New Documents on Col. Robert Lowry’s raid on Jones County, Mississippi

Recently, I received an email message from Richard A. Jermyn, Jr., whose great-great grandfather and great grandfather both participated in Confederate Col. Robert Lowry’s raid on the Unionist/deserter stronghold of Jones County, Mississippi, during the Civil War.

The Jermyn family was from Handsboro and Mississippi City of Coastal Mississippi, where James Jermyn was actively engaged in trade between Mississippi City and New Orleans. “Mobile, the Mississippi Coast, and New Orleans,” writes descendant Richard Jermyn, “were intimately tied together via coastal shipping, . . . . Handsboro and Mississippi City were centers of commerce in the region up to the Civil War.” Great-great grandfather James, “born in Yarmouth, England, was a cabin boy on a British ship, jumped ship in New Orleans at the age of nine years old, fought in the Mexican war, eventually settled in Handsboro/Mississippi City as a schooner/packet boat captain, and was enlisted [in the Confederate Army] for the duration of the Civil War.” (1)

 In spring 1861, James Jermyn enlisted in Co. E of the 20th Mississippi Infantry (“Adams Rifles” of Harrison County), which was later joined with the 6th Mississippi Regiment to quell unrest in the Jones County region of the state. Later, his son, Robert Alfred Jermyn, enlisted in the same company. I find it particularly interesting that the father and son participated in the Lowry raid as regular soldiers, and thus might have offered a different perspective on events than the two officers, Col. Lowry of the 6th Miss. Reg’t., and Col. William N. Brown of the 20th Miss. Inf., who also provided eye-witness accounts.  

Alas, despite the fact that James Jermyn’s narrative diary survived the war, and despite a note that he wrote to his wife Samantha from Knight’s Mill on May 5, 1864 (just following the Lowry raid), James provided few details about the raid itself.  What he does provide, however, is possibly the only written day-by-day description of the men’s movements during the course of that raid. For those details alone, the diary of James Jermyn is invaluable. (2)  Portions of that diary are reproduced below, with original spelling and punctuation left intact.

 On April 14, James Jermyn wrote:

Left camp near Raleigh [Smith Co., MS] at 11 a.m. marched 12 miles and rested about 2 hours and then Scouted all night.

On April 15, he reported that his unit had

Stopped at Mr. Rob’t Hawthorn’s at sunrise and slept in the Ginroom till 12M when we marched to the Leaf River and crossed at Mr. Blackwell’s and marched to Knight’s Mills & Bivouaked Dist 8 miles.

At that point, the two units were amid deserters. All three of the above surnames—Hawthorn (Hathorn), Blackwell, and Knight—may be found among men listed on Newt Knight’s roster.

On the 17th, James wrote in somewhat unclear language that Co. E had

Left camp near Knight’s Mills and deployed as Skirmishers & drove Black Creek to the mouth crossed Tallahoma creek and marched about 3 mile and Bivouaked at night.

On April 18, he wrote, the men

Left at sunrise deployed skirmishers and drove the rest of Tallahoma & Tallahala Creeks and then marched to Ellisville and rested until 4AM.

On April 19,

Left Ellisville at Daylight marched 3 miles and then deployed skirmishers. Skirmished about 10 miles up Tallahala and then marched 8 miles to Mile’s Mills & Bivoaked.

On April 20,

Left Mile’s Mills at Sunrise and marched 7 miles and Bivoaked at Copeland’s Mills at 11 A.M. and marched 16 miles crossed Bogohoma and Bivoaked near Mr. Williamson’s place.

On April 25,

Left our Bivoak at Sunrise and marched about 5 miles S.E. and rested till 4 P.M. when we marched back to Tallahala and guarded the Fords and foot logs & Bridges and drove the swamps with dogs marched in all about 21 miles sweeping Bogohoma 3 or 4 times.

On April 26,

Left our posts on Tallahala and marched about 2 miles and Bivoaked about 1 mile from the Widow P(?)ouilk’s Place.

On April 27,

Left our Bivoak at 10 A.M. marched a 10 miles and Bivoaked near Wm Hodges farm in the N.W. corner of Wayne County.

On April 28,

Left our Bivoak at 10 A.M. marched a____mile and deployed as Skirmishers and Skirmished 8 miles in the Forks to Thompson’s Creeks then marched 4 miles and Bivoaked at dark on Little Thompson Creek near the Bridges.

On April 29,

Left Bivoak at 12 a.m. marched 1 mile and deployed as Skirmishers and Skirmished 8 miles and then marched 4 miles down the Creek and Bivoaked in Perry County.

On April 30,

Started at Sunrise and marched____miles and Bivoaked near Mr. Finche’s in Wayne County.

On May 1,    

Left our Bivoak at 8 a.m. marched 3 miles South deployed as Skirmishers, Skirmished ___ miles then marched 4 miles & Bivoaked at Henderson’s Farm in Green County.

Finally, the skirmishes ended. On May 2, Jermyn reported, we

left our Bivoak at 7 a.m. and marched 25 miles and Bivoaked at night at Mr. Wm. McGillberries on Bogohoma Jones County.

On May 4,

Left our Bivoak at Mr. McGillberries at 6 ½ a.m. and marched to Tallahala Creek by 12 Rested 2 hours At 2 P.M. Marched to Ellisville and out on Raleigh road 6 miles & Bivoaked. Dist 31 miles.

On May 5,

Started at Daylight and marched to Knights Mills by 10 a.m. Dist 10 miles.

It was on this date that James Jermyn wrote the following words to his wife, Samantha, in which he surely referred to the Jones County raid when he alluded to “very arduous duty,” but now believed that “prospects look brighter than they have for a long time”:

Dear Wife, I added these few lines to you informing you that I am enjoying a reasonable position of good health, and hope this will meet you enjoying the same blessing. Since I last wrote to you we have been performing very arduous duty from which we have just arrived at camp. I have not received a letter from you since the 4th or 5th of March last. I have no news to write you of interest though our prospects look brighter than they have for a long time and hope this year will bring about peace. Alfred is well I expect he will write to you. All the rest of the boys are in good health. Give my love to all. Write to me the first opportunity you have and believe me your ever Affectionate Husband, James Jermyn. (3)

On May 7,

left Knights Mills at 7 a.m. and marched 26 miles to Bivouac 1 mile north of Tallahala.

On May 8,

Started at Daylight passed through Paulding at 7 A.M. and Bivoucked at 5 ½ miles from Enterprise at 5 P.M. Dist 20 miles.

On May 9, James Jermyn reported that Co E,  20th Miss. Inf., had left Mississippi for Alabama:

Started at Daylight and marched to Enterprise at 12 M left on the Rail Road from Maridian—here shifted cars and left Maridian [Meridian] at 4 P.M. on the Ala & Miss Rail road and arrived at Bigbee River at 10 P.M. went up the river about 4 miles on the Steamer Marengo, and landed at the Parole Camps near Demopolis Alabama and Bivoucked.

Although James Jermyn reported his health as “good,” and their son Alfred as “well,” to his wife on May 5, 1864, the war took a great toll on both. According to Richard, his great grandfather (Alfred) “lost all of his toes to frostbite—because of no shoes—and was said could not wear shoes again.” James Jermyn died during the year following the war.

Richard Jermyn offers this speculation about his ancestors’ war experiences:

My personal/general feeling is that the people of Coastal Mississippi who fought in that war, were thoroughly whipped, felt that the war’s intense suffering and misery—marching, hunger, cold, capture, exchange, fighting, disease, sickness, death, exhaustion, etc.—for what seemed like forever, was all for naught, and they were not particularly proud of some of the things that they did or witnessed and they didn’t really want to talk about it. They were proud that they served—that they didn’t suffer the embarrassment of having shirked their duty. Although the Mississippi Coast had small amounts of slavery, most of the men who fought were simply fighting because it was expected for the men to do their duty. It was said that the women would have nothing to do with deserters or men who avoided their service duty.

Of course, many of the Piney Woods men who refused to serve the Confederacy believed themselves to be the South’s true patriots—and their women supported them, too. When one moves beyond issues of loyalty and motive, however, one sees Southern as well as American men caught in a brutal civil war that pitted them against one another, and which brought lasting destruction and poverty to the South. 

The words of author Lionel F. Baxter, whose grandfather, Marion Francis Baxter (also from Handsboro, MS), likewise served in Co. E of the 20th Miss. Inf. during Col. Robert Lowry’s raid on Jones County, capture well the grisly nature of guerrilla warfare. In his 1977 biography of his grandfather, based on extensive research in the National Archives, Baxter wrote that Jones County deserters were “as ruthless a pack of bushwhackers as any found in the border states.” Still, he pointed out, Capt. Wm. B. Thompson of Co. H, 6th Miss. Reg’t., was “appalled by the sight” of the hanging of four young men who were court-martialed by Col. Lowry after they “shot into our troops” (p. 87). (4)

Whether privates or officers, probably few Confederate soldiers would have objected to executing deserters who shot at them from the swamps. Capt. Thompson’s misgivings, however, reflected the raw, personal nature of home front battles. According to Lionel Baxter, his grandfather Marion had “similar reservations” as did Thompson about the inner civil war in Piney Woods Mississippi that spring of 1864. As he looked back on his unit’s hanging of a group of deserters that included a boy of 16 (Baxter’s own age), he concluded that “it was a mistake to have hanged that boy as undoubtedly he was led into that kind of life by the older men” (p. 87). As Lionel Baxter noted, this was the “seamy, unromantic side of warfare” (p. 88).

