The Death of Reuben Wood
From Trial Transcripts, July - September 1865

The trial opened 11 July 1865 in Nashville, TN when Champ Ferguson was indicted on two counts: first, beign a guerilla; second, murder. The indictment included murder of fifty-three persons not including the murders of Van Duvall and John Hurt near Champ's old home in Clinton County, KY on or about the 1st of May, 1865.

Testimony of Elizabeth Wood and Robert W., children of Reuben Wood:

Elizabeth testified first:

"I am the daughter of the late Reuben Wood, of Clinton County, Kentucky. He died on the 4th of December 1861. He was shot at home near Albany, KY., on Monday evening, December 1, 1861, about sunset."

"I heard some persons coming up the road, whooping and hollering as if driving stock. I went to the door to see who it was and saw Champ Ferguson, Rains Philpot, and another man whose name, I think, was Kincaid, coming down the road driving some hogs. I also saw father coming down the road in the opposite direction, and they met just about in front of the house. Ferguson, in a very abrupt manner, ordered father to get out of the road. Father did so, just as soon as he could, and was just coming up to open the front door of the house when Ferguson and Philpot rode up to the fence and ordered him to come back, which he did. Ferguson asked him how he came on, and the usual compliments were passed. Ferguson, then calling father a name, said, "I suppose you have been to Camp Dick Robinson."

"Father answered,"I have".

"He (Ferguson) then asked what father's business had been there, and before answer could be made, Ferguson, using vile and bitter language, told him nobody but a d-d old Lincolnite would be caught at any such place."

"Ferguson continued in this manner for five or ten minutes. The language I cannot express. Ferguson then drew his pistol and said, 'Don't you beg, and don't you budge.'"

"By this time mother was standing in the doorway with me, and she begged Ferguson not to shoot father. I also begged for the sake of God not to shoot him. Father said,'Why Champ, I nursed you when you were a baby. Has there ever been any misunderstanding between us?'"

"'No,' said Ferguson, 'Reuben, you have always treated me like a gentleman, but you have been to Camp Robinson, and I intend to kill you.'"

"Ferguson then shot father, but he didn't fall. He shot again and missed. Father drew his coat around himself as he walked around the house and then in the back door. The first shot took effect in the left side, below the nipple, in the pit of the stomach."

"Ferguson jumped off his horse and went around the other end of the house, Mother and I went to hunt for father, and met Ferguson with his pistol in his hand ready to shoot. He said,'Where is he? Where is he?' We told him we didn't know. We begged him not to shoot any more but he paid no attention to us, and went on into the room where father was. I heard another shot, and heard chairs falling over and a desperate noise. Mother and I screamed as loud as we could, alarming the neighborhood. We then went to the Widow Noland's about six hundred years from our house."

"We returned in a short time, finding father sitting by the fire. We begged him to lie down. He said,'No, I cannot lie down, as your were not present, until I relate the circumstances.'"

"I am not sure, but I think he said,'There will be some hereafter about this. They cannot go on this way. I am bound to die and I want you to know just how it was.' Father then told us what happened after he went around the house."

"He said that he went in the back door, picked up a hatchet, and placed himself in a corner by the front door, supposing Ferguson would come in that way. Instead of doing so, however, Ferguson came in the back door, but did not immediately see father, not until he got near the middle of the floor. Father said he saw Ferguson aiming to shoot again and that he jumped at him and knocked the pistol down with the hatchet, when the pistol went off, the bullet went into the wall. Then Ferguson tried to put his pistol against father's breast to shoot him, and father kept knocking the pistol off with his hatchet."

"They scuffled around over the floor for some time, and Ferguson at length threw father on the bed. Again the attempt was made to put the pistol to father's breast, but he again warded it off with the hatchet, hitting Ferguson on the side of the head and knocking the pistol out of his hand into the bed, where it got lost in the covering. Ferguson then let him loose and started out of the house, with father pursuing him with the hatchet in his hand. At the door, they met Philpot, who poked his pistol in father's face, cursing him, and told him if he touched Ferguson again he would blow his brains out. Father then went upstairs and remained at the top until both of the men left, holding the hatchet in one hand and pitchfork in the other. While there, he heard someone come into the house and go out again, he supposed to get the pistol off the bed."

