Tennessee: Second Confederate Flag Stolen
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — One of five flagpoles at Oak Hill Cemetery in Johnson City is empty this week for the second time this month after someone stole the Confederate flag it bore.
Katie Walker, of the Johnson City Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy, with a 1st National Flag of the Confederacy like the two that were stolen. (Tony Duncan/Johnson City Press)
“It’s the second time in the last two weeks it’s happened,” said cemetery owner Tim McKinney. He found the empty flagpole, with its rope dangling in the wind, on Tuesday. He was there to mow the grounds.
“It was a brand new flag,” he said. The Confederate flag, which usually flies in a Confederate soldiers’ grave section, was provided by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
UDA President Katie Walker said she was surprised the first time the flag was taken, but disappointment replaced that when she got the second call from McKinney.
“I was surprised” the first time, she said. “I just didn’t think anybody would climb over that fence to do that. I figured it was a prank and wouldn’t happen again.”
When McKinney called her on Tuesday, Walker was “disappointed and a little angry that someone would do that in a cemetery. I see no reason why they should do that.”
Walker said there are 40 cemetery plots for Confederate soldiers, but only nine are occupied. In that section, which borders Boone Street, the organization installed a flagpole a couple of years ago to display the national Confederate flag.
“There are nine Confederate veterans buried in those plots. We wanted a way to honor them (so) we put up that flagpole and put a marker there,” she said.
Other Confederate soldiers — 60 in all — are buried throughout the cemetery, she said.
For now, that flagpole will likely stay empty, Walker said.
Anyone with information about the thefts can contact the Johnson City Police Department at 434-6166.
-Johnson City Press
###
Mississippi: Civil War Exhibit Honors Black Caregivers
An exhibit honoring African Americans who served in health care professions during the Civil War will be displayed at Union University’s Emma Waters Summar Library Saturday through Dec. 14.
The “Binding Wounds, Pushing Boundaries: African Americans in Civil War Medicine” exhibit is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s traveling exhibition program, according to a news release. The exhibit consists of six panels featuring photos and facts about how African Americans helped heal the wounded during the war.
“The involvement of African Americans in Civil War medicine is a part of history that’s not well known,” said Paul Sorrell, creative projects coordinator for library services, in the release. “The panels tell a new story of an old event.”
Anna Beth Morgan, associate professor of library services and associate vice president for academic resources, said Union is the first site in West Tennessee to showcase the panels.
The exhibit will be inside the library to the right of the entrance. At least one case of Civil War artifacts will be displayed near the panels. Medical antiquities on loan from Jackson’s Carnegie Center for the Arts and History, the Brooks Shaw Collection from the Old Country Store and the Jackson-Madison County General Hospital also will be displayed.
The library will host a reception and presentations for the exhibit Nov. 7. The reception will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the library, where attendees can view the panels and artifacts. Presentations will follow at 7:30 p.m. in room D-3 in the Penick Academic Complex.
In the presentations, David Thomas, professor of history, will discuss the war’s historical significance, and Jill Webb, professor of nursing and assistant director of the Honors Community, will talk about the war’s medical aspects.
Morgan said local social studies classes may visit the exhibit, and a detailed curriculum for children and young adults is available for teachers who want to incorporate the exhibit into their lesson plans.
“It’s important to respect the work that African Americans have done,” Morgan said in the release. “The exhibit itself was birthed out of an understanding that the role of African Americans in the Civil War, particularly in health care, has been understated through the years.”
For more information about the exhibit curriculum, visitwww.nlm.nih.gov. To learn more about the exhibit, call Melissa Moore, Union’s public services librarian, at (731) 661-5408.
-The Jackson Sun
###
Georgia: Augusta to Celebrate Civil War 150th Anniversary
AUGUSTA, Ga, — To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States, the Historic Augusta Foundation has planned a symposium series focused on the topics of “family, medicine, and the home front” in 1863.
The two-day event features a variety of presentations that are sure to interest area history buffs, particularly those most intrigued by the Civil War era.
On Friday, Nov. 8, at 6:30 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church, Dr. Stephen Berry will deliver a lecture entitled “House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War.”
Photo courtesy of researchonline.net The First Presbyterian Church of Augusta is pictured.
The talk will be based largely on his book of the same title, in which he argues that the president’s reluctance to punish the South after the war may stem, in part, from his complicated relationship with his in-laws. Mary Todd Lincoln was one of 14 siblings split between the North and South; she had three brothers who fought for the Confederacy.
The author of four books about 19th-century America, Berry holds an endowed chair in Civil War history at the University of Georgia; he is currently working on a biography of Edgar Allan Poe.
Following Berry’s lecture, there will be a reception at the Boyhood Home of Woodrow Wilson and the Lamar Boyhood Home, both diagonally across the street from the church. These two Friday events, the lecture and the reception, are free and open to the public.
The second day of the symposium – Saturday, Nov. 9 – includes four talks, all at the Morris Museum of Art.
The first is scheduled for 9 a.m.; at that time Erick Montgomery, executive director of Historic Augusta since 1989, will discuss what he has learned from his five-year research on the genealogy of both the Wilson and Woodrow families.
