jacket, I felt that I was a real soldier and I though how proud "the girl I left behind me" would feel if she could see me in my new attire.
So with my belt and cartridge box buckled around me and with pistol in its scabbard and saber dangling at my side, I got a pass and went over into town and had my picture taken, and sent it back to my girl, who was about 22 years old while I was 17. Of course, when I saw her last only a week or so before, I thought her the prettiest and sweetest creature that I had ever known. But what changes will a few short months bring about in a boy's conception of woman's perfection, for when I saw her again some six months later, while on furlough, the delusion had vanished and to me all her beauty and loveliness had vanished and she appeared only as any other ordinary woman or girl to me. Now this does not prove that this girl I once thought the perfection of loveliness was any less lovely, but on the contrary, the fickleness of a green boy along this line, while in his teens.
When the war had closed and I had returned to the old home town, after nearly three years of experience gained in the crucible of war, I wanted that picture just for its comical appearance, so called at her home. She had married in the meantime. It was one of these old degareotype, as most of the pictures of that day were. She carefully wrapped it up and gave it to me, and I put it in my pocket and when I took it out to look at it later, I found that I had only the case with the picture gone. So I thought that if she really wanted the picture that bad, I would not deprive her of it. So I made no further effort to obtain it, I only wanted it for its oddity and I would give anything in reason if I could come in possession of it now.
It was only a few weeks after I joined the army until I was ordered on a scout down into Arkansas to disperse a force of Confederates whose frequent raids into Missouri. This force was commanded by a Colonel Freeman, ours by Captain Samuel E. Turner of Kingston, Missouri. We came onto the enemy while they were eating their dinner and after having dispersed them, we finished eating what they had hurriedly left. The Paymaster was in camp paying off these Southern soldiers and we captured his money chest and all his Confederate money, and our boys all had plenty of money. It was no good, however, after we got back in Missouri.
When I first donned my uniform and drew my arms, I felt that I could whip a half dozen of the Johnnies, but before we finished the raid I felt like it would be perfectly agreeable with me if in such an encounter we had half dozen to the other fellow's one.
We took seven days rations with us on this scout and were gone three weeks. After our rations had all been used up, we had to forage on the country and it was very slim picking as the men in that part of the state were all in the army except the old men and the boys that were too young to bear arms. The people would hide what little food they had, sometimes up in the loft of their cabin and sometimes under the floor - anywhere to save it.
After having accomplished what we were sent down there to do, we took up the march back to Springfield. When we got back to Forsythe, when we forded the White River, as we went down we found the river swollen from heavy rains while we were south of it. And there being no bridges nor ferryboats, we learned that up the river seven or eight miles, there was a canoe, one of these primitive kind that was dug out of a log. So we went up there, and camped that night, and the next morning about sunrise, we started crossing the river. The canoe would only carry two of the boys and their equipment and saddles and the oarsman. It was about a fourth of a mile from the river bank to the mountain, and the intervening space was covered with heavy timbers.
Sometime during the day the Johnnies began firing on us form the mountain top and kept up a desultory fire all day, and when all had crossed the river but about twenty0five of us, the Captain lined us up and called for the last two or three loads. I, thinking it would be brave, was one of the first to step out and volunteer. We thought it quite probable that after the greater part of the command had crossed over, that the Johnnies would rush down on us and capture the few remaining on that side of the river, but nothing happened to interfere with all of us getting over the river in safety.
It was my luck to be placed on picket duty some seventy-five or a hundred yards back from the river, to guard against a surprise, and as it was about dusk, I imagined that the shadow of every tree in the woods concealed an enemy slipping up on us. I never felt better than I did when I got in the last boat-load, and pulled for the shore of the opposite side. In getting our horses over, one in the canoe would lead one and one would rush a bunch of them in and swim across. We got back to Springfield without further incident.
Some two or three weeks after this, I was ordered on a scout again down into the same part of Arkansas. This time there was a larger force of us, near Yelleville, I was accidentally wounded by the discharge of a comrade's gun. This comrade was helping me bridle my horse that had slipped his bridle while we had stopped at a farm house to get a drink. I was placed in the ambulance and taken to Yelleville where I was left for three or four weeks until a government train of wagons came down bringing provisions for soldiers stationed in that part of the state. I was placed in one of these wagons and carried back to my regiment at Springfield, where I was taken to the Regimental Hospital. Here I remained until sometime in June.