"I was with father from that time until his death. To every person who talked with him, he said he was bound to die. He never had any other idea. He could hardly sit up to get through with his statement, and went to bed immediately after he had finished. He would speak a few words and then stop to rest. He died about eleven o'clock in the forenoon of Wednesday. I don't know his age exactly but he was nearly sixty years old at the time. He had no arms about him when shot and there were none about the house."

Reuben W. Wood was sworn and testified that he came home the night after his father was shot, that the wound looked very bad, and that his father's first words to him after he came home were:
'Robert, I can't stand it long. Ferguson has shot me.'"

Champ Ferguson's interview on the subject of Reuben Wood after the trial was over:

"The testimony in this case," he said, "was with very few exceptions, false. Reuben Wood and I were always good friends before the War, but after that he was connected with the same company in which my brother, Jim, was operating. I knew that he intended killing me if he ever got the chance. They both hunted me down, and drove me fairly to desperation."

"On the day that he was killed, we met him in the road and he commenced on me, using the most abusive language. I knew his disposition toward me, and I believed he intended to shoot me. The touching story about his piteous appeals to - that he had nursed me when a babe, and tossed me on his knee-- are false, and were gotten up expressly to create sympathy, and set me forth as a heartless wretch. If I had not shot Reuben Wood, I would not likely have been here, for he would have shot me. I never expressed a regret for committing the act, and never will. He was in open war against me."

NOTES:

1. Only mention of his family being Unionists and that he was in a desperate feud with his won family.

2. It wa about this time that he moved his wife and daughter across the mountains into Tennessee, near Sparta, in White County.

3. Mr. Wood, being about 60 and unarmed, put up quite a fight against a younger man proving what a tough bunch these mountaineers were.


Hell Along the Border

by Ron Soodalter

October 10, 2012

After the October 1864 Battle of Saltville in Virginia, Union Lt. Elza C. Smith of the 13th Kentucky Cavalry lay wounded in the Emory and Henry College Hospital along with several of his white and African-American troopers. Suddenly, Rebel guerrilla Champ Ferguson burst into the ward at the head of his band. He strode across the room, and when he came to Smith’s cot, he raised his rifle and snarled, “Do you see this?” He placed the muzzle a foot from Smith’s forehead as the injured man lay helpless, pleading for his life. Ferguson drew back the hammer, and …  CLICK!  The weapon misfired. He cocked his rifle and pulled the trigger twice more, with the same result. Finally, mercifully, on the fourth attempt the gun discharged, and Smith lay dead on his cot, a bullet through his head.

An old adage maintains that history is written by the victors—and to a large extent, this is true. Yet, at the end of the Civil War, our nation’s bloodiest struggle, only two men were tried and executed for war crimes. Both had served the Confederacy. One was Henry Wirz, commandant of the notorious prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville, Ga.; the other was Rebel partisan ranger and guerrilla fighter Champ Ferguson. There is room for extenuation in the case of Wirz, an ineffectual martinet clearly out of his depth; the same cannot be said for Ferguson. While some romantics have doggedly held to the image of Champ Ferguson as a much-wronged Southern patriot and freedom fighter, he was in fact a vicious killer who took life with neither conscience nor compunction.

In the Cumberland Mountains community of Albany, Ky., the seat of Clinton County, there stands a plaque that reads: “Civil War Terrorist Champ Ferguson born here in 1821. Guerrilla leader with Confederate leaning, but attacked supporters of both sides thruout Civil War in southern Ky., Tenn. Over 100 murders ascribed to Ferguson alone. Hunted by both CSA and USA ….”

