By Ann Parker

My Great, Great Grandfather was Richard Ferdinand Woodroof.  He was born in Rutherford County in 1820.  He enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1862 when he was forty two years old.  He had a wife and seven children.  During the war he was taken ill with Typhoid fever and was left in an attic of a hotel by his company commander.  He was provided with an army nurse to take care of him.  While he was convalescing the Yankees came through.  They found him and took his clothing, his watch and his money and also that of the nurse.  Just as the Yankees  were about to shoot  them both, a Yankee sergeant came up the stairs. Richard Woodroof  noticed a Masonic pin on his lapel.  He was also a Mason and gave the Masonic sign to the sergeant.  The sergeant ordered the soldiers to give back the clothing, money and watch, and spared the lives of the two men. 

When the war was over and   Richard Woodroof was on the way home he often had to go without food.  Once when he had been three days without eating he stopped at a farmhouse and asked for some food.  A very nice lady answered the door and said the Yankees had been through and had taken all the food except chitterlings.  She cooked them and Richard Woodroof said that was the best food he ever tasted.  After the war he always had chitterlings cooked at home.

While Richard Woodroof was away in the war the Yankees came through Rutherford County.  The Woodroofs were carpenters and had built false panelling in the walls of the farmhouse to hide food such as flour, beans and corn meal.  The Yankees did not notice the panelling.  They tore out the underpinnings of the farmhouse but all they found was an old hog jowl. The children all ran to hide before the Yankees reached the house.  My grandfather Richard Jr. hid in the orchard.  Some of the girls and Richard Woodroof's mother-in-law hid in the barn.  A Yankee went in the barn and tried to steal a saddle. Richard's mother-in- law grabbed the saddle and hit the soldier with it nearly knocking him unconscious.  He pulled his gun and was about to fire when the captain came in the barn and ordered him to put the gun away saying the Union Army was not fighting women and children.