When still on my crutches, I re-enlisted in the 13th Missouri Cavalry with many others of the old 6th M.S.M. Cavalry and we got a thirty day furlough with transportation home. I with others went to Kingston, Caldwell County, Missouri, my former home. As my parents had left there and moved to Kentucky, I had no home to which to go, but my comrades were especially kind to me, also their parents, and welcomed me into their homes - notable, the Crosses, the Rosses, and the Spiveys, who I remember with deepest gratitude. The people feasted us and entertained us with parties and every manner in which they could.
The thirty days furlough seemed to fly by with the rapidity of a drama, and we were having such a fine time that we hated to break away and go back to the regiment and to the humdrum of army life. So Will Spivey, who had married while at home on furlough, and who had a case of sore eyes, a very common disease in the army, and Jesse Ross, who had a felon on his thumb that nothing would ease so much as the kind ministrations of his best girl, and I, whose would had not entirely healed, and who had taken a strong fancy to one of Jesse Ross's sisters, went to the town doctor, old Dr. Smith, and got him to write us a certificate of disability for service for fifteen days. We sent this back to our Colonel by one of the boys. So our good times were lengthened out to forty-five days.
When this extension was up, we went to Hamilton and took the train over the Hannibal and St. Joe. Railroad, now the Burlington, to Macon, then over the North Missouri to St. Louis, where the regiment was gathered after the furlough had expired. We were quartered there at Benton Barracks until Price made his raid into Missouri. The first battalion consisting of companies A, B, C and D, of which my company "C" was a part, were ordered to north Missouri where the Confederate Col. Thrailkill was sent with quite a force, the purpose of which was to draw off quite a large part of Union forces from the pursuit of the Southern army.
We took the North Missouri Railroad there running from St. Louis to Macon, then transferred to the Hamilton and St. Joe and detrained at Cameron, there we were marched to Kingston, where Thrailkill had sacked the town. Here we got on his trail and followed to Mirable, a little town some five miles from Kingston, and found that he had sacked this town of everything his command needed and then headed for Clay County, where he re-crossed the Missouri River near Missouri City and regained the main Southern army's lines somewhere in Jackson County. While we were crowding him closely, we were never able to quite overtake him as he had considerable the start of us from Kingston. Our command went into camp at Liberty, while the forces of the Federal and Confederate Armies were fighting at Little Blue, Independence, Big Blue and Westport. The latter place was the decisive battle and broke the morale of the Southern forces.
We remained at Liberty about three months from Oct. 1864 to the latter part of December of the same year. Our duty while there was scouting after the Bushwhackers that then infested that part of the state. These included the James and Younger boys.
From Liberty, we went to St. Louis, entraining at Cameron, Mo. We loaded our horses in freight cars, we had to ride on top of these, not very pleasant riding. At St. Charles, there was no bridge across the Missouri River on which to cross the river, but a ferry boat equipped with a Railroad track on which the cars were run, one at a time, and carried over the river.
We remained at Benton Barracks some little time, then went to Rolla, and into winter quarters for the rest of the winter. While at Rolla, the Colonel of the regiment called on our company Captain to send to headquarters two of the best penmen of the Company for clerical duty. In the contest for these positions, Jesse D. Ross and I won out and were detailed for special duty at Regimental Headquarters. This duty consisted of making out payrolls, muster rolls, Commissary requisitions, details for scouting expeditions and various other lines of work connected with the headquarters.
Sometime in the latter part of the winter of 1864 and 65, a part of the Regiment was moved to Waynesville, the county seat of Pulaski County, and I was sent with this Command to that place, but still held to my position as clerk. We were there to furnish escorts for government trains that carried provisions from Rolla, the then terminus of the Iron Mountain Railroad running from St. Louis to Rolla, to Springfield, Mo., the main outfitting point in South Missouri. We were there when the war ended in April, 1865. From this point, the Regiment was ordered to concentrate at Rolla, and from there take up the march to the great plains country of the West, the objective being Denver city, Colorado. This was eleven years prior to Colorado's admission as a state into the Union.