Ferguson was very much a product of his time and place. A relatively successful south-central Kentucky farmer, he was born into a Southern mountain border culture that embraced the blood feud and justified violence, often unto death, as a means of resolving personal differences. Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln well understood the mentality when he wrote, “Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor lest he be first killed by him.” To Champ Ferguson, the world was a simple place, consisting of friends and enemies. The former were to be embraced; the latter, eliminated. In 1858, he killed his first man, stabbing a local constable over a financial dispute. According to his own account, when he joined the war three years later, it was less because of his commitment to the Southern cause than as a means of escaping prosecution. By this time Ferguson was 39, but despite the late start, he would soon add dozens of killings to his tally.

At 6 feet in height and weighing some 180 pounds, Ferguson was an imposing figure with a reputation around his hometown as a drinker, gambler and bully. His powerful physical appearance, combined with what one historian referred to as his “primordial” nature, struck terror in the hearts of his enemies. As with many who lived in the conflicted border states, his war had less to do with fighting for Southern independence than settling scores with neighbors—and in some cases, with blood kin—who happened to be on the wrong side. He himself later described his guerrilla band’s theater of operations: “We were having sort of a miscellaneous war, up there, through Fentress county, Tennessee, and Clinton county, Kentucky, and all through that region. … Each of us had from 20 to 30 proscribed enemies, and it was regarded as legitimate to kill them at any time, at any place, under any circumstances.”

He did exactly that. His first victim was a neighbor, William Frogg. When he rode up to the Frogg cabin, Mrs. Frogg suspected no ill will; she had known Champ since childhood, and she offered him a seat and an apple. He refused both and sought out her husband, who lay ill in his bed. Champ inquired as to Frogg’s health, and his neighbor responded, “I am very sick. I had the measles and have had a relapse.”

Champ accused Frogg of having contracted his illness while visiting the Yankee recruitment center at nearby Camp Dick Robinson, which Frogg vehemently denied. Ferguson simply drew his pistol and shot Frogg twice in front of his wife and child, killing him on the spot. He then ransacked the cabin, looking for weapons. At his trial four years later, Ferguson would voice what would become his constant refrain: “I considered myself justified in killing him.”

One month later, Champ saddled and stole the horse of another local citizen while loudly cursing the man for a “God-damned Lincolnite” and threatening to kill him. That same day, he rode the stolen horse to the farm of Reuben Wood, a man who had been a lifelong friend until the war put them on opposite sides. As Wood finished feeding his livestock and was entering his house, Champ rode up with two Confederates and said, “I suppose you have been to Camp Robinson.” It appears that to Ferguson, simply visiting the Yankee recruitment center earned a man a death sentence. Wood acknowledged that he had, to which—according to the later testimony of Wood’s daughter—Ferguson responded with a long, “violent and bitter” diatribe, ending with, “Don’t you beg and don’t you dodge!” Wood’s wife and daughter pleaded for his life, while the old man himself reminded his visitor, “Why, Champ, I have nursed you. Has there ever been any misunderstanding between us?”

Ferguson coldly replied, “No, Reuben, you have always treated me like a gentleman, but you have been to Camp Robinson, and I intend to kill you.”

And he did.

Clinton County, Ferguson’s home and birthplace, was overwhelmingly Unionist in its sympathies, as was nearly all of Champ’s own family, and the killings of Frogg and Wood, as well as the blatant theft of livestock, had roused the countryside against him. After his father’s death, Reuben Wood’s son gathered a small band of armed men for the express purpose of killing Champ Ferguson. He missed his chance, and Champ quickly moved across the border into secessionist Tennessee with his band of brigands, settling in White County, along the Calfkiller River. By this time, Champ’s brother, Jim, had joined the Union’s 1st Kentucky Cavalry as a scout, and the brothers had sworn to kill each other on sight—which no doubt would have happened had Jim not been ambushed in December 1861.

The Tennessee-Kentucky border was hotly contested by both Union and Confederate forces throughout the war, and from time to time, Champ found himself serving with regular Rebel units, most notably as a scout for the calvalry of the legendary John Hunt Morgan. However, he preferred to function on his own, without the bothersome rules of military conduct to impede him. His former home, Clinton County, became the scene of vicious guerrilla fighting. Ferguson’s opposite number, local hardcore Union partisan and guerrilla leader David “Tinker Dave” Beatty, swore to kill Champ, and each gave as good as he got, with atrocities committed on both sides.