My deep thanks to Richard Jermyn for sharing precious family documents with Renegade South!

Vikki Bynum

1. Email, Richard A. Jermyn, 23 Dec. 2010, to Victoria Bynum.

2. “The Sojourns of James Jermyn During the War Against the Southern Confederacy, 1861 to 1864,” Transcribed copy of diary by David T. Hale, Biloxi, Mississippi, April 1995. Copy provided to Victoria Bynum, moderator of Renegade South, by Richard A. Jermyn, Jr.

3.  Excerpt from letter by James Jermyn, 5 May 1864. In a letter to one of his daughters, James added this note to his wife, Samantha (Email from Richard A. Jermyn, Jr., 3 Jan. 2011, to Victoria Bynum).

4. The War Service of Marion Francis Baxter, C.S.A, by Lionel Francis Baxter & John Medders, published by John W. Baxter.

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Ed Payne: “Unionist Naming of Mississippi Children, 1861-1880″

Unionist naming of Mississippi children:  1861-1880

By Ed Payne

In December of 1867, former Knight Band member and staunch Unionist Jasper Collins named his first son born after the Civil War, Ulysses Sherman Collins.   Federal forces had won the war but the victory failed to sway the hearts and minds of most white Southerners.  So naming a child in honor of the Union’s two most successful—and reviled—generals was a bold act of defiance.  The incident provides clear evidence of Jasper Collins’s steadfast adherence to his beliefs.  Given this, I wanted to learn how many other Mississippi children were given Unionist names.  For comparison purposes, I also searched for children who bore the names of Confederate leaders of comparable stature.

Naming children after political figures occurred with far greater frequency in the 19th century than in modern times.  A search through the Mississippi census of 1870, for example, yields 172 males named “Benjamin F.,” 337 named “Andrew J.,” and fully 964 with the given name of “George W.”   These patterns clearly suggest a tendency on the part of families to pay homage to early American luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, and George Washington.  Even flinty New Englander Daniel Webster apparently garnered enough respect for 53 Mississippians to have named their sons “Daniel W.”

For purposes of this inquiry, I researched male children residing in Mississippi at the time of the 1870 and 1880 federal household censuses.  The 1870 census search was restricted to males born between 1861 and the enumeration date of June 1, 1870.  Similarly, the 1880 census analysis dealt with those born from 1870 through June 1, 1880.  In evaluating naming patterns, my working assumption was that those given names which resembled the names of eminent Civil War figures in most cases did reflect such a connection. The assumption that this was generally true should not be construed as a belief that connections exist in every case.  For example, in compiling my data, I counted each “Robert E.” as connoting a child named after Robert E. Lee.  Yet a review of the 1860 census, two years before General Lee rose to fame, shows that 20 Mississippi children born in the period from 1850 to 1860 happened to be named “Robert E.” 

A second fact, which came as something of a surprise, is that only a relatively small percent of Mississippi children born during the study period were named after Civil War heroes, Confederate or Union.  The two censuses include some 330,000 Mississippi male children born within the 1861 to 1880 timeframe (171,000 black, 138,000 white, and 21,000 mulattoes).  Of these, only 1,695 (0 .5%) bear names that seem emblematic of the six Civil War figures analyzed.

Table 1 provides a count of given names coinciding with those of the selected Confederate and Union leaders.  Several variations of each name were searched using Ancestry.com.  For example, variations for Abraham Lincoln searched were: “Abe L.”, “Abraham L.”, and “Lincoln” (“Abraham” alone was not counted).  The given name “Ulysses” (with various misspellings) was considered to be associated with U.S. Grant.  The abbreviations “R.E.L.”, “U.S.G.” and “W.T.S.” (i.e. William Tecumseh Sherman) were also searched, although only instances of “R.E.L.” were found.  However, due to their commonality, “Davis” and “Lee” without supporting initials were not counted.  An exception to this general pattern was Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.  Since “Thomas J.” coincides with popular naming of children after Thomas Jefferson, only given names incorporating “Stonewall” were counted. 

These tallies likely include some duplication of those children born January-May 1870 and still alive in 1880, who fell within the search parameters for both censuses.  Please bear in mind that my goal was not rigorous accuracy, but rather to obtain some indication of the relative frequency with which these names were bestowed.

	1861 -	1870		1870 -	1880
Confederate name	Blk	Wh		Blk	Wh
Jefferson Davis variations	46	168		6	22
Robert E. Lee variations	13	115		22	206
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson variations	21	24		5	13
	80	307		33	241
				Blk	Wh
Confederate name totals (1861-1880)				113	548
	1861 -	1870		1870 -	1880
Unionist name	Blk	Wh		Blk	Wh
Abraham Lincoln variations	50	5		53	0
Ulysses Grant variations	219	22		404	9
Wm T Sherman variations	139	12		115	6
	408	39		572	15
				Blk	Wh
Union name totals (1861-1880)				980	54

Table 1: Count of the naming of Mississippi children for Civil War eminences, 1861-1880. The counts for those identified as mulattoes have been combined with those listed as black.

Table 1 indicates that among whites, names reflective of the selected Confederates occurred 10 times more frequently than those associated with the Union leaders.  Newly freed slaves, less restricted after 1865 in naming (or re-naming) their children—but still in large measure economically dependent on the white population—nevertheless chose names allied with the Union figures 8.5 times more than Confederate ones. 

The census search yielded a list of 54 white male Mississippi children who appear to have been named after Lincoln, Grant, or Sherman.   Their number is small but what seems remarkable, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, is that they exist at all.  And their existence raises other questions: were their parents Southerners or Carpetbaggers; in what areas of the state did they reside; and during what interval within the 1861 to 1880 birth range was Unionist naming most frequent?  The census information compiled in Table 2 provides some interesting answers.

Cnt	Census	YoB	Name	County	Region	Self	Fthr	Mthr
1	1870	1869	Ulysses Atkinson	Leake	PB	MS	AL	AL
2	1870	1868	Sherman Beech	Jones	GC	MS	AL	MS
3	1870	1868	Grant Bibb	Monroe	PB	MS	MS	MS
4	1870	1869	Lincoln Bosman	Tippah	N	MS	SC	TN
5	1870	1864	Lincoln Brannon	Clarke	PB	MS	n/a	MS
6	1870	1868	Sherman Bunnsaw	Jasper	GC	MS	MS	MS
7	1880	1872	Ulysses Butler	Itawamba	N	AL	AL	MS
8	1870	1861	Lincoln Bynum	Jones	GC	MS	MS	MS
9	1880	1870	Sherman Cawley	Jones	GC	MS	MS	MS
10	1870	1868	Ulysses S. Collins	Jones	GC	MS	MS	MS
11	1880	1880	Oaker Grant Conlee	Pontotac	N	MS	MS	GA
12	1870	1869	Ulyssis Coon	Monroe	PB	MS	AL	MS
13	1870	1870	Ulyssus Cotton	Carroll	D	MS	MS	MS
14	1870	1868	Sherman L. Davis	Rankin	SC	MS	SC	SC
15	1870	1869	Ulysses G. Dexter	Tishomingo	N	MS	Engl	TN
16	1880	1876	Sherman Dunaway	Lincoln	SC	MS	MS	MS
17	1880	1880	C. Sherman Eddy	Hinds	SC	MS	OH	AL
18	1880	1874	U.S. Ford	Lee	N	MS	NC	MS
19	1880	1879	Sherman George	Grenada	N	MS	Grmy	MS
20	1870	1865	Ulyssus Hall	Carroll	D	MS	AL	AL
21	1870	1866	Ulyssus Hamlin	Tippah	N	IL	TN	SC
22	1870	1869	U.S. Grant Hillhouse	Calhoun	N	MS	SC	MS
23	1880	1872	James Grant Hutson	Tishomingo	N	MS	TN	TN
24	1870	1870	Sherman Jammison	Itawamba	N	MS	DE	AL
25	1870	1869	Ulysses S. King	Marion	GC	MS	MS	MS
26	1880	1879	Sherman Kinkaed	Yazoo	D	MS	Irelnd	MS
27	1870	1863	Abraham L. Lee	Jones	GC	MS	n/a	MS
28	1870	1865	Sherman Lee Lominick	Tippah	N	MS	SC	SC
29	1880	1872	Grant Luten	Grenada	N	IN	IN	IN
30	1880	1880	Grant McDade	Kemper	PB	MS	AL	MS
31	1870	1869	William Grant McDowel	Oktibbeha	PB	MS	n/a	AL
32	1870	1868	Grant McEwin	Pike	SC	MS	MS	MS
33	1870	1866	Grant W. Millan	Newton	PB	MS	SC	MS
34	1870	1863	Grant Nelson	Holmes	D	MS	VA	VA
35	1870	1870	Sherman Parasot	Holmes	D	MS	n/a	IN
36	1870	1870	Grant Perry	Chickasaw	PB	TN	TN	TN
37	1880	1873	William Grant Pritchard	Pontotac	N	TN	SC	AL
38	1870	1865	Grant Robinson	Hinds	SC	MS	KY	MS
39	1870	1868	N. Grant Shumpert	Itawamba	N	MS	SC	MS
40	1870	1866	Sherman Sivilly	Harrison	SC	MS	GA	MS
41	1870	1865	Sherman Smith	Jackson	GC	MS	MS	MS
42	1870	1869	Sherman Spence	Pike	SC	MS	Grmy	Grmy
43	1870	1869	Ulyssus Sulivan	Monroe	PB	MS	MS	MS
44	1870	1865	Sherman Swords	Pontotac	N	MS	TN	NC
45	1870	1866	Grant Tacket	Calhoun	N	AL	AL	TN
46	1880	1878	Grant Taylor	Alcorn	N	MS	MS	TN
47	1870	1866	Grant Thompson	Lowndes	PB	MS	VA	MS
48	1870	1869	U.S. Grant Townsen	Lincoln	SC	MS	LA	LA
49	1870	1864	Sherman Walden	Prentiss	N	MS	NC	NC
50	1880	1878	Grant L. Walker	Chickasaw	PB	MS	AL	MS
51	1870	1866	Sherman Welborn	Jones	GC	MS	MS	MS
52	1870	1865	Ulepes Grant Willborn	Jasper	GC	MS	n/a	MS
53	1870	1870	Abraham L. William	Choctaw	PB	MS	NC	GA
54	1880	1878	Sherman Wilson	Warren	SC	MS	TN	LA

Table 2: List of Mississippi white males born 1861-1880 having possible Unionist names. Based on Ancestry.com searches of the 1870 and 1880 U.S. Censuses.