At that time, the Indians were very bad in that part of the country; mainly the Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahoes, three of the most blood thirsty of all the Indian tribes. Our march from Rolla was at easy stages making an average of about twenty-five miles a day. At this late date, I remember only one of the towns through which we passed until we arrived at Kansas City, then a town of only a few hundred population - that was Pleasant Hill in Cass County. Two things caused me to remember this place. One was that the Surgeon of our Regiment and of the 6th Regiment also, Dr. W. H. H. Cundiff, lived there. The other was that the Mo. Pacific Railroad, the first railroad to build into Kansas City, was being graded at that point. Rather strange to say that the road over which we marched from Pleasant Hill to Kansas City ran within two hundred yards of the farm I later bought and lived on in South Jackson County for more than fifty years, and at this writing, expect to live upon it the remainder of my life.
This road crossed the little Blue River at the point then known as the old Harrisonville Ford about two miles southeast of what is now Grandview. We camped on the bank of Big Blue about one hundred and fifty yards southeast of what is now the town of Dodson, Missouri. That night, there came an awful downpour of rain that almost completely covered the ground in water. Lieutenant Thornton, as I now recall, and I slept to-gether and we cut a pile of brush and piled them up and spread our blankets on the brush to sleep on, so we could keep out of the water.
The next day, we passed through Kansas City down Main Street to the river, then up the river bottom, which then was covered with a thick growth of cottonwood timber, to the Kaw River, which we crossed on a shaky pontoon bridge and camped that night in Wyandotte County, now Kansas City, Kansas.
I am now going back in the narrative to the fall of 1864.
When a part of our regiment was stationed at Liberty, Mo., when we would have to go to Kansas City for our rations, we would cross the river on a ferry boat over to the south side where the Government warehouses were located on the levee of the river, load up the company's wagons, and return to Liberty. At that time, practically all the business of K.C. was done north of 5th Street and a large part of this was down on a levee where the many steamboats that plied the Mo. River unloaded and took on passengers and freight. There was no railroad in K.C.
When we first came to Liberty we were camped in a blue grass pasture just south of the town on the east side of the road leading down to Liberty Landing and only a short distance from William Jewell College. While there, I went to see old Pres. Thompson, who, before the Civil War, was president of this school. He had visited our house when I was a boy at Kingston as my father was a Baptist Minister and so was he. Two of my brothers attended this school. Brother Livingston was before the war while Mr. Thompson was Pres. And Brother Caney after the war had closed.
When the weather began to get cold, we broke camp in this blue grass pasture and moved over into town and took for our quarters a large brick building that stood on the southwest corner of the Public Square and qhich had been built and used for a hotel - "The Thompson House." While stationed at Liberty, the presidential election was held in Nov. 1864. I was in my eighteenth year and I cast my first vote for Abraham Lincoln, something I have been proud of all my life. Soldiers wearing the uniform were allowed to vote, even if they were under the required age.
While in camp, we usually had an abundance of rations, but our cooks were not always the best. There lived in Liberty at that time, and for many years before, a family by the name Grant Peter Grant, a distant relative of General Grant. This Mr. Grant had been a prominent citizen of Liberty, having been elected sheriff of Clay County for several terms. His family consisted of his wife and three daughters, all highly accomplished and educated. The two oldest ones were school teachers, the youngest daughter named Rose was very beautiful, about my age, and as boys of my age, not always indifferent to the charms of the milder sex, I naturally took a fancy to Rose.
But I am getting ahead of my story. The war made living very high, it was almost impossible for civilians to get the better things that entered into a normal diet: sugar, coffee, and flour especially. So four or five of us boys made a deal with this family to draw our rations and let them cook them and board us for the excess of rations over what we would consume. This was sufficient to supply this family with enough to feed them also, which was a boon to them. These people were intensely Southern in sentiment and many were the arguments we had at the table while eating our meals, but usually all in good humor. As I remember now, the other boys that boarded there with me were Will Spivey, Jesse Ross, Dave Snider and Dick Hutchings, all nice, well behaved boys. These girls were church attendants and I wanted to go with Rose so badly. I did not know what to do or how to proceed to accomplish my desire.
One Sunday evening after supper, I lingered at the table till the other boys had all gone back to their quarters, hoping that an opening might be made so I could ask Rose to accompany her to church. My timidity was caused on the ground that these people were such strong Southern sympathizers and I took it for granted that they would not want to be seen in Church with a Union soldier, especially in a town so strongly Southern as Liberty was at that time. It was getting close to the time for the girls to start, and my heart was palpitating with hope and fear, when Mrs. Grant, mother-like, divined my feelings and said, "Mr. Hill, wouldn't you like to go with the girls to church?" So with this encouragement, I no longer hesitated, and when they were ready, I asked Rose if I could have the pleasure of accompanying her, which she most graciously granted.