By the winter of 1862, conditions had gotten so out of hand along the Kentucky-Tennessee border that members of partisan bands from both sides met in Monroe, Tenn., to discuss a cessation of hostilities. It was agreed by those attending, including Tinker Dave, that they would cease the wanton killing and looting, lay down their weapons, and go home. However, with a regional peace within their grasp, a handful of Rebel guerrillas—including Champ Ferguson—immediately broke the terms of the agreement, ensuring the mayhem would continue.

Throughout the four years of war, Ferguson killed regular soldiers, members of the Home Guard, and simple farmers. He slew helpless prisoners and the children of his enemies. At one point, he berated one of his men for sparing the lives of fleeing boys, screaming, “God-damn them … You ought to have shot them.” He murdered five men in one day alone, the last a local youth of 16. Although he sometimes used his pistol or rifle, he reportedly preferred to do his killing “up close and personal” with a Bowie knife.

Champ apparently was ever alert to the possibility of personal gain. Clergyman Isaac T. Reneau wrote in a letter to Tennessee governor and future president Andrew Johnson, “Ferguson has been engaged in horse stealing on a large scale ever since the great rebellion began, and, it is supposed, has stolen thousands of dollars’ worth of property.”

The most deliberate, cold-blooded murders perpetrated by Champ Ferguson occurred after the Battle of Saltville. Both before and after the killing of Lt. Elza Smith described above, Ferguson and his men rampaged through the hospital and the grounds, slaying injured black troopers where they found them as well as the white soldiers and officers with whom they served. Espying one wounded young white trooper crawling along the ground, Ferguson demanded why he had “come down there to fight with the damned niggers.” Ferguson drew his pistol and asked the hapless soldier, “Where will you have it, in the back or in the face?” The terrified youth was incoherent with pain and fear, so Ferguson peremptorily chose for him.

So outraged was the Confederate high command at Ferguson’s conduct at Saltville that they ordered his arrest. He was incarcerated on Feb. 8, 1865, but by this time, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was on the run, and the war was all but lost for the South. Brig. Gen. John Echols ordered Champ released within days of Lee’s surrender, and soon thereafter—with the Confederacy crumbling around him—Ferguson was back in the Cumberland, weapons in hand, resuming his bloody personal war. He slew his last two men on May 1, and within days, Union Maj. Gen. George Thomas ordered that Ferguson be declared an outlaw and his surrender refused. Champ’s former comrades, presented with the possibility of parole, urged him to surrender rather than bring the wrath of the victorious Northern army down on them all. By month’s end, Ferguson was arrested at his home and charged with murdering 53 men.

At his trial, the prosecution paraded 43 witnesses before the jury, each with a personal story of how the defendant had murdered a friend or loved one. One of the most damning witnesses was none other than Tinker Dave Beatty, whose offenses on behalf of the Union were arguably as heinous as those of his long-term adversary, but who had the good fortune to have come out on the winning side. Ferguson displayed no remorse whatsoever and, when allowed to speak, either denied or attempted to justify his killings. Former Confederate general and cavalry commander Joseph Wheeler was one of the few to speak on Ferguson’s behalf, but the jury was unimpressed; it convicted Champ on all counts and sentenced him to hang. In his final statement, he said, “I die a Rebel out and out, and my last request is that my body be removed to White County, Tennessee, and buried in good Rebel soil.”

Champ Ferguson was executed on the morning of Oct. 20, 1865. Just before he was dropped through the trap, his voice rang out over the crowd of silent observers: “Good Lord have mercy on my soul!” The short drop failed to break his neck, but rendered him unconscious. He lived for some 17 minutes before the attending physician pronounced him dead. His wife and daughter took him home to White County and buried him in the local churchyard, according to his last wish.

