Reminiscences of Smithville

SMITHVILLE REVIEW
Smithville, Tennessee

March 31, 1927

REMINISCENCE No. 4
by W.T. Foster

Among those who joined Company A, L. N. Savage, Captain, May 1861, and which was Mustered into the sixteenth Regiment June 9, were four Kerseys, Pomp, A. J., Felix, and Calvin. Felix was killed at Murfreesboro, A. J. at Franklin. The people of Dekalb County and the burgs of Liberty and Smithville in particular will bear witness that in ' 63 and ' 64 up to July 24, Pomp Kersey was very much alive. The exact date of Pomp Kersey's return to his home in the Short mountain country, I can not ascert ain. He left Capt. Savage's company and never returned to it, and I am inclined to think this was in 1862, as that date will better accommodate itself to the series of events that took place and of which I wish to speak. The fact that Capt. Savage was k illed in the battle at Murfreesboro about Jan. 2, 1863, and that Pomp is supposed to have left the company while it was still commanded by Savage, seems to indicate that he began his guerrilla life in 1862. Smithville, like all the towns in the border st ates had its federal sympathizers among its citizens. The fact that a man had voted against secession, seemed to class him as a federal sympathizer. My father voted to remain in the Union on the two occasions, February 9 and June 8, 1861. The additiona l fact that his sons were found on opposing sides in the latter part of the war made his lot a still more difficult one. His age rendered him unfit for service as a soldier but his services as saddler and harness-maker were in great demand and he was usu ally supplied with a moderate amount of cash. No sooner had Kersey organized his gang of bush-whackers than he began to pay regular nocturnal visits to Smithville and my father was one of his favorite victims as he could be relied on to make a contributi on to Pomps exchequer. I shall never forget the night they rode into the hall of our home where the jail now stands. We were roused from sleep by shots fired in every direction from the square. All this firing accompanied by the clatter of horses over the streets and the savage yelling and cursing of the fifteen or twenty guerrillas made life in Smithville in those days anything but diversion. The stamping and plunging of the horses in the hall, the threats and oaths of the invaders, the pleading of m y father and step-mother for better treatment at their hands, utterly dazed me as a child of not more than four years, and accordingly I crawled out of bed and descended to the hall among the horses. My father saw me in time to rescue me from being tramp led, threw me under the bed this time and in no uncertain tones said, " Stay under there you little d----." I stayed. After a sound choking of my parents they brought out the money and Pomp promptly annexed it. The imprints of horse-shoes remained on t he hall floor for many years after the war, even till an entirely new floor was laid. These robbing invasions occurred at regular intervals and short ones at that. I remember that Uncle Nathan Newby came down from Warren County one evening and tied his horse in the back yard for the night. That night Pomp descended from his Rendezvous on Short Mountain, surprised Smithville with one of his wildest demonstration killed Uncle's horse on sight, choked the old people into the usual surrender of all cash on hand, tackled Uncle Nathan using their strangling methods on him. In the interval between chokes, he denied having any money, stuttering greatly, however, he was expecting to be killed. Our cow in the backyard came in for a shot, the ball grazing the s pine, greatly exciting her but doing no permanent damage. We are not surprised at General Sherman's definition of war, after a night with Pomp Kersey. Time and again just such nights as the ones above described were experienced by the people of Smithvil le in those awful last years of the Civil War, Liberty suffered as badly, perhaps, as shown in the ruthless midnight murder of Benjamin Blades, whose only provocation was that he was a Union man. Pomp and his gang surrounded his house, put on a terrifyi ng demonstration and shot this good man and prominent merchant through the door before he could open it, killing him instantly. To display their utter abandon they made the night air resound with a couplet set to music which ran with a lilting swing:

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Liberty's arising
Benjamin Blades is a-merchandising!"

At this distance it is hard to understand why this band of guerrillas was tolerated for any length of time, much more so that it was tolerated to July 24, 1864.

The next paper will conclude the notice of this band.