There was something connected with the uniform of a soldier that naturally appeals to those of the opposite sex, although they may be on the opposite side in war. I suppose it is due in a large measure to the fact that usually the soldier is young, and that his uniform is flashy and shining and he is drilled in the school of military discipline, and he has to carry his person in a straight and erect position, but whatever the reason, it is true that a soldier, other things being equal, can easily ingratiate himself in the good graces of a girl when a civilian of equal merit could not.
After the incident above narrated, I would linger at this home after the other boys had returned to camp. The family all seemed to take an interest in me. I was young, passably good looking, had been raised in a family of refinement, brought up by a father that was quite strict in his discipline of his children, so I knew how to deport myself in society. But this pleasant relation between Rose and myself was of short duration, as the Command was soon ordered to strike camp and go to St. Louis as above mentioned. But before going, I made arrangements with Rose to correspond with her after I had become permanently settled. So when we got to Rolla and went into winter quarters, I wrote her, but instead of getting a reply from her, got a letter from her next older sister Lizzie, telling me of Rose's death and stating that she was on her death bed when she received my letter, and that she requested her to answer it, as she did not want me to think that she had treated my letter with indifference.
Thus was shattered another one of life's young dreams, and another tragedy was enacted in the seemingly untimely death of a beautiful young life. Of course, I answered this letter expressing my very deep sorrow and warm sympathy for the family. Lizzie and I from the beginning kept us a desultory correspondence, just a friendly one, until I was married. I have some of these letters still after more than sixty years.
I relate these incidents in my young life as I proceed with this narrative because such or similar events are common in the experience of most all normal persons.
When I digressed from this story to tell about my experiences with the Grant family at Liberty, I was telling of the crossing of the Kaw River and camping that night in Wyandotte County, now Kansas City, Kansas. The next day, we marched to Fort Leavenworth, where we camped that night, then resumed our march to Fort Riley and on to Salina, Elsworth, and Fort Zarah. This latter place was on the Walnut River and was named for the wife of Gen. John C. Fremont.
From there we went to Fort Larned, then back to Fort Riley where we spent some little time. Here was the first large bunch of Indians I had seen since I was a boy, living some fifty miles north of St. Louis in Warren Co. The Government at that time was moving them from the South to Western Reservations. About five hundred Indians came into Fort Riley one night and put on one of their war dances and it was comical in the extreme.
From Fort Riley, we took up our march to Denver, Colorado, escorting General Upton, the author of "Upton's Military Tactics," under which the military forces were then operating and who was to assume command of that military department. Our march was up the Smoky Hill River, a new route from Fort Riley to Denver and between the old Santa Fe Route on the south and the Omaha and Denver Route up the South Platte River on the north.
The first buffalo we encountered was on our march to Larned between Ft. Riley and Salina, the latter place then only a small trading post and where some soldiers were stationed for escort duty and to keep the Indians at bay. There were only a few buffalo at first, but the further we got from civilization, the thicker they got, and when we neared the Colorado and Western line of Kansas, they were a solid mass as far as we could see in every direction. Perhaps we passed through fifty miles of them - millions and millions of them.
We remained at Denver only a short time, going from there down the South Platte River to Fort Garland, about eighty miles from Denver, and went into camp there. The regiment was then scattered into different detachments and placed at various stations along the main road that followed the Platte River from Omaha to Denver. These stations were some ten to fifteen miles apart and consisted of a settler's store, a company or more of soldiers, some sod houses for quarters and a large corral built of sod with walls about ten feet high with port holes through which the soldiers could shoot in case of attacks by Indians, which was not infrequent.
The duty of these soldiers was largely escorting the Government wagon trains that hauled supplies from the Missouri River - which at that time was alive with steamboats to various points in the Rocky Mountains, and the stage line. At that time, the Indians were on the war path and committed many atrocities, acts of savagery, such as capturing small squads of soldier wagon trains and killing and scalping all the whites they could get hold of, after cutting their hearts out, and shooting their bodies full of arrows. There was at that time - 1865 - practically no white settlement between Fort Riley and Denver, nor between Denver and Fort Kearney, Nebr., only great reaches of timberless prairies, sand hills, buffalo grass, sage brush, vast herds of buffalo, as before mentioned, from Salina to Denver, or a part of this way, with large droves of antelopes, jack rabbits, wolves, and prairie dogs. There were no buffalo at that time on the Platte River.
