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Published: August 3rd 2015
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MEMPHIS, MISSOURI
This is a Google Earth image showing the proximity of our family ties to Memphis, MO. MEMPHIS, SCOTLAND COUNTY, MISSOURI
Jesse Gunnels, the man who raised Grampa Bill Wakefield’s mother and chased the rebels out of Scotland County farmed only a few miles from the land where Glen Oliver’s dad was raised. Glen married Carolyn Sylvester and they raised a noisy family together. A few years after Glen went up the flume on Christmas Day of 1945 Carolyn married Grampa Bill. A few miles to the north of the Oliver farm in Memphis, just over the Iowa line, James Daniel Hanson was born at about the same time that Grampa Bill was born in Pantano. Hanson was this writer’s other grampa. Neighbors living not too distant to the east of the Oliver farm were the family that Tom Horn, the famous, mule skinner, scout, man hunter, liar, drunkard, and killer grew up with. There still are a few Olivers farming land near Memphis. They are descendants of Joseph Johnson Oliver’s brother, Charlie. Joe, Charlie, and their brother-in-law, Hudson Rice in a fit of patriotism joined up with the 1
st NE Missouri Home Guard on June 18, 1861. They consolidated with the 2
nd NE Missouri Home Guards and were mustered in on February 1, 1862 to the federal service as the 21
st Missouri Volunteer Infantry. Joe was elected lieutenant of Company I and held a commission signed by Honest Abe Lincoln. They all marched off to join General Grant’s Army of the Tennessee for an attack on the vital rail yards in Corinth, Mississippi. General Johnston and the whole Confederate Army of the Mississippi surprised them at a place called Shiloh at daybreak on April 6, 1862. Soldiers in both armies were green as red blackberries. Joe’s outfit was part of the First Brigade in Prentiss’s Division and was among the first units engaged by an entire Confederate Corps led by General Hardee. Those Missouri boys hadn’t even had breakfast yet when they were overrun. The whole bunch of those green federal soldiers scattered like quail. Joe got shot in the arm trying to rally them, and Charlie helped him reach safety. The two of them didn’t stop running until they reached the Tennessee River. Hospitals were quickly set up across the river. The wound was bad enough that Joe was discharged from the army. Joe and Hudson were both discharged through the same set of orders issued on July 11, 1862, so maybe Hudson was wounded too. In September of 1862 Joe was conscripted into the 51
st Regiment of Enrolled State Militia. It was a cavalry outfit that chased guerilla bands led by William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson all through Ray County. The enrolled militia had to provide their own guns, ammo and horses and got no pay or pension benefits. In March of 1864 Joe received a soldier’s bounty of $300 apparently for the use of his horse. Eventually Congress authorized limited pension benefits for that service. In February of 1865 the 51
st was transferred into federal service as the 55
th Missouri Regiment, and Joe was once again commissioned as a lieutenant, but the war ended before enrollment could be completed. Charlie soldiered on with the 21
st Missouri Infantry through the end of the war. Joe and Charlie had another brother named John who remained in Virginia when the rest of the family moved out west. John was from a part of the state near the West Virginia line. He had no slaves and tried to maintain neutrality through the war. When the State of Virginia voted to secede from the Union, the folks in West Virginia broke off from them and attained statehood on their own. John was in sympathy with the pro union border faction until 1863 when he was conscripted into Company G of the 22
nd Virginia Militia. It was a short term enlistment and John was soon back at home. In 1864 when Phil Sheridan, that bantam rooster, began scorching the earth in the Shenandoah Valley John reenlisted in his old unit. They fought admirably at the Battle of Cedar Creek but were defeated and eventually cut off from the rest of the Confederate army. The unit was officially disbanded in January of 1865. The character played by Jimmy Stewart in the movie
Shenandoah could well have been modeled after our Uncle John Hill Oliver. A few miles to the southeast of Memphis is Hannibal, Missouri and the boyhood home of Mark Twain. Straight east of Memphis and just across the Mississippi River in Illinois is Nauvoo. It is where the Mormons tried to settle after they got run out of Missouri. Soon enough they would get run out of there too and their leader, Holy Joe Smith, would get himself murdered by an angry mob outside his jail cell in Carthage. By January of 1846 the Mormons had split into factions. Some of them thought that the leadership of the church should remain with the Smith Family. Others found only trouble with that leadership and chose to follow Brigham Young. Still others chose to follow the “Boy Wonder”, Jim Brewster. Although still a child Brewster was thought to have similar visionary powers to those of Holy Joe himself. One of Brewster’s visions was that the Mormon Promised Land was to be in the lush mountains and verdant valleys at the mouth of Gila River. Boy did he get a wrong number there. Young’s faction was by far the strongest. His idea was to head for territory in Northern Mexico and find land that nobody else would ever want to occupy. He found just what he was looking for in the Great Salt Lake Valley, but he did not escape to Mexico for long. At the end of the War with Mexico in 1848 the Mormon lands were annexed by the United States. It would become the Territory of Utah and the Mormons would prosper in it. Young, of course, was the territorial governor and thought that gave him power to do as he damn well pleased. That power, however lenient the government allowed it to become, did not extend to overturning the jurisdiction of the federal courts. When that happened, as it inevitably did, the army was called upon to enforce the law of the land. When President Buchannan sent troops to Utah in 1856 the Mormons perceived it as an act war and went into open rebellion. The Mountain Meadows Massacre was the sorry result. The Mormon War, silly as it was, was America’s first civil war. Ultimately all sins were forgiven but the army stayed, although they stayed out of sight of Brigham Young. Our family has well known connections to the Mormons including some who participated as murderers of women and children at Mountain Meadows. A big part of our family history happens to intersect at Memphis, Missouri; the Olivers, Wakefields, Hansons and Leavitts all have roots near there. Oddly enough, General Albert Sidney Johnston who commanded to Confederate Army at the Battle of Shiloh, where Joe Oliver was wounded, also commanded the military expedition against the Mormons. Johnston, by the way, was killed at Shiloh. He was nicked behind the knee by a stray bullet that severed the big artery back there and he bled out before anyone even realized what happened. He was the highest ranking officer killed on either side during the whole Civil War; a fine soldier. I hope that bullet was fired by one of those green soldiers from the 21
st Missouri. It might have been Charlie.
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