Americans love their outlaws. By combining the Robin Hood image with the myth of the Lost Cause, the South minted such would-be folk heroes as Jesse James, Cole Younger and Champ Ferguson, assigning them in death a nobility they lacked in life. Their apologists created or subscribed to fables describing how they were “driven to it” by a cruel and brutal foe. Such stories grew up around Champ Ferguson even while he lived. One tells how his wife and daughter were “outraged” by Union soldiers—some versions have them killed—driving Champ to join the war to seek revenge. Another tale describes how Champ’s 3-year-old son was shot dead by a Yankee soldier for waving a small Rebel flag—an impossibility considering his only son had died of illness in 1847. According to some contemporary sources, Champ himself occasionally fell back on these falsehoods to justify his actions, although, shortly before his death, he acknowledged that they were complete fabrications. In reality, Champ Ferguson was nothing more than a mass murderer who displayed an unbridled willingness to take human life, without remorse and for his own personal reasons. In the end, he richly deserved to perish at the end of a rope.

The Frazier History Museum has Champ Ferguson memorabilia, including the hand-colored tintype of Ferguson and photos of his wife that accompany this story; gallows rings from the prison where he was executed; and a letter he wrote to his wife just prior to his execution. Many of the Frazier’s Ferguson items can be seen in the Civil War exhibition “My Brother, My Enemy,” which is on display at the Kentucky Historical Society through Dec. 8. 

CIVIL WAR CAPTAIN THOMAS W. WOOD OF TANEY COUNTY, HIS ANCESTORS AND HIS DESCENDANTS
Researched and Compiled by Wm. L. and Vera Wood, Strafford, Missouri

An early resident of Taney County, Missouri was Capt. THOMAS WILSON WOOD, born December 20, 1826 in Cumberland County, Kentucky to John and Sarah (Crouch) Wood. John Wood was born September 28, 1783 in Washington County, N.C., (now Tennessee) and went to Kentucky in 1803 where he met and married Sarah Crouch. She was born in 1792 in North Carolina and had come with her parents James and Agnes (Denton) Crouch to Kentucky when very young. John and Sarah Wood made their home on the land he first settled along Spring Creek, and here they remained until their deaths, John on January 31, 1861 and Sarah a few

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years later. Their children were: Martha, who married Henry Johnson; William, who married Emiline Brock; Anna, who late in life married her widowed brother-in-law, Henry Johnson; James, whose wife was Elizabeth Amos, went to Missouri and then to Lamar County, Texas; Thomas Wilson, of this sketch; John Jefferson, who married Lavina Myers; Agnes, whose husband was Charles Harrison Myers, a brother of Lavina; Samuel Wilburn, who married Emily Adaline Wright, and also went to Lamar County, Texas; Emily, who died soon after her marriage to James Crawley; and Jesse Willis, who married his cousin Sarah Maria Wood in Madison County, Illinois. Two other children died as infants. (1)

The grandfather of Thomas Wilson Wood was Samuel Wood, born May 2, 1737 in Leicestershire, England, and who came to America in 1755. Tho only eighteen he soon enlisted in the Virginia Militia, a company commanded by Col. Geo. Washington, and was with Braddock when he met defeat at Ft. Duquesne in the French and Indian War. A few years later, in Loudoun County, Virginia, he married Sarah Reives, born October 13, 1747 to James and Sarah (Bean) Reives. Samuel and Sarah Wood were parents of seven sons: William b 1773; James b 1774; Samuel, Jr. b 1777; Thomas b 1779; Abram b 1781; John b 1783; and George b 1787. The last three were born after the family moved to Washington County, where the father died in 1800. (2) During the Revolutionary War, Samuel Wood did his part to aid his adopted country in its fight for freedom. Altho lameness and poor health may have limited his military service, he served in other ways, by caring for the sick and wounded in his home after the battle near Alexandria, and by giving his pewter tableware to be melted and made into bullets when the Colonial troops at Georgetown ran short of ammunition. (3)