Most of the time we were in Colorado - this was from June 1865 to May 1966 when the regiment was mustered out at Fort Leavenworth. I was on detached service at Regimental headquarters at Fort Garland as clerk and therefore did not come in contact with the Indians to any great extent.
I remember one time in particular when the Sioux Indians had attacked a wagon train of forty of fifty wagons on the Platte river Road some little distance west of Julesburg, Colorado, and the news came to us some twenty miles distant that the Lieutenant in command of the station at which a party of my company was stationed hurriedly started to the relief of the train with thirty-eight of us. We rode the twenty miles at double quick and when we came on site, the whole county seemed alive with Indians. But the Lieutenant ordered a charge and we went for them at full speed, but as soon as they saw us, they made a dash for their ponies and rushed into the Platte River and across to the other side and disappeared in the sand hills.
Those that were left dead on the ground were large, fine specimens of manhood, no clothes on, save only a breach cloth and their bodies were painted and their heads shaved bare, save only a narrow strip of hair left on the center of their head running back from the forehead.
While we were stationed on the Platte River, there came to our command a little white boy who had escaped from the Sioux Indians. He was about twelve years of age and had been captured by the Indians when a baby. He could talk only in Indian dialect and when he did, he told us about his escape. He said after the Indians had all gone to sleep, he got up and got on his pony and made for our camp. He had known from raids of the Indians that there were white people over on the Platte, and he knew that he was a white and not an Indian, and he rode his pony so hard and so far that it died and left him a-foot. Said he built up a fire out of buffalo chips around him and got in the center so the wolves would not get him. Sleeping with me one night in my tent, and when he waked up the next morning, there had been a big snow, and when he first saw it, he exclaimed, "Ho, ho Sioux, he heap cold! Pale Face, he heap warm!"
Lieutenant Salles of my company took charge of the boy, and I learned that after we were mustered out, he advertised the fact of his possession of him, and a family in Ill. Claimed him and identified him by a scar on his neck caused by a burn.
Soon after, we got settled on the Platte River, and just subsequent to the narrative about the Indian boy, I was ordered to Fort Garland, to clerk at Regimental Headquarters and continued in this position until the Regiment was mustered out.
The winter of 1865-66 was very severe in Colorado and Fort Garland was eighty miles from the mountains from where all the wood for fuel had to come in Government trains. In good weather we could gather buffalo chips sufficient to make fire for our cooking, but when the ground was covered with snow, this means of securing fuel was cut off and during the winter we ran out of wood and had to dig up sage brush roots for fuel. This was a very cold and tedious task with a foot of snow on the ground. The tops of this sagebrush resembled the sage our mothers used to grow in their gardens, but it had a heavy root, often as large as the wrist of an ordinary sized man and burned quite well.
About the first of May 1866, our Regiment was ordered to Fort Leavenworth to be mustered out. Jesse Ross and I filled out the blank discharges of our Company "C." After we had bought citizens clothes over in the city, most of us threw away our uniforms and donned our new suits and stacked or turned into the Port Quartermaster all of our equipment (our arms, we could have retained at a nominal price and I have regretted a thousand times that I did not keep mine for an heirloom to hand down to my children).
We were furnished transportation to our homes which were scattered through various sections of Missouri. All of us that were returning to North Missouri took a steam boat to St. Joe, and we Caldwell Co. boys took the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad from there to Cameron, and then detrained and got to our individual homes as best we could.
Looking back over my army life with a retrospective of more than three score years, I remember much that was trying, many dangers, long, trying marches that were accompanied with hunger so severe that we could relish a raw piece of salt bacon or any other food. But at the same time, there was much that was pleasant and enjoyable, experiences that have lived through all these years that have been a source of comfort to me, friendships formed in the crucible of war's trials and war's dangers that have lived through all these years, and the greatest satisfaction I have gotten out of this nearly two and one-half years of service for my country is to have been permitted to live to see that country grow from a population of about thirty-three million of people to one hundred and twenty millions and to know that our country, once torn, rent with war's deadly strife and sectional bitter feuds, has become the most powerful and beneficient nation ever instituted among men, and that the dear old Stars & Stripes wave again in triumph, unobstructed from the cool lakes of the North to the sunny gulfs of the South, and from the Eastern seas to the waters that were the lands of the Pagans, and that a homogenous people, devoted to one flag and one country, obey one Constitution and are loyal to one country. To have been permitted through an infintessimal way of having helped to bring this about has been one of the most worthwhile things of my life.