          
To begin, the large majority of children given Unionist names were born into families with Southern roots.  Of the 54 listed, 48 (88.9%) were born in Mississippi.  All but two (96.3%) were born in states that comprised the Confederacy.  The only exceptions were Ulyssus Hamlin (born in Illinois) and Grant Luten (born in Indiana).  Among the fathers, 14 (25.9%) were Mississippi natives with an additional 27 (totaling 75.9%) hailed from other secession states.  Only four came from states outside the former Confederacy (one each from:  Delaware, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio) while four were born in foreign countries.  (The birthplace of five fathers was not recorded.)  Data for mothers shows even stronger Southern heritage:  29 (53.7%) were born in Mississippi and another 22 (totaling 94.4%) in other Confederate states.  Of the remaining three, two came from Indiana and one was born in Germany.

The census location of children shows the greatest concentration of Unionist names tended to occur, unsurprisingly, in those areas of Mississippi where the cotton economy was weakest and war time discontent against Confederate authority the strongest.  For purposes of analysis, census counties listed on Table 2 were grouped into five state regions: North (N), Delta (D), Pine Belt (PB), South Central (SC), and Gulf Coast (GC).  These are derived from the state’s current tourist regions—which correlate with accepted geographic and cultural areas of the state (see Map).  Note that in this division Jones County and the surrounding “piney woods” area fall within the Gulf Coast region.

The Northern region of the state had the greatest number of Unionist names with 18 (33.3%) followed by the Pine Belt with 12 (22.2%) and the Gulf Coast with 10 (18.5%).  Among the individual counties, Jones had the highest count with six.  The counties of Itawamba (N), Tippah (N), and Monroe (PB) had three each.

The peak period for bestowing names with Unionist associations took place in the years 1869-70 (16 names) followed by 1865-6 (12 names).  Of the 54 individuals listed, 40 (74%) were born between 1861 and 1870.  Only 14 names (26%) date from the later period of 1871 to 1880, when Federal Reconstruction policies waned and Southern Democrats began to reassert political control. 

It bears repeating that a given name of “Grant” or “Sherman” by itself is not proof of a Unionist connection.  On the other hand, it seems equally relevant to suggest that families with strong Confederate loyalties might have shied away from names tainted by their association with despised Union leaders.  Whatever the linkages or lack thereof, children who bore unpopular names doubtless came home with blackened eyes or busted lips as Civil War animosities carried over into playgrounds.

Taking the six children in Jones County with “Union names” as a sample, what can be discovered in researching their fathers?  Let’s return to our starting point: Ulysses Sherman Collins.  Civil War records, pension testimony, and newspaper articles all concur that his father Jasper came from a family of Unionists.  In 1862, however, passage of Confederate conscription laws impelled him and several relatives to enlist in Co. F of the 7th Battalion MS Infantry.  Jasper participated in the battles of Corinth and Iuka, but deserted in October 1862 after stating his opposition to a newly enacted Confederate law granting military exemptions to slave owners with 20 or more slaves.  One year later, he joined with Newton Knight in the formation of the Knight Band. 

After the war Jasper Collins repeatedly stated that his course of action was the correct one.  Whether admiring or excusing his forthrightness, Jones County neighbors elected him to the county Board of Supervisors.  Upon his death in 1913, the local paper published a laudatory, if somewhat evasive, obituary.  His son Ulysses (‘Lyss) found neither his name nor his family’s Unionism a barrier to being elected, like his father, to the Board of Supervisors and later to the position of Chancery Clerk.  He died an honored and respected member of his community in 1941.

The father of Sherman Cawley is identified through census records as Franklin P. Cawley (aka Corley).  Frank P. Cawley joined Co. C of the 37th MS Infantry on March 8, 1862 but was listed as absent without leave from March 11, 1863 until May 11, 1864.  This, of course, overlaps with the most active period for the Knight Band and the spring 1864 campaign by C.S.A. Col. Robert Lowry that rounded up a number of the deserters.  The Knight Band rosters list “B.F. Cawley” as a member, but this is not definitive proof he was the same person.  Franklin Cawley returned to his unit and was captured at Nashville on December 15, 1864.  Imprisoned in Camp Douglas, Illinois, he proved more fortunate than some of his Piney Wood comrades in surviving the harsh conditions there until released in June 1865.  Both Franklin P. Cawley and his son Sherman were last found on the 1880 census.

Abraham Lincoln Lee appears on the 1870 census as a seven year-old in the household Delphine Lee.  Working backwards to the 1860 census, his father turned out to be James W. Lee.  Although James W. Lee was of conscription age (born circa 1835), no records have been found of him serving in the Confederate military.  On April 13, 1864, however, he joined the ranks of Piney Woods men who travelled south and enlisted in the Union 1st New Orleans Infantry.  He was assigned to Co. D and served until his death from typhoid fever on 28 July 1864.  His son Abraham grew up to be a Jones County farmer who, like Ulysses S. Collins, died in 1941.

Lincoln Bynum’s single census listing is in 1870 as a nine year-old.  Thus it seems he was given the name “Lincoln” in 1861, at the very outset of the war.  No military records have been found definitely referring to Lincoln’s father, Hiram James Bynum.  Nor does his name appear on the Knight Band rosters.  But an inquiry into his family connections reveals a man living amid Unionists.

Hiram Bynum’s familial Unionist connections can be summarized as follows:  1) sister Lydia married Simeon Collins, an older brother of Jasper, in 1839.  Simeon and several of his sons appear on the Knight Band rosters.  2) Another of Hiram’s sisters, Sarah, married William Holifield (aka Holyfield).  He, too, appears on the renegade rosters and, following the Lowry campaign, enlisted in the 1st New Orleans Infantry.  3) Hiram’s first cousin Prentice M. Bynum is found on the Knight Band rosters and also subsequently joined the 1st New Orleans Infantry.  4) First cousin, Tapley Bynum, rode with the Knight Band and was killed by Lowry’s forces.  5) First cousin Dicey E. Bynum married William H. Mauldin, another of those who enlisted in the 1st New Orleans Infantry in the spring of 1864.  He died of typhoid pneumonia the following December.  Lincoln Bynum apparently died in childhood.  Hiram Bynum is said to have died circa 1883 in Jasper County.

Sherman Welborn was a son of Thomas Newton Welborn and grandson of Younger Welborn (1805-1880).  In Free State of Jones, Victoria Bynum quoted a descendent as stating that, although of conscription age, the sons of Younger Welborn refused to join the Confederate army.  No military records have been located for Thomas but, as in the case with Hiram Bynum, an examination of family connections uncovers Unionist activities.  In the wake of the Lowry campaign, Thomas’s older brother William and younger brother Tolbert made their way to Louisiana and joined the Unionist 1st New Orleans Infantry.  Tolbert Welborn died of disease during his enlistment while his brother William was discharged in June 1866 and later drew a pension for his service.  Thomas Welborn died in 1917 and his son Sherman, a farmer, in 1929.        

Only in the instance of Sherman Beech has a Unionist link not been found.  His father was Thomas Beech (aka Beach).  A Thomas Beech who appears to match the parentage of Sherman enlisted in Co. B of the 25^th Alabama Infantry on May 15, 1862 and was given an unconditional discharge due to illness that same November.  Sherman Beech is last found in Jackson County on the 1880 census, while his father is reported to have lived until 1922.

Thus of six children seeming to have Unionist names, four had fathers who took part in Unionist activities or else had close relatives so engaged.  There is a possible link in one case (Sherman Cawley) and insufficient information for another (Sherman Beech). 

One final observation: some families may have given a child a Unionist name and then thought better of it.  While searching the 1930 Ancestry census transcriptions for Ulysses Collins by his given name, a record was found for Ulysses Pearson Walters.  His name had not appeared among those compiled in the searches of the 1870 and 1880 censuses.  Working backward, I found him to be a son of Richard Herrin Walters (1841-1911).  Coincidentally or not, the mother of Richard H. Walters was a member of the Unionist Collins family.  On the 1870 census (Smith County) Ulysses Pearson Walters was listed simply as “Pierson Walter” and in 1880 (Jones County) as “E.P. Walters.”  It was not until the 1900 census, as a married adult of 28 living in Laurel, Mississippi, that he reported his full name as “Ulysses P. Walters.”  When he died in 1947, his gravestone listed him as “U.P. Walters.”