The fruit of his scholarship was published as a book in 2006: “Thomas Woodrow Wilson: Family Ties and Southern Perspective.”
Born in Virginia and raised in Georgia and South Carolina, Wilson identified himself as a Southerner; but his family connections, just like that of Abraham Lincoln, were more complicated than one might suppose.
His father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was pro-Confederacy. He was a founding member of the southern branch of the Presbyterian Church in America, which split off from its northern counterpart due to sectarian differences; as the war dragged on, the Rev. Wilson opened up the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta where he was pastor as a hospital for wounded soldiers.
What the average person may not know, however, is that six of the future president’s Wilson uncles were pro-Unionist. Hailing from Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana respectively, several of them served in the Union army. Like so many families during the War Between the States, the Wilson and Woodrow families were a “house divided.”
At 10:45, the topic “Medical Experiences of the Civil War – At Home and in the Field” will be addressed by Dr. Alfred Jay Bollet.
A recognized expert on the medical history of that period, Bollet argues in his book entitled “Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs” that our popular conception of the horrors of the field hospital system is misinformed.
According to Bollet, after the problems encountered in the first year of the war, both the North and the South made significant advances in medical practice; and he cites, in particular, the development of an efficient ambulance corps on both sides and the many dedicated doctors and nurses in the huge military hospitals that sprang up as a result of the national conflict.
Dr. Lee Ann Caldwell, Historian-in-Residence at Georgia Regents University, will speak about the Augusta home front in 1863.
The author of a highly popular eighth-grade social studies text entitled “Georgia: Its Heritage and Its Promise,” Caldwell has written a series of articles about Augusta history for “Augusta Magazine.”
The final two events in the Saturday program are a reader’s theater presentation organized by Dr. Jim Garvey, a retired communications and professional writing professor at Georgia Regents University, and a museum tour of a special exhibition of works on paper from the Civil War era.
Although the Friday program is free, there is a charge of $30 per participant for the Saturday lectures and tour. Advance registration is also required by Nov. 7 at the latest.
One can make reservations by calling 706-724-0436 or emailing Historic Augusta at info@historicaugusta.org.
A check or money order (made out to Historic Augusta) can be mailed to P.O. Box 37, Augusta, GA 30903. For those mailing in their registration fees, please include name, postal address, phone number, email address, and number of attendees. A recipient of the prestigious Carolina Trustee Professorship in 2008, Dr. Tom Mack currently holds the G.L. Toole Chair at USC Aiken.
-The Aiken Standard
###
Virginia: Civil War Field Hospital Opened to Public
CHESTERFIELD, Va. — County residents got a first-time glimpse of Civil War medical history right in their own backyards with the opening of Historic Point of Rocks. The site, which was used as a field hospital during the Civil War, is now open to the public for programs and other events. Up until Living History Day on Saturday, Chesterfield County only opened the house to visitors by appointment.
The Surry Line Artillery Civil War reenactors prepare to fire a cannon as part of an artillery demo for Living History Day on Saturday. The event was held at Historic Point of Rocks, Chesterfield’s newest Civil War park.
The house was owned by the Rev. John Alexander Strachan, the founder of Enon Baptist Church. During the Civil War, the property was occupied by Union soldiers, and used as a field hospital from May of 1864 until the end of the conflict.
The site was also visited by President Abraham Lincoln 18 days before he was assassinated on April 15 1865, and two days before Petersburg fell to the Union Army.
The Union Army disassembled Enon Baptist Church and erected it on the grounds of Point of Rocks as a hospital building. Strachan was able to reclaim his land with a petition of the government in 1866, following the end of the Civil War. The house was owned by the members of the Strachan family from 1640 until 2012, when ownership transferred to Chesterfield County.
To celebrate the property’s history, Living History Day brought a historical interpreter of Clara Barton, and interpreters of Civil War era soldiers and surgeons to the grounds.
Historical interpreter Mary Ann Jung portrayed Barton, who served during the summer of 1864 as superintendent of the nurses at the hospital. Visitors also enjoyed an artillery demonstration.
Members of the Society of Civil War Surgeons, a national organization of Civil War medical reenactors, displayed surgical equipment from the era and discussed surgical techniques.
Thomas Wheat, a member of the society, said that surgical practices were very crude. Surgeons amputated limbs if bullets caused a soldier’s bones to shatter, or harmed a main artery. Wheat said that such injuries today could be treated without amputation.
“They would separate the patient from their affliction,” he said.
Scott Williams, chair of the military history committee for the Chesterfield Historical Society, said that opening up the site for programs would let more people know about its existence.
“So much of the history we are interpreting today, we have found in the past few years,” he said, “I don’t know how it slipped through the cracks that there was a major hospital here.”
To make the site even more inviting to the public, 12 interpretive signs will be added to the area by the Blue and Gray Education Society, a non-profit Civil War educational association. The signs will be installed in December, along with others at all of the county’s historic sites. The county plans to have the floor of the house stabilized, and to eventually restore the property.
Jane and Brian Zimmerman, residents of Enon, could be seen making their way down the grounds for an artillery demonstration. The Zimmermans knew very little about the site’s historic significance before their visit.
“It’s nice to have something like this in our own backyard,” Brian Zimmerman said.
###