I stayed in Caldwell Co. some three or four weeks, mostly at Kingston, my old home, and Mirable, a little village town in the same county. I had not seen any of my parent's family for nearly three years - a long time in a boy's life. So I decided to make them a visit, not knowing how I would be received, as they so strongly opposed my going into the Union Army.
As stated before, they had moved to Kentucky, so I took the Hannibal and St. Joe train for that state. I stopped off at Bexier, Mo. Where my brother Tom was at work and spent a night with him. He was running a pile driver for this road. Then I stopped off at Logansport, Ind. Near where I had a sister living at that time and spent a few days with her and her husband, Joe Bruen. Then she and her two children, Quint and Fannie, went with me to Kentucky where we took the stage to Walton, Kentucky, where my brother Judd met us in a one-horse carriage borrowed from a neighbor.
It was about nine miles from Walton to home and the road quite rough, and the old mare hitched to the vehicle would balk at most every hill and Judd and I would have to get out and encourage her by pushing the carriage. We finally reached home and received a warm welcome from all the family. It was some time in June when I got home and I helped the boys with their crop. Although the country looked very poor, a good crop was grown that season, showing that the country was more productive that its appearance would indicate.
I found a good class of people lived in that part of the state, but they were extreme Southerners in sentiment, very few that had been loyal to the government during the war. The young men had largely been in the Southern Army and as the war had only been over a little more than a year, it was only natural that prejudice ran high against those that stood by the Union in that fratricidal conflict. An older brother who was a radical sympathizer with the South, talking to me one day shortly after I had arrived home, advised me not to talk about having been in the Union army, as the girls of that community would slight me in company and they would have nothing to do with me if I showed too plainly that I was proud that I had worn the uniform of a Federal Soldier. I replied that the Kentucky girls could go to no-man's land as far as I was concerned if they did not want to keep company with me because of the course I pursued during the war.
When I went to Kentucky to visit my folks, I thought I would stay there only a short time and then return to my native state of Missouri, where all my boyhood days had been spent. But an event occurred soon after I got there that completely changed my purpose and caused me to remain there until the coming March of 1967.
I had not been at home long until I heard my folks talk much about a certain neighbor and family by the name of Pinkston, especially about their grown daughter Cyrene. Their praise of her was so flattering that I was impressed with her fine qualities before I had seen her. My father's folks and this family attended the same church (Concord Baptist) which was about a mile from where we lived, and the Pinkston family had to come by our house on their way to church. On a Sunday morning soon after I got home, Cyrene - for this was the daughter's name - and her brother, Joe, came along on their way to church and stopped in front of our house to speak to sister Hattie about something and she went out to the still-block (as this was used at that time largely, instead of a yard gate, off of which the women could get on their horses. Everyone at that time rode horseback) - and while out talking to Cyrene and Joe, she called to me to come out to where they were talking and sister Hattie introduced me to them.
Cyrene reached out her delicately gloved hand and gave me a warm hand clasp. As I looked up into her soft blue eyes, I thought her the most lovely creature I had ever met. She seemed to me to embody all that was lovely and beautiful in woman, and something right there told me that her live and mine were going to be blended into one life, and that our pathway was going to be along the same beaten path until death should part us.
She most graciously invited me to call on her at her home which my sister Hattie and I did the very next Sunday afternoon. From that day on, I became a frequent visitor at her home. When I went back in the house after meeting her the first time, I said to my mother, "Mother, I am going to marry that girl." Mother laughingly remarked, "Will you hush that foolishness!"
Yet, I knew that nothing would please her more than to have Cyrene as a part of her family. I had had other lady friends that I thought a great of and thought that I really loved as boys of from eighteen to twenty years usually think they do, but no other ever appealed to me with such overwhelming force and gripped my heart with such strong and yet tender cords as this beautiful and lovely Kentucky girl did. Her while life reflected the same perfection that I saw in her at her first meeting. Here was a beautiful Christian character, I think one of the most perfect lives that I have ever known. She had a supreme faith and trust in her heavenly Father. Her friends were only limited by her acquaintance, and for more than a quarter of a century, my life was made sweet by the warmth and sunshine of her pure sweet love.
When the Civil War broke out I had only a limited school education, as the schools of Missouri prior to that time were only three.
(Here, the narrative ends abruptly, without even a signature.)
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