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SMITHVILLE REVIEW
Smithville, Tennessee

April 7, 1927

REMINISCENCE No. 5
by W.T. Foster

My father, W. G. Foster, at last grew tired of paying unwilling tribute to Pomp Kersey into whose pistol muzzle he had been forced to look on so many occasions. My step-mother, Judy, too, had a surfeit of rough handling each time the marauders c ome, and when the Federal lines extended to include Wilson County we moved to the vicinity of Watertown. I shall never forget the wonderful peace that came to us when we realized the guerrillas could not reach us. We had our inconveniences of course, du ring the two or three winters we spent there, living in at least four different houses. I think the Watertown school house was the first we occupied, temporarily, of course, and it was here, sitting on a high rail fence down at the turn-pike that I saw m y first really great spectacle, Wheeler's Cavalry go by. My impression is that they were going east, riding two abreast, and I shall never forget how I watched that long line of horsemen pour steadily over the hill near Cherry Valley and fade away toward the east. I sat on that fence for hours as the horses went by in an average walk or shuffling jog. Nobody seemed in a hurry. As I sat there that day a childish witness to the pomp and majesty of war, awed and intimidated as I was by numbers,noise,shee r avoirdupois and might, I felt all the elation, heaped on the army all the adulation, and worshipped as devotedly at the shrine of Mars as was possible to a child of my age. Looking back now I realize what an appalling waste of energy there was whether that energy be considered as stored up in men, horses, material, or what not. Surely the pomp and glory of war is a chimera. Is it possible that war has had the nations fooled all these ages? I do not doubt it for an instant. The Sermon on the Mount u niversally adopted as the law of nations would turn swords into pruning hooks, warships into tractors, and munitions plants into fertilizer factories. The colossal crime of humanity is war! We have extolled it, filled our school histories with its reci tal, set a halo of glory about it absolutely out of all proportion to its deserts, till our young people come to look lightly on fields of blood, national waste as a matter of course, and the creation of infernal extermination machines as the grandest occ upation of human beings.

All society depends for its stability on antagonism, not agreement. The Pomp Kersey regime had sooner or later to meet disaster. On the night of July 23, 1864, a dance occured at the home of Mr. Dennis on Canal Creek. At the dance were Bill Ha thaway, T.C. Bratten, Henry Blackburn, a Mr. Parrish, Dr. P. C. Shields and later came Louis Lyles and James Clarke, a mere boy. Kersey had been tipped off as to the dance. With fourteen men he rode from his rendezvous on Short Mountain, halted near the Dennis home and waited. Hathaway tired out went to a room and went soundly to sleep. Bratten was sitting talking to a young lady. The night was far spent and two of the dancers came out to mount their horses. At that time pandemonium broke loose. Wi th diabolical yells and a broad-side of shots, Kersey was upon them, filling the yard and surrounding the house. The net result was James Clark killed, the precipitate flight of the others to Liberty, and a resolution registered that Kersey and his band should die. By noon of July 24 the avenging band of twelve men, Hathaway, Bratten, Gan and nine others, were picking up the trail of the guerrillas. In the after-noon fragments of hay which they had foraged were found on the trail to Short Mountain. Th ese were followed as far as caution would permit. The rendezvous was discovered to be in a thicket near a place called Half Acre. Hathaway and his men crawled cautiously through the underbrush and came in range of the sleepers, eight in number in one gr oup and two in another. A well-planned fusillade rang out and five of the larger group were dead. Pomp and two others unhurt sprang up and one of them ran and escaped. Pomp became entangled with his horse and was killed as was his companion. The two m en apart from the eight, Ike Gleason and E. J. Hawkins escaped. The seven men were thrown on a two-wheel ox-cart and hauled to Liberty, some heads dragging the ground in low places it was reported, thrown into a vacant store for the night and next day bu ried in one big square grave near the town bridge. Thus short shrift was made of DeKalb's greatest terror during the war and the death of Clarke, Blades, Colwell, Rigsby, and maybe others avenged. Two queries presented themselves: Were the bodies of t he seven men labeled before burial? Did Col. Joe Blackburn help hunt them down?

A song that became popular in that section began thus:

We had a little party
On the banks of Canal,
Along came Pomp Kersey
And whipped us like Hell!
We routed, we scouted
All half the next day,
And found the bushwhackers
By scatters of hay!

Chorus:
Huzza! Huzza!
We're a nation so true,
Three cheers for Abe Lincoln,
The red, white and blue!

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Last update: February 2, 1997

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