In the middle of it all............... ?
At The Center Of The Map Is Catoosa County, Georgia. Immediately To The Right Of The Highway 27 Indicator Is Where I Speculate Our Great-Grandfather, Samuel Jones, Was Farming At The Time The Civil War Came To North Georgia
It has always been my desire to be able to traipse across the land that our ancestors lived on as far back as possible but that is not a simple task. The Irish side would really be a daunting undertaking even if one steps foot on Irish soil. The basic question arises in that case, just where did the families live? We really have no idea today other than records that at least provide us with two counties in Ireland and nothing more. I seem to have found where our grandfather raised his family in Arkansas, within a reasonable guess at least, but the search for our Great-Grandfather Samuel Jones's property is proving to be a bit more difficult. We certainly know where our own mother was born and raised and where the Canadian roots of the family are to be located, but the actual land records for the property holdings of Samuel Jones, in the antebellum south have not been uncovered in current times. The records I am sure still exist, it is but a matter of searching out the sources of the records. In attempting to locate Captain Samuel Jones in his late years by concentrating on finding any record of the man in the 1860 census contains one vital clue to aid finding his property just prior to the Civil War. The census district he is residing in is labeled "Snow Hill" and is about 50 miles to the west of his former home in Gilmer County where most of his children were born and raised. In viewing old maps found online Snow Hill lies but a few short miles to the south of the current Chickamauga National Battlefield Park.
Catoosa County, 1864
Snow Hill (Post Office) Is Just To Left Of Center Along The Road South To Lafayette. In This Map The Jones Property Would Lie Along The Road And Almost On The Dotted County Boundary Line Below The Snow Hill Label.
This location in all probability is his final land holdings of any great value. To find his actual county land records in old historical county records may be problematic but I do hope to accomplish that someday. If not, then perhaps this article will provide enough hints to allow some other future Jones descendant with an interest in history to track down the records. Just what year Samuel left Gilmer County and landed in Catoosa County will help to narrow down the years of County records to search. One might assume that the death of his wife Narcissa in 1852 may have influenced his decision to settle elsewhere, perhaps in 1853 when according to some family historians his final term of office as Justice of the Peace in Gilmer County expired.
Another clue in helping to place some credibility on what speculations I make later in this writing also comes from some early family historians, namely Nancy Hicks in collaboration with Kristin Ingram. It concerns some difficulties Samuel and one of his offspring, his daughter Elizabeth, encountered during the Civil War. It is anecdotal evidence uncovered by these two latter day family descendants regarding some of the experiences Samuel's daughter Elizabeth Jones Steele. This of course is a sister of our Grandfather, Alfred Hines Jones. Elizabeth married Robert Jefferson Steele in Gilmer County in 1851 a year before the death of her mother. Kristin Ingram, recently of Oregon, and Nancy Hicks of the Atlanta area are the first and only family historians I have come across on the internet. Just who or what was the actual source of the tale of Elizabeth I suspect is anecdotal information passed down through other family branches and Nancy compiled a summary of what had been shared with her. Again I only suspect this is the source. Nancy Hicks in her own right is a very methodical and determined researcher and she very well may have discovered most of what we are now learning of the North Georgia Jones clans. The narrative regarding Samuel and his daughter tends to lend credence to the possible location of the Jones property at the time of the war. The real source for the details of the story is unknown and can only be accredited to Nancy Hicks most likely. It states that she fled to Georgia to her father's home which certainly was located in the midst of much of the Chickamauga battle activity if the location defined here proves out to be the correct property. The veracity of the entire story may be questionable for it seems to incorporate some of the worst circumstances that did happen during the entire war but all this to one person? That to me is questionable but it very well may be very true .
The narrative regarding Samuel and his daughter Elizabeth is copied as follows:
From Nancy Hicks, Elizabeth Jones born October 20, 1835 in Gilmer County, Georgia. She married a Robert Steele who was born in Marengo County [Alabama ?] in 1835. He was a plantation owner in Alabama; the family owned many acres of cotton and more than a hundred slaves. In about 1852 he married Elizabeth Jones.
Robert and Elizabeth had two daughters and a son: Alice, born in 1853; Blanche, born in 1858, who married Dr. Thomas Moss in Arkansas; and Jefferson who married Minerva and reared Alice's orphaned children. Robert was a Captain in the Confederate army. He was stricken with red measles in 1863 and died in Confederate camp. Elizabeth stayed on the plantation with her father-in-law, Samuel Steele, until Union Army troops came through Alabama, burned down the house and took the male slaves with them, driving off the African women. They also killed father in law Samuel Steele with a sword because he wouldn't reveal where he had buried the family jewelry and silver.
Elizabeth and her children moved to slave cabins and labored in the fields to try to bring in the cotton crop, but new troops came by and set fire to the cotton plants. Elizabeth then took her children and escaped to her father's home in Georgia as a refugee. But their new safe haven lay in the path of Sherman's March, and the Georgia home was burned to the ground.
Elizabeth's last refuge was property her family owned in Arkansas. She went there with her children and settled near Conway [sometime after 1870], where she created a small cotton empire. Elizabeth's and Robert's daughter Alice, born in Alabama in 1853, married Brownlow Fletcher Stephens in Harrison, Arkansas in July 1875. Alice and Brownlow had six children. Elizabeth Blanche who married Robert Leonard Metcalfe and had children Daisy, Elizabeth and Thomas. They moved to Alabama eventually; Alexander; Sidney; Samuel; Eugene and Daisy Alice. Brownlow owned a large cotton plantation in Arkansas. He and Alice died in a yellow fever epidemic in Conway Arkansas about 1889, leaving their young children in the care of Alice’s brother, Dr. Jefferson Steele and his wife Minerva.