Despite this modest sampling of names and the current lack of evidence that all those on it are, in fact, indicative of Unionist sympathies, it’s my hope that the names on Table 2 will provide some basis for further inquiries into Unionist sentiment found in the heart of the Deep South.

Resources utilized:  Ancestry.com; Footnote.com; Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s longest Civil War by Victoria Bynum; Echoes from our Past by the Jones County Genealogical and Historical Society; and The Bynum and Herrington Connections by Ruby Bynum Sanders.

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Newt Knight vs. the U.S. Court Claims revisited: Montgomery Blackwell’s deposition

For thirty years, guerrilla leader Newt Knight of Jasper County, Mississippi, sought compensation as a Unionist from the U.S. government on behalf of himself and 54 men who had belonged to his Civil War “Knight Company.”* These men included deserters and a few draft evaders who banded together in the swamps of the Leaf River in neighboring Jones County to fight against the Confederacy.

In my recent book, The Long Shadow of the Civil War, I analyze in depth Newt’s unsuccessful efforts to gain compensation from the federal government. Aiding my analysis were numerous depositions, including those provided by Newt Knight, H.L. Sumrall, Jefferson Musgrove, J.M. Valentine, E.M. Devall, William M. Welch, J.E. Welborn, J.J. Collins, B.F. Moss, A.B. Jordan, O.C. Martin, E.M. Edmonson, T.J. Huff, T.G. Crawford, and R.M. Blackwell.** Among these men were members, friends, and enemies of the Knight band. Some former members of the band testified on behalf of Newt, the claimant; others testified for the U.S. government, the defendant. In several instances, the defense called on witnesses friendly to Newt Knight in hopes that the testimonies of wartime allies would contradict one another.

R.M. (Montgomery) Blackwell, a 48-year-old farmer, was one such Knight band member called to testify on behalf of the U.S. government. On March 7, 1895, at 5:30 p.m., Montgomery was deposed at the Ellisville, Mississippi, courthouse by Jesse M. Bush, clerk of the circuit court. After establishing Blackwell’s identity, defense attorney John C. Dougherty asked him whether he had “belonged to any body of men during the war,” and to “state what it was, at what time and what place you joined and what purpose you had in connecting yourself with the same.”

With no apparent hesitation, Montgomery Blackwell replied that he had “belonged to Captain Knight’s company; joined in Jones county near Reddoch’s Ferry; I believe it was in Sept. 1863. Knight had a squad of Union men, and I had enough of kin in the Confederate ranks, and I concluded to go with the Knights.”

Two things stand out in Blackwell’s answer. First, he contradicted Newt Knight’s testimony that the Knight Company was formed on October 13, 1863. Second, he did not identify his family as solidly Unionist, but rather indicated a fair amount of support for the Confederacy within its ranks. This is not surprising since many families in the Jones County area, including the Knights, were split over the war. The most solidly Unionist family, as I have pointed out on this blog as well as in Long Shadow and Free State of Jones, were the Collinses.  They and their kinfolk comprised the majority of band members. Joining ranks with the Knight Company, however, forged a new kinship link between the Knight and Blackwell families when, in 1869, Montgomery Blackwell married Newt’s cousin, Zorada Keziah Knight.

Blackwell’s tentative answer in regard to when the Knight Company was formed was a minor discrepancy given that thirty years had passed since the war’s end. Perhaps for this reason, defense attorney Dougherty immediately shifted to a more important area of contradiction by asking Blackwell to explain whether or not he “took any oath” at the time the band was formed, and if so, to “state what oath, before whom, and when and at what place” it was taken.

This talk of an “oath” harkened back to an affidavit certified in 1870 by justice of the peace T. J. Collins which stated that the Knight Company had not only organized itself on October 13, 1863, but had elected officers and taken a “sollomn [sic] vow to be true to each other and to the United States and to fight on behalf of the United States during the war.” This document, signed by four Jones County men, made no claim that any Union official had administered an oath of allegiance, only that the men had spoken one among themselves.

With the passage of time, however, the facts surrounding this elusive oath became hopelessly confused. In their 1895 depositions, several members of the band testified that T.J. Collins had delivered the oath in 1863, when in fact he had certified a statement from several witnesses in 1870 that the Knight Company had taken such an oath–likely without the benefit of any public official.

Others, Montgomery Blackwell among them, testified in 1895 that “old man V.A. Collins” had likely administered the oath.  But if anyone presided over this moment, it probably was Benagah Mathews, as suggested by Jasper Collins in his testimony. The elderly Mathews, who had close ties with the band, was a probate judge by 1869. It was he who took responsibility for filing Newt Knight’s initial claim file in 1870, acting in lieu of a lawyer for the Knight Company.

The problem in 1895 was that Newt Knight’s new lawyers were not familiar with the internal workings of the Knight Company, as Benagah Mathews had been, and, in their efforts to embellish its Unionist credentials, they created a trap for themselves. The notion that a Unionist official had administered an oath of allegiance to the Knight Company during the midst of the Civil War was easily shot down by the government’s defense team.  By distorting the evidence in this and other instances, Newt’s lawyers put witnesses such as Montgomery Blackwell in predicaments where they were asked to remember “facts” that had been altered by Newt’s lawyers in an effort to strengthen the evidence.

At the same time, the government misplaced Newt Knight’s truly factual evidence, offered in his first petition of 1870, that the reconstructed government of 1865 had recognized him as a staunch Unionist. None of that evidence was presented in his second and third petitions (see Long Shadow of the Civil War, pp. 77-96). Not surprisingly, the Knight Company lost its bid for compensation as an ad hoc military unit that had fought on behalf of the Union Army during the Civil War.

Vikki Bynum

* NOTE: Although lawyers for Newt Knight identified the Knight Company as the “Jones County Scouts” between 1887 and 1895, I have found no evidence that the band ever referred to itself by this name. It’s my opinion that Newt’s lawyers manufactured the new name to give it more of an official military ring.

**Newt Knight’s 1887-1900 claim file is located in Records of the U.S. Court of Claims, 1835-1966, Record Group 123, Committee on War Claims, Claims of Newton Knight and Others, #8013 and 8464, National Archives, Wash. D.C.

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The Populist Party in Jasper County, Mississippi, 1894

Here’s a wonderful document sent to me by independent researcher Ralph Poore. It’s a reminder of the vibrant third-party political movements that emerged for a time in post-Civil War Mississippi. I’m especially intrigued by the names “R. A. Welborn,” “Dr. Lyon,” and “C. J.” and “D.A. Lightsey,” as those surnames are all connected in some way with Jones County Unionists and/or Populists. Perhaps readers can help identify possible kinships across county lines.

Vikki Bynum, Moderator

Jasper County Review

October 3, 1894 2:4

Resolutions of Populite [Populist] mass meeting.

Mass meeting of People’s Party of Jasper County held at courthouse in Paulding on September 20, 1894.

J. C. Rodgers chairman of the executive committee elected chairman of the meeting.

John White, secretary.

R. M. Read, Sr.

Committee of Ten: R. M. Read, Jr., A. W. Atwood, A. G. B. Graham, J. J. McNeill, John Simms, F.C. Thornton, R. A. Welborn, Dr. Lyon, W. E. Cook, C. J. Lightsey, D. A. Lightsey.

“Resolved, That we, the People’s party in mass meeting assembled, recognize the fact that the Democratic party has signally failed to carry out its promises. Therefore, be it

“Resolved, That we condemn the action of the present administration as subversive of the rights and interests of the people.

“2^nd. That we condemn the action of Grover Cleveland in regard to the silver bill. We favor the government issuing greenbacks and paying the public debt and doing away with national banks, that general bankrupts may be averted.

“3^rd. That we have been and still are in favor of Jeffersonian Democracy, and that our faith has never been shaken nor our courage diminished.

“4^th. We recognize the People’s party as the only hope for relief, and that we ask all true reformers to go with us in this, the hour of our country’s peril.

“5^th. That we are in the fight to stay until the battle for reform has been gained and the people emancipated from the rule of mammon.

“6^th. That we are bound by no machine nor governed by no party lash, but believe more in moral honesty and competency in the discharge of official duties than the political epithets with which false men would beguile the people.

“7^th. When a party becomes corrupt it is time to abandon it and build upon the ruins thereof truth and honor.

“8^th. Believing in the righteousness of our cause and in the integrity of the American people, we invoke the aid of the God of justice on the success of our cause.

“9^th. Resolved, That we reindorse the Omaha platform and the action of the Forest convention.

“Resolved, That we ask the Vindicator and all other reform papers to publish the above report, and on motion the Jasper County Review was requested to publish the proceedings of the meeting.”

JASPER COUNTY PEOPLES’ PARTY
Name	Party Position	Business		Location	Birth year
Rodgers, J. C.	Chairman of the executive committee		Juror
White, John	secretary		Election manager	Twist Wood
Read, R. M., Sr.			Confederate veteran
Read, R. M., Jr.	Committee of Ten		Election manager	Missionary
Atwood, A. W.	Committee of Ten	farmer	President, Jasper County Farmers’ Alliance		1852
Graham, A. G. B.	Committee of Ten	farmer	Election manager	Cross Roads
McNeill, J. J.	Committee of Ten
Simms, John	Committee of Ten
Thornton, F.C.	Committee of Ten			Leonia
Welborn, R. A.	Committee of Ten	farmer		P. K.	1867
Lyon, Dr.	Committee of Ten
Cook, W. E.	Committee of Ten	farmer	Election manager	Claiborne	1861
Lightsey, C. J.	Committee of Ten	farmer	Election manager	Paulding	1841
Lightsey, D. A.	Committee of Ten		1894, candidate for Coroner and Ranger	Paulding
Heidelberg, W. W.		State senator

JASPER COUNTY FARMERS’ ALLIANCE
Name	Position	Business		Location
Atwood, Augustus W.	President	Farmer		TWP 3, Range 13 East
Long, W. P.	Secretary

November 6, 1894 5th Congressional District election in Jasper County Jasper County Review, Nov. 7, 1894 2:3
Precinct	Williams (Democrat)	Ratliff (Populist)
Paulding	20	6
Missionary	24	7
Antioch	22	7
Palestine	15	10
Twistwood	42	8
Hopewell	14	4
Fellowship	29	–
Garlandsville	18	1
Randal Hill	6	–
Montrose	34	2
Mt. Zion	39	10
P. K.	20	16
Cross Roads	27	23
Claiborne	23	17
Heidelberg	47	2
Vossburg	18	1
Rawl’s Mill	17	1
Total	415	115

Ratliff received 120 votes in 1892.

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Remembering Southern Union Soldiers on Memorial Day

Chalmette National Cemetery

I received these photos from Deena Collins Aucoin this Memorial Day morning. The first is of Chalmette National Cemetery in New Orleans. The second is the grave of Riley J. Collins from Jones County, MS. An avowed Unionist, Riley resisted service in the Confederate Army, and joined Co. E, 1st New Orleans infantry (although his gravestone says LA Infantry) on April 30, 1864. He died of disease the following August.

Deena is a descendant of Simeon Collins, brother of Riley. Both men, along with brother Jasper Collins and many nephews and cousins, were members of the Knight Band in the Free State of Jones. Three other Collins brothers–Warren, Stacy and Newton–deserted the Confederate Army and fought against it in the Big Thicket of East Texas.

Vikki Bynum, moderator

Riley J. Collins Grave, Chalmette National Cemetery

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Paul Escott Reviews Bynum, Long Shadow of the Civil War

I am delighted to post historian Paul Escott’s review of my new book, recently published on H-Net’s Civil War forum!

Vikki Bynum, moderator

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=29769

Victoria E. Bynum. The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. 272 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8078-3381-0; ISBN 978-0-8078-9821-5.

Reviewed by Paul Escott (Wake Forest University)
Published on H-CivWar (May, 2010)
Commissioned by Matthew E. Mason

Escott on Bynum

“Few histories,” writes Victoria Bynum, “are buried faster or deeper than those of political and social dissenters” (p. 148). The Long Shadow of the Civil War disinters a number of remarkable dissenters in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas. It introduces the reader to stubbornly independent and courageous Southerners in the North Carolina Piedmont, the Mississippi Piney Woods, and the Big Thicket region around Hardin County, Texas. These individuals and family groups were willing to challenge their society’s coercive social conventions on race, class, and gender. They resisted the established powers when dissent was not only unpopular but dangerous–during the Civil War and the following decades of white supremacy and repressive dominance by the Democratic Party. Their histories remind us of two important truths: that the South was never as monolithic as its rulers and many followers tried to make it; and that human beings, though generally dependent on social approval and acceptance by their peers, are capable of courageous, independent, dissenting lives.

Bynum begins by focusing on the fierce, armed resistance to Confederate authority that developed in the North Carolina Piedmont, in Mississippi’s “Free State of Jones,” and in Texas’ Big Thicket counties. All three areas “had solid nonslaveholding majorities with slaves making up only 10 to 14 percent of their populations” (p. 16). Guerrilla leaders in all three supported the Union over the Confederacy, sheltered and encouraged deserters, and fought the soldiers and authorities of the new Southern nation. They often gained considerable power locally and forced Confederate leaders to dispatch troops in vain internal efforts to eradicate them.

Bynum gives detailed attention in this part of the book to the North Carolina Piedmont. Religious conviction was an important part of resistance in North Carolina’s “Quaker Belt,” where particularly strong resistance developed in Randolph County, an area that had also been influenced by the antislavery beliefs of Wesleyan Methodists. Women played an especially prominent role in dissent in the Piedmont. They aided their husbands, stole to feed their families, helped other deserters, and both protested to and threatened Confederate officials. “Deeply felt class, cultural, and religious values animated” these women’s actions (p. 51).

In nearby Orange County, North Carolina, there was “a lively interracial subculture” whose members “exchanged goods and engaged in gambling, drinking, and sexual and social intercourse” (p. 9). During the war these poor folks, who had come together despite “societal taboos and economic barriers,” supported themselves and aided resistance to the Confederacy by stealing goods and trading with deserters. During Reconstruction elite white men, who felt that their political and economic dominance was threatened along with their power over their wives and households, turned to violence to reestablish control. Yet interracial family groups among the poor challenged their mistreatment and contributed to “a fragile biracial political coalition” (pp. 55-56) that made the Republican Party dominant before relentless attacks from the Ku Klux Klan nullified the people’s will.

Bynum next focuses on Newt Knight’s military company that fought the Confederacy in Jones County, Mississippi. These armed resisters were so powerful that by late 1863 the Confederate government had to send troops to the area in order to carry out two major (and largely unsuccessful) raids against them. Knight also defied racial taboos by choosing to live with and father children by a black woman named Rachel, who was a slave of Newt’s grandfather. Together they started “a multiracial community that endures to this day” (p. 8). Bynum’s careful research adds to our understanding of the nature and roots of resistance in the “Free State of Jones.” Through three decades following the Civil War, Knight petitioned for financial compensation from the United States for the pro-Union efforts of himself and his military company. The documents of his long and ultimately unsuccessful quest reveal details about Jones County Unionism and his own determination. Pro-Union ideals played a far larger role than religion among Knight’s company. Newt’s obstinate resistance to the South’s ruling class led him to embrace and work for Populism in the later years of his life.

Family and community ties were at least as important among dissenting Southerners as among the slaveholding elite. Close relatives of Newt Knight and of his two key lieutenants in the “Free State of Jones” had moved to east Texas in the 1850s. There several brothers–Warren, Newton, and Stacy Collins–became principal figures in the anti-Confederate resistance that flourished in the Big Thicket region. Only one of eight Collins brothers chose to be loyal to the Confederate government. After fighting Confederate authorities during the Civil War, the Collinses and their relations later became active in the Populist Party and then in the Socialist Party. They stood up against the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of greedy or corrupt capitalists just as they had rejected the dominance of slaveholders. Back in Mississippi, members of the Collins clan chose to resist not only the power of the Democratic Party but the religious and cultural dominance of the Baptist Church, which had become part of the “white southern orthodoxy” (p. 108). Jasper Collins and other members of his family began a Universalist church; Newt Knight’s brother Frank “converted to Mormonism and moved to Colorado.” Such “dissident religious groups” faced “fierce and frequently violent” reactions, for they “threatened the reconstituted order over which the Democratic Party reigned supreme” (p. 105).

Professor Bynum closes her book with a chapter on the interracial offspring of Newt and Rachel Knight. Called “white Negroes” or “Knight’s Negroes” by their neighbors, these individuals continued to exhibit an independent spirit as they dealt with their society and with each other. They chose to identify themselves in a variety of ways; different members of the family adopted different approaches to life. Some passed as white, others affirmed their African American identity, and still others saw themselves as people of color but kept a distance from those whom society defined as Negroes. Within the family group there were many independent spirits. One woman, the ascetic Anna Knight, forged a long and energetic career as an educator and Seventh-Day Adventist missionary.

Victoria Bynum has plunged deeply into the primary sources on these interesting individuals, family groups, and local communities. Her footnotes will be very useful to future scholars. Yet, micro-history of this type often proves to be more tangled, complex, and difficult to comprehend than study of a large region, because the connections are both more abundant and, inevitably, less fully documented. It also is difficult to tell a multiplicity of short but complicated stories clearly. Professor Bynum’s history of these dissenters lifts the veil on a complicated web of friends, enemies, allies, and family relations who interacted over time. To describe the variety and extent of local conflicts, she must characterize the local community and introduce a host of minor characters. The multiplication of names, places, and details can be as confusing as it is illustrative of the depth of her research. Unfortunately, the welter of briefly mentioned details makes the reader’s experience choppy and sometimes confusing. Had the sources been rich enough, three separate books might have been easier to read than one peopled by so many characters whose personalities remain dim.

The Long Shadow of the Civil War is valuable, however, because it proves that dissent was not rare and insignificant. It modifies the image created by those in power of a solid, unchanging South united behind class dominance, white supremacy, and subordination of women. As writers like Eudora Welty have shown us, the Southern man or woman can be an independent, stubborn, dissenting, even eccentric individual. The fact that we tend to remember so few of these Southerners testifies to the coercive power that repressive elites have exercised through most of the region’s history.

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Searching your ancestors’ Civil War records? You never know what you might find!

Note from moderator: Some time ago, before my move to Missouri temporarily engulfed my life, I had an interesting set of exchanges with Shelby Harriel, who had posted a comment beneath Ed Payne’s post, “Jasper Collins and the Ellisville Patriot.” After conducting extensive research on her family,  Shelby was astonished to discover that several of her Mississippi ancestors had fought for the Union during the Civil War. “Being a Southerner to my very soul, it’s been difficult to understand and accept,” she wrote. Determined, however, to understand rather than dismiss (or hide) her kinfolk, she quickly realized that the Civil War South was anything but unified over secession from the Union.  In email messages to Ed and me, she further digressed on her fascinating journey into the past. With her permission, I am publishing her letter describing what she learned about the Civil War service of her Smith, Harriel, and Bounds ancestors.

Vikki Bynum

First of all, this all started when my paw paw’s first cousin, Mr. Hollis Smith, began sharing with me the history of our families.  He was born in 1915 and actually remembered talking to his Civil War relatives.  When asked why they fought for the Union, he looked at me as if I were crazy and replied, “They didn’t believe the Union should be dissolved!”  He provided me with a copy of the picture I have attached.  Sadly, Mr. Hollis passed away in September at the age of 95.

From left to right:  Telfair (Mr. Hollis’ grandfather), Thomas R., Nimrod “Peter” (standing), John Lampkin, and Sherrod Smith.

I have the service and pension records for all of these men.  I have service records for a Sherrod Smith of the 17th Battalion Cavalry but am not sure if the soldier was the man in the picture or their first cousin, also named Sherrod.

Thomas rose to the rank of sergeant in Co. G, 1st New Orleans Infantry (Union). He was 5’8″ with light colored hair and green eyes and was 21 when he enlisted.  I have found a T.R. Smith of Co. B, 7th Battalion MS Infantry from Jackson County which is next to Harrison County where the Smiths were from at the time, so I have assumed this is “my” Thomas R. Smith.  His enlistment is given as April, 1862 but his record states “absent without leave having never reported.  Nor correctly reported….should be marked deserted.”

John Lampkin was 22 when he enlisted in the same regiment, Co. H. He was 5’11″ with black hair and blue eyes. He died in a hospital in Carrollton  of small pox in January, 1865. There is a rumor that he wasn’t actually the soldier that died of small pox in the hospital but switched identities with another soldier and went on to be a professional gambler in New Orleans when he was shot in the back and killed over a game of cards. For some reason, I don’t feel that is true.   There appears a John L. Smith of Co. B, 7th Battalion MS Infantry with the same information as Thomas’.

Pete is a mystery. When I sent off for his papers, I received records for an “N.J. Smith” of Co. B, 3rd Mississippi Infantry. Those were his initials, and that was a unit raised in this area, but this particular soldier was listed as having been “severely wounded” on July 20, 1864 at Peach Tree Creek and died on July 24, 1864, in a Macon hospital. But Pete survived into his 80′s. Mr. Hollis swore up and down that Pete never served, but yet he applied for a pension in 1924 where he claimed to have enlisted in the 3rd MS Infantry in 1863 (he would have been 16 even though he definitely doesn’t look that young in the picture!). The officers listed on the application are correct, and the pension was granted. Two Confederate headstones were applied for, one for the 4th MS Cavalry. According to the application, he enlisted in 1861 with no discharge date. And then there’s another application for a headstone where the regiment is the 3rd MS. According to this document, he enlisted in October, 1863, and was discharged April 26, 1865. I sent away and received papers for a “Peter Smith” of the 4th MS Cav. But I don’t think this is the same person because this unit was formed in another part of the state. However, it was at Camp Moore, Louisiana, which is about an hour and a half away from here. I suppose he could have served in both. So that leaves the question of the soldier “N.J. Smith” who was killed outside Atlanta. Even though Mr. Hollis said he didn’t fight, he was granted a pension in 1924. At any rate, I’ve concluded that Pete did fight due to the fact that the pension was granted, and his two older brothers fought against him for the Union, one of whom, Thomas of course, signed as a witness on his pension application!

The Smiths had two first cousins, Reuben and Rufus, who served in the 3rd MS Infantry.   Both appear as AWOL at certain times, but they also show up as having been sick.  So it doesn’t appear that they deserted and joined the 1st NO like their cousins.  It seems that Unionist loyalties are connected through family ties.  However, this doesn’t seem to be the case with this branch of my family.

While doing this research, I took a look at the rosters of the Union unit Thomas and John Lampkin joined out of New Orleans. Lo and behold, there appeared the name of one Reutilus Hariel, Jr. in Co. G (The army misspelled my paw paw’s name by putting an extra “r” in it when he went to fight in WWII. He liked it and kept it.). His name was spelled every way imaginable, but that was him, the man of whom I am directly descended. He went with the Smith brothers to New Orleans and joined with them.  Unlike the Smiths, I could not find him in a Confederate unit prior to his enlistment in the 1st NO.  At any rate, after being told my entire life that we had no direct ancestors who fought, I found out three years ago that wasn’t true. After telling Mr. Hollis of my discovery, he just laughed because I think he knew all along but didn’t want to tell me that my direct ancestor fought for the Union. As for my direct family, I think it was known at some point but was covered up over the years until it became forgotten. Reutilus, after all, died in his 40′s.  His father, Reutilus Sr. is another family mystery.  We don’t know where he came from or what happened to him.  He rode off to work on the telegraph lines one day and never came home.  Neither he nor his horse were ever discovered.  We believe he was robbed and murdered because he is rumored to have always ridden the finest horses and wore the finest clothes.

There was another man named William Bounds whose sister married Reutilus Jr. While looking for his Confederate records, I kept coming up empty. Later, I found his name with those of the Smith brothers and Reutilus. Now it made sense why his headstone wasn’t pointed. He wasn’t a Confederate. He was in Co. I of the 1st NO and was listed as a deserter as of Jan. 13, 1866.  He was cleared of the charge in 1886.

Thomas, Reutilus, and William are all buried together in a cemetery about five miles from where I live. It’s kind of funny because they’re buried in the middle of the little cemetery while everybody else is buried along the fence row and away from them. I wonder if that’s on purpose. At any rate, according to Mr. Hollis, the Smith’s mother made it known she did not want to be buried near her Yankee son, and she’s not. She’s buried in another cemetery a couple of miles away, along with Pete, her Confederate son.  I don’t know where, exactly, in New Orleans John Lampkin is buried.

After doing more research on William Bounds, I have found out that he is the son of John E. Bounds and Nancy Sumrall.  Rumor has it that John was harboring Confederate deserters and run out of the county because of it.

I have discovered that William had two brothers who joined the 1st NO with him:  James and Addison, both of whom were 6’3″! James had red hair and black eyes. I hope I can find a picture of him one day. Addison had light colored hair and blue eyes. William was just under six feet with red hair and green eyes.

Addison made corporal.  As a part of the provost, he was detailed to escort prisoners to Fort Jefferson in the Tortugas, beginning in February, 1866. I read where most prisoners there were Union deserters. Talk about irony…..my Southern-born ancestor fighting with a Union unit based in New Orleans and guarding Yankee deserters.   Addison himself appears to be a Confederate deserter as I found an “A. Bounds” of Co. B, 17th Battalion Cavalry from Harrison County.  He was enrolled in April, 1862 and listed as present.  However, that’s where the records for that particular unit end for him.

In addition to housing Yankee deserters, Fort Jefferson was also the prison where Dr. Samuel Mudd was sent. He was there the same time as Addison.

I could not find a Confederate unit for James unless I overlooked something.

These Bounds had first cousins, Richard and John Clark Bounds of Jasper County, who were in Co. K, 37th MS Infantry.   They were the sons of Addison Bounds, brother of John E.  Richard was wounded in 1862 and sent to a hospital in Holly Springs.  He was paroled after Vicksburg and then was listed as AWOL February 9th, 1864.   I don’t have his 1st NO records yet, but they’re on the way.  John was on detached service and missed out on the whole Vicksburg experience.  His records show he was paroled at Meridian in May, 1865.   So why did he choose to remain loyal to the Confederacy instead of deserting and joining the 1st NO like his brother?  I wonder if he knew that Richard had deserted and joined the Union.

I have in my notes a Joseph A. Bounds listed as a brother of Richard and John Clark.  There is a Joseph A. in Co. F, 19th MS who served in Virginia throughout the war, but I don’t think these are the same men.

There were other relatives to the Bounds listed above:

There is a Stephen, Solomon and George Washington Bounds who all served in Co. H, 3rd MS Infantry.  George Washington was discharged due to disability.  Nathaniel Bounds of the 38th MS Cavalry died at a hospital in Okolona in June, 1862.  I could not find any of them in the NO unit.  I have also found a W. S. Bounds whose name is given as Woodward on one of the cards.  He was also in Co. H, 3rd MS and detailed as a teamster in 1863.  His records don’t indicate what happened to him after that year.  There is a D.W. Bounds in the same company.  He is listed as AWOL since November, 1863.   I don’t know who the D.S. is but I have found a Daniel Woodward in my genealogy notes.  There is a D.W. Bounds of the 2nd NO, a unit that failed to organize resulting in soldiers being transferred to the 1st.  And there is a Daniel W. Bound listed in Co. H of the 1st.  Furthermore, there is an Ellis Bounds in Co. G.  I could not find a Confederate unit for him although his father filed for a pension where he listed the 3rd MS as his son’s unit.  In my notes, I have Ellis’ death date as 1864.   There are also John and Henry of Co. G of the 1st NO.  In my notes, I have a John Riley and James Henry listed as brothers of Ellis and that they were twins.  No Confederate unit could be found for them either even though their father, Gillium, (2nd cousin of John E.) was in Co. H, 3rd Battalion MS State Troops.  He is listed as present in August, 1862 but deserted a few months later in January, 1863.  All of these Bounds were from the Coastal area.

I have the Confederate service records for this set of Bounds.  Their Union service records, where applicable, are on the way.

In addition to these Smiths and Bounds, I have a Uriah Lee of Co. G, 1st NO.  I could not find a Confederate unit for him.  His service records are on the way as well.

If it’s one thing you can say it’s that the Bounds family was torn in two.  Speaking of being divided, I have always felt for my great-great-great aunt, Nancy.  She married Elijah Lee whose headstone says he was in the 4th MS Cavalry.  However, I think this was a mistake and that he did not fight at all or maybe in a unit I haven’t discovered yet.  But his brother, Uriah, fought in the 1st NO.  Their first cousin, Eli Lee, however, fought in the 7th Battalion MS Infantry and was paroled after Vicksburg.  So Nancy’s brother and brothers-in-law fought for the Union while her cousin and possibly her husband fought for the Confederacy.  No Confederate unit could be found for Uriah and Eli did not join the 1st NO after paroled.  As a sidenote:  these Lees are third cousins to Robert E. Lee.

This is what I have discovered in my research so far.  I haven’t been able to find much on the 1st NO other than the brief history available on the Internet and have assumed it was more or less a type of home guard unit for the protection of New Orleans from all the guerrilla warfare going on in southwestern Louisiana.

I appreciate you taking the time to read through this.  I’d be interested in learning anything you have to share.  Thank you for your time.

Kindest regards,
Shelby Harriel

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The Sheriff who Opposed Newt Knight: Cindy DeVall on her Great-Grandfather, E.M. DeVall

 

 

 

E.M. DeVall, Sheriff of Civil War Jones County. Photo courtesy of Cindy DeVall

Note from Vikki Bynum, Moderator

Memories of the Knight Company and the “Free State of Jones” were passed down to descendants of both its supporters and its enemies. Few people opposed Newt Knight more strenuously during the Civil War than Sheriff E. M. DeVall. In 1895, Devall testified against Newt Knight on behalf of the U.S. government during Newt’s claims process (discussed at length in chapter four of Long Shadow of the Civil War).    

In this guest post, Sheriff DeVall’s great granddaughter discusses his life and family, and reflects on the DeVall family’s experiences and memories of the Civil War.

 

E. M. DeVall

by Cindy DeVall

Thank you for the opportunity to submit a few thoughts on my great grandfather, Edmond Maclin DeVall, sheriff of Jones County, Mississippi, during the Civil War. I read with great interest both of your books. I certainly do have a different perspective on the Civil War in Jones County as a result of your research and dedication to making sure that “the truth” is revealed. What seems very clear to me after reading the books is that there was no “solid south” and that within families and among in-laws, there was great passion about the war and over the need to fight it.

 Edmond Maclin DeVall (b. 1829 in SC) came to Jones County from South Carolina. His father, Neri B. DeVall, died intestate in 1845 in Edgefield District, and his widow, Mary (Truwit) DeVall came to Jones County with three sons and two daughters,  The eldest, Mary Elizabeth DeVall, married Hiram Anderson (son of Isaac)* in 1846. Edmond Maclin, being the eldest son, was given great responsibilities and by 1846 was already buying property in Jones County from Drury Bynum. In the 1850 census of Jones County, his mother lists real estate worth $350. Her brother, William Truwit of Mobile, bought 300 acres from Allen Anderson in “Old Town,” very near the Bynum Cemetery and the Anderson-Minter Cemetery. The 1853 state census of Jones Co lists Edmond Maclin as living with 2 males and 1 female. I can only assume his mother had died. He was 23 or 24 years old and had three siblings: Edward C., age 13; Melvoe Emily, age 11, and Charles N. age 9.

 My father, Leslie Coombs DeVall, Jr., (b. 1919-Ms) always talked about the importance of owning property. He said that his father stressed that you could lose your job or your money, but if you had land, you had roots. My grandfather surely must have had that reinforced from his father, Edmond Maclin. My father used to also speak about his grandfather being sheriff of Jones County during the Civil War and how he had to keep law and order against that band of “outlaws and thieves that caused so much trouble for the good people of Jones County.” My grandmother (Ethel Freeman DeVall) also told me on repeated occasions “that ole Newt Knight surely did stir up a lot of trouble in Jones County.” My grandmother was from Alabama and did not even arrive in Ellisville until 1898. However, I am sure she reflected the thinking of some of the citizens of Jones County as well as that of her future father-in-law.

 Edmond Maclin’s two brothers both served in the Civil War. Edward, at the age of 21 or 22, enlisted in Co. “C”, 7th Battalion, Ms Infantry, in May 1862 and died on Nov. 15, 1862, of wounds received at the Battle of Iuka. He left behind a wife, who I believe was Mary Ann Taylor (b 1839-Al), and a two-year-old son named John Knox DeVall. Both disappeared from records soon after his death. The 1860 census showed Edward to be a farmer with real estate valued at $250. His unmarried brother, Charles, was  still living with the family. Charles, at the age of 18, enlisted in CO “K,” 8th Ms Infantry, in May 1861 and served until he died at the Battle of Franklin in November of 1864. 

 Edmond Maclin’s sister, Melvoe Emily DeVall, married Hardy Parker, son of James Leander Parker* and Mary Anderson, in 1859. Shortly after, a group of Jones County citizens moved to Angelina County, Texas. Melvoe and Hardy Parker raised their family in Angelina County and Melvoe died in 1880 in child birth.

 I remember being raised with values related to integrity, honesty, loyalty to family and being a good citizen. My father did not think those values up in a vacuum. My grandfather provided for several families during the Great Depression in Jones Co and was a respected member of his community. Those values must have been something he learned from his father, Edmond Maclin DeVall. I am able to understand that he did not want to “recognize” a group of Jones County Scouts because he viewed them as being outside the law and not being good citizens. The fact that two of his brothers had died in the Civil War and a sister had left the county completely and moved to Texas probably only intensified his determination to dismiss the existence of citizens he viewed as deserters and outlaws. He experienced the Civil War deaths of two brothers who were poor farmers and yet did not come home, but stayed and fought.

Edmond was married to Mary Jane Welborn, the daughter of Joel E Welborn, and probably had a mentor or two in the bunch who were father figures. His loyalties were to “order, community and family.” He must have been a man of great passion whom I wish I had known. I can’t help but wonder if Edmond Maclin and Jasper Collins ever had any heated discussions!

 Vikki, as you said in your dedication in Free State of Jones, “Now I understand”

 Thanks again for allowing me this opportunity and thank you many times over for the books.

Cindy

*Despite his strong Confederate credentials, E.M. DeVall’s kinship ties with the Andersons and the Parkers link him to the staunchly Unionist Collins family. Such kinship links were common among Jones County’s Confederate and Unionist families, complicating the story of its inner civil war considerably.

 Vikki

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The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Q & A Between UNC Press and Vikki Bynum

A conversation with Victoria E. Bynum  

Author of The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies  

Published April 15, 2010  

$35.00 hardcover, ISBN 978-0-8078-3381-0  

The Long Shadow of the Civil War

  

Q. There seems no end to books about the American Civil War. What does The Long Shadow of the Civil War offer that is new?
A. Although Civil War books about the home front are not new, this is a new sort of home front study that focuses on three communities from three different states. Rather than close with the war and Reconstruction, The Long Shadow of the Civil War follows individual Unionists and multiracial families into the New South era and, in some cases, into the twentieth century. This historical sweep allows the reader to understand the ongoing effects of the war at its most personal levels.
   

Q. What led you to combine three Civil War home fronts, all noted as areas of violent disorder, in one study? Why these three?
A. Most basically, I combined them in order to provide in-depth comparisons of the communities within the same volume. But there’s more to it than that; the communities have important links to one another. The North Carolina Piedmont was the ancestral seedbed of migration into what became Jones County, Mississippi. Later, East Texas attracted many non-slaveholding Mississippi families seeking a less-developed piney woods region.  

All three regions exhibited fierce Unionist activity during the Civil War, with brothers fighting in separate deserter bands across state lines in two of the communities. So, combining them in one study provided a wonderful opportunity to identify common characteristics of Southern Unionism, while also showing how different geographic settings influenced the nature of the inner civil wars.
   

Q. What were the most important similarities among the three communities of dissent? The most important differences?  

A. All three communities were located outside the South’s plantation belt and all had large non-slaveholding majorities. Important differences were religious practices and length of settlement. The North Carolina Quaker Belt had a history of religious dissent that included Moravian, Mennonite and Dunker sects as well as Quakers.   

Beginning around 1848, Wesleyan Methodism, with its anti-slavery ideals, gained popularity in this region. The Quaker Belt was also a long-settled region of expansive, deeply entwined family networks that lent force and stability to anti-Confederate sentiments.

By contrast, neither Jones County, Mississippi, nor Hardin County, Texas, exhibited significant or organized religious dissent against slavery. As in North Carolina, family networks were important to anti-Confederate activity; however, in East Texas, more recent migration from states like Mississippi meant that family networks were less extensive there. Less cohesive and deeply rooted communities, coupled with politicians’ successful linking of Texas’s 1836 revolution to the Southern cause of secession, undermined organized anti-Confederate activity among non-slaveholders in East Texas.  

Q. Why did you return to the Free State of Jones County, Mississippi, and to the North Carolina Quaker Belt, two regions that you wrote about in previous books, for this study?
A. Ever since I discovered that a splinter band of Unionist deserters, led by several brothers of members of the Jones County band, kept Confederate forces at bay in the Texas Big Thicket, and after discovering ancestral links between the North Carolina Piedmont and Jones County, Mississippi, I have wanted to combine the inner civil wars of these three regions in the same volume. Doing so also gave me the opportunity to analyze research materials that were not included in my earlier works: two examples are documents concerning the lives of freedpeople and poor whites in Orange County, North Carolina, and Newt Knight’s 1887-1900 Mississippi claim files.  

Q. You cite abolitionism as a motive for anti-Confederate sentiments in only one of your three communities: that of the Randolph County area of the North Carolina Quaker Belt. How and why did religion play such an important role in this region, but not in Jones County, Mississippi, or the Big Thicket of East Texas?
A. The Randolph County area of North Carolina (including Montgomery and Moore Counties) was the “heart” of the state’s Quaker Belt. Quaker opposition to slavery had faded over time because of the state’s changing demographics, but it never entirely disappeared, making this region fertile ground for Wesleyan Methodists who gained a foothold in the 1850s. In Montgomery County, the Rev. Adam Crooks condemned slavery from the pulpit of the Lovejoy Methodist Church. In contrast, Jones County, Mississippi and Hardin County, Texas, were Baptist strongholds during the secession crisis. I have found no evidence that any Baptist church in either county publically opposed slavery or secession; indeed, the Leaf River Baptist Church of Jones County publically supported the Confederacy.
   

Q. Newt Knight, the controversial “captain” of the Knight Company, is a polarizing figure who even today evokes heated arguments among readers. Why is this so, and how did it affect your historical treatment of him?
A. As long as we continue to debate the causes, meanings, and effects of the Civil War, Newt Knight’s motives and character will also be debated. We know that he defied Confederate authority during the war, supported Republican Reconstruction afterward, and openly crossed the color line to found a mixed-race community. To neo-Confederates, such facts make Newt a scoundrel and a traitor to his country and his race. To neo-abolitionists, he is a backwoods Mississippi hero who defended his nation and struggled to uplift the black race. My response to such powerful and emotional narratives is to examine critically not only the documentary evidence, but also the mountain of published opinions about Newt Knight that have too often functioned as “evidence” for both sides of the debate.  

Q. Newt Knight, his white wife Serena, and former family slave, Rachel, were the founding parents of a multiracial community. What sort of a community was it in terms of racial identity? How did members of the community identify themselves racially, as opposed to how the larger white society defined them?
A. As segregation took hold in New South Mississippi (1880-1900), the descendants of Newt, Serena, and Rachel were increasingly defined by white society as black, i.e. as “Negroes,” despite being of European, African, and Native American ancestry. Before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, however, few of these descendants identified themselves as “black.” Depending on their physical appearance, including skin shade and hair texture, descendants of Newt and Rachel variously defined themselves as white, Indian, or colored. Whereas white society applied a “one drop rule” that grouped together all people of African ancestry, these descendants self-identified in ways that reflected their multiracial heritage.  

There is no direct evidence of how Newt, Serena, or Rachel racially identified their multiracial descendants. Descendant Yvonne Bivins, the most thorough Knight researcher, was told by her elders that Newt Knight actively encouraged his descendants to identify as white. All that is certain—but nonetheless remarkable—is that they economically supported, nurtured, and lived openly among both white and multiracial kinfolk all their lives.  

Q. By crossing the color line, Newt Knight deviated from the norm by acknowledging and supporting his multiracial descendants. What may we deduce from those facts about his political views on race relations in the era of segregation?
A. Since we don’t know that Newt Knight identified his multiracial descendants as “black,” we can’t deduce from his intimate relationships with them, or by his efforts to enroll them in a local school (one that he helped create) alongside his white descendants, that he supported equality for all people of African ancestry—that is, for people classed as “Negroes.” Only if we adhere to the “one drop rule”—and assume that Newt Knight did, too—can we conclude that Newt’s protection of his own kinfolk extended to all Americans of African ancestry.  

Newt’s efforts on behalf of freedpeople as a Republican appointee during Reconstruction do not necessarily make him an advocate of black equality, as some historians have argued. There were many Reconstruction Republicans who supported the same basic rights of marriage and military service that Newt upheld for freedpeople, while supporting segregation and opposing black voting rights. We simply don’t know Newt’s political position on these issues.  

Q. For thirty years, Newt Knight petitioned the federal government to compensate his ad hoc military band, the Knight Company, for its support of the Union during the Civil War. What do those petitions reveal about the claims process itself, as well as the Knight Band?
A. The transcripts from Newt Knight’s extensive claims files suggest the federal government’s hostility toward claims of Southern Unionism, especially after 1887, as the nation sank into a deep economic depression. That year, Newt renewed efforts begun in 1870 to win compensation.  

Several depositions of Jones County men made a strong case for Unionism among the Knight Company. The passage of time, however, doomed Newt’s claim to failure. His Washington, DC lawyers were unfamiliar with the Jones County uprising, while witnesses’ memories of the war faded over time. Most damaging, crucial evidence presented in Knight’s 1870 petition was misplaced by the government and never presented after 1887. At the same time, an expanding literature that portrayed the white South as having been unified around secession made Northerners all the more suspicious of Southern claims of Unionism.  

Q. The Long Shadow of the Civil War is as much about the legacies of Civil War dissent as about the war itself. Why did you include both topics in a single volume?
A. To truly understand the Civil War, we need to understand its long-term impact on the lives of those who endured it. Southerners who took a Unionist stance lived with that decision all their lives, as did their children and grandchildren. Some struggled to put the war behind them and never spoke of it again; others, like Newt Knight and Warren Collins, defended their actions all their lives, and went on to fight new political battles.  

Multiracial communities that grew out of war and emancipation grew larger and more complex in the late nineteenth century. Faced with racial violence and segregation, many of their members exited the South during these years. But among those who remained, we witness the birth of a multiracial Southern middle class.
   

Q. You locate a long tradition of political dissent among certain Jones County families that found expression in third party political movements after the Civil War. How does this New South agrarian radicalism shed light on Civil War Unionism and vice versa?
A. In all three regions, I found examples of emerging class consciousness among non-slaveholding farmers as a result of the Civil War. Late in life, Newt Knight, for example, offered a class-based critique of Southern society. Two prominent Unionist brothers, Jasper J. Collins of Jones County, Mississippi, and Warren J. Collins of Hardin County, Texas, went even further, carving out political careers as populists and socialists in two separate states.  

A close study of individual lives reveals how the Civil War reshaped their perspectives. Of course, the majority of Southern Unionists did not join third-party political movements in the aftermath of war. It appears, however, that some ideologically committed Unionists, such as the Collinses of Mississippi and Texas, grew ever more militant in their political views as the years passed.  

Q. Your epilogue, “Fathers and Sons,” compares and contrasts three twentieth-century histories of individual guerrilla leaders written by their sons. What do these biographical sketches reveal about the impact of kinship and politics on the Civil War memories of Southern Unionist families?
A. All three biographies were written after the deaths of their subjects, and reflect the need for sons to defend notorious fathers against charges of treason, lawlessness, or ignorance—especially in the wake of New South glorification of the Confederate cause. Further complicating Tom Knight’s biography of Newt Knight was his effort to present his father as a hero to the segregated, virulently white supremacist society of the 1930s. At the time of Newt’s death, Tom was estranged from him and the family’s interracial community. He knew little about his father’s early years (his narrative is studded with factual errors) and his “memories” of Newt Knight during the Civil War and Reconstruction were profoundly influenced by his need to valorize Newt and thereby restore respect for his family. Though very different in tone and accuracy, Vinson A. Collins’s and Loren Collins’s biographies of their fathers, Warren J. Collins of Texas and Jasper J. Collins of Mississippi, are presented not only with a sense of each son’s relationship with his father, but also in the context of the nation’s politicized memories of the Civil War.  

###
This interview may be reprinted in its entirety with the following credit: A conversation with Victoria E. Bynum, author of The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies (University of North Carolina Press, Spring 2010). The text of this interview is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/uncp/media/bynum/.
                                                                                                                              PUBLISHING DETAILS
ISBN 978-0-8078-3381-0, $35.00 hardcover
Publication date: April 15, 2010
240 pp., 9 illus., 1 map, bibl., notes, bibl., index
For more information: http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-7790.html
The University of North Carolina Press, http://www.uncpress.unc.edu
116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808
919-966-3561 (office) 1-800-848-6224 (orders) 919-966-3829 (fax)  

CONTACTS
Publicity: Gina Mahalek, 919-962-0581; gina_mahalek@unc.edu
Sales: Michael Donatelli, 919-962-0475; michael_donatelli@unc.edu
Rights: Vicky Wells, 919-962-0369; vicky_wells@unc.edu

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Just Released: “The Long Shadow of the Civil War”

I’m excited to announce that my new book, The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies, has been released!  Click here to see its table of contents.

The Long Shadow of the Civil War

To purchase a copy directly from the University of North Carolina Press, click on the title, above. You may also order it from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

To learn more about The Long Shadow of the Civil War, watch for my next post on Renegade South, which will feature my recent Question & Answer interview with the University of North Carolina Press.

Vikki Bynum

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