On April 6, 1848, Thomas Wilson Wood, our subject, married his cousin Mizzana Wood. She was born Marth 5, 1821, a daughter of William and Elinor (Ryan) Wood. William Wood was in the North Carolina Militia as early as 1791, going on several engagements against the Cherokee and Creek Indians. (4) and was commissioned a Lieutenant by John Seivier, the first Governor of the State of Tennessee. (5) History states that William Wood was among the first to come to the Stockton Valley area of Cumberland County, Kentucky and surveyed much of the land there for the early settlers. He was in the Kentucky State Legislature for 23 consecutive years, and held other minor county offices, as sheriff, surveyor, and treausrer. (6) In 1813, he was Captain of a company of volunteers in Governor Isaac Shelby’s campaign to Canada, where the rank of Brevet Major was bestowed on him. (7) William Wood was also active in the early Baptist movement in Kentucky, being one of the thirteen organizational members in 1802, of the Clear Fork Baptist Church, and was church clerk for that body until his death in 1851. Major Wood and his wife are buried in the cemetery near this church. (Altho in a different building, this church near Albany, Ky., still occupies the same ground and celebrated its 171st homecoming in September of 1973.) (8)

The children of Thomas and Mizzand Wood were William Jefferson, b 1849; James R. b 1850; John Henry b 1854; and Thomas Lafayette, b 1861. Two daughters, Eliza and Sarah, died when infants.

During the Civil War the counties of Cumberland and Clinton, as well as others bordering the Confederate State of Tennessee, were the scene of continued strife and guerilla warfare. Reuben Wood, a cousin of Thomas and Mizzana, was murdered in November of 1861 by the

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notorious rebel, Champ Ferguson and his band of Confederate Rangers. Then early in 1862, their nephew, William Johnson, a Union Soldier home on leave, was killed and his father, old Henry Johnson, was threatened by the same rebels.9 Other families in the area had been harrassed and worse until it was unsafe for the men and boys, so a volunteer unit of cavalry was formed in the area with Thomas Wilson Wood elected as Captain. This company was mustered into the U.S. Army Dec. 23, 1863 at Columbia, Kentucky and discharged January 10, 1865 at Camp Nelson, near Louisville, Ky. and was designated as Co. "C" of the 13th Ky. Vol. Cay. Altho very young, William J. Wood, the oldest son of Thomas and Mizzana, was also in this unit, and was discharged a Sargeant. (10)

There were many battles and skirmishes in the area, and with most of the men and older boys away fighting, many families fled northward to seek refuge and safety among strangers. Among these was Mizzana and her boys who went with the family of her brother-in-law Henry Johnson, to settle between Sedorus and Parkville, Illinois.

When the hostilities were ended Capt. Thomas Wood went back to his home, only to find it burned and the ground ravaged. After attempts to relocate in a neighboring county of Kentucky, he went to Kansas, as did many of his military comrades. In this new state, with free land, he settled in Sumner County, near the town of Corbin. (11)

The Johnson family met sorrow while living in Illinois when the mother, Martha Wood Johnson died December 7, 1865. In 1869 two sons, Isaac Newton (12) and James Johnson (13) brought their families to Missouri and settled in Taney County. Mizzana and her family remained in Illinois until sometime after 1870 when Thomas found the family and after a joyful reunion they all traveled to their new home in Kansas. About ten years later William J. married Ellen Hull and Thomas L. married Margaret Smith in Sumner County and raised large families there. James R. died unmarried in 1882.

The other son of Thomas and Mizzana, John Henry Wood, came to Taney County to visit his Johnson cousins near Bradleyville. While there he met Ellen Roller, born February 21, 1865 in Virginia, a daughter of Phillip and Rosanna (Bledsoe) Roller, who had brought their family to Missouri a few years previous. On March 8, 1883, John Henry and Ellen were married and established their home near her family who lived in the Roller community some five miles west of Bradleyville. John Henry Wood was a farmer and also taught school a few years. Their children were: Zana Ann, who married Lonnie B. Clark, a son of John and Isabel (Moody) Clark; James Madison