Some of the details in the story may be embellished. I wonder of the veracity of the death of her father-in-law by a soldiers sword. Of course it very well may have happened that way but it all needs further proof. The sentence regarding fleeing to her father’s home does make sense and is the clue that I focus on here for it reveals events that fit the location found.
In 1870, Elizabeth and her children were still living with her father and her brother, Alfred Hines, in the Calhoun area of Gordon County to the southeast of the Chickamauga location by some 30 miles. This also seems to be the area that one of Samuel’s brothers, Rev. John Calvin Jones, settled in after the close of the war. The Reverend was a staunch Unionist and stayed out of the South during the war.
Samuel’s census entry for 1870 regarding his wealth, reveals a very meager amount, and is in sharp contrast to what the 1860 pre-war census reflected. I seriously doubt that he owned any property at all in 1870 although his census data states he has real estate valued at $100 and his daughter Elizabeth is noted as owning $225 in real estate property.
This story led me to delve into the history of the battle of Chickamauga. In reading the official military correspondence of September 1863 leading up to and during the battle, between various units, Federal and Confederate, it certainly drives home the dangers of what our Great-Grandfather may have faced during the time of the conflicts around and to the South of Chattanooga. Most of the operations of that famous battle primarily occurred in the adjacent counties of Catoosa and Walker in North Georgia, in the very location our Great-Grandfather had relocated to sometime between 1853 and 1860. The area of Snow Hill named on maps of the time for it was a location of an area Post Office and probably not an organized community of much size.
What follows is conjecture but I do find it somewhat credible but not entirely factual for the moment but I do think that what I present here may help others in the future really pinpoint the location of Samuel Jones at the time the Union Forces began their moves into Georgia in order to put down the rebellion that had erupted in the Southern States. The Battle of Chickamauga resulted in a Confederate victory bringing about a replacement of the Union Commander by General U.S. Grant and he in turn chose General Sherman to lead the attack on Atlanta and eventually begin the famous March to the Sea.
Samuel may have evacuated to other places, probably to Gordon County, to the southeast of his property by some 30 miles, shortly before all the action began to occur around his property. Or maybe he was stubborn and remained in place and did endure some physical hardship as units of both armies marched across his property or along the Lafayette road in front of his home for several days as they were maneuvering and reconnoitering north and south but two or three miles south of the final battle location.
Chickamauga, Snow Hill, Lafayette and numerous other places in the neighborhood of what might be considered an educated guess as to the location of the farm of Samuel Jones are mentioned time and again in the messages of various military commanders during the time leading up to the battle and during the battle itself. Even later in 1864 when Sherman began his final and crushing advance out of Chattanooga to the south, the area of Snow Hill and the Lafayette road are again along the route of march of portions of the Union Forces on the move towards Atlanta.
More than likely Samuel in 1864 was long before situated to the south in Gordon County, in the area of Calhoun where he lived out his final years until his death in 1870. But even the area around Calhoun witnessed Sherman's invasion. Sam Jones truly was in the path of the war from the very beginning of action in North Georgia in 1863. Snow Hill no longer exists on today's maps and I have been unable to find any historical references to it in any other available internet sources. But it does appear on at least one Military map found within the Official Record of The Civil War concerning the Battle of Chickamauga. The map reveals what I feel might very well be the location of Samuel Jones's property, the property he settled on sometime in the 1850's.
The following map, but a portion of a larger map, is clipped from the Official Record and contains an obscure notation on the location of a lone farmhouse just to the south of what would be the location of Snow Hill at the beginning of the Civil War. The map gives references to the known owners of various enterprises and homes. What apparently is a farmhouse that caught my attention on the map is noted as belonging to "W. Jones". The initial "W" could stand for William or Wendell or any other number of given names, but I contend it could also stand for "Widow" or "Widower". The term "Widow" can be found on several other similar maps within the Official Record but usually it is spelled out in full and not just an initial. Towards the left-bottom of the map another Jones name is noted which in all likelihood provided the need for the map maker to draw some distinction between the two locations. Thus the addition of the initial "W" to one location.
The question comes down to what was the initial meant to signify. Since census data states Samuel Jones living in Catoosa County, and the other Jones location to the south being in Walker County it is easy to focus on the location labeled "W Jones". So I need to point out here that what I speculate on is nothing more that just that, speculation and at best an educated guess. Thus the need to seek out the Real Estate Records of the period.
W. Jones Or Is It Samuel Jones. This Map Made Almost A Year After The Battle Of Chickamauga Showing Some of the Route That Sherman And His Troops Followed On The Way To Attack Atlanta
A brief phone call to the Catoosa County Courthouse made a few years back leads me to believe that the records most certainly do exist but of course they are probably not easily accessed nor indexed since they are deposited in remote storage areas used by the county for old records. It might require a diligent effort to locate the actual property description for the land of Samuel Jones, the land he owned when the war came to Georgia, and that he lost ownership to as the war ended. How he lost it all his property is again speculation as presented here but most certainly he suffered the loss in the same manner so many Southern land owners did, most likely through an inability to pay taxes or possible penalties placed on land owners after the War. The period of Reconstruction in the South was not really meant to be a time of forgiveness for those that believed in the Confederate cause and in so many cases it was really a period of plunder. In the case of our Great-Grandfather we can only apply the lessons of the history of the period for now and from that viewpoint it isn't difficult to assume the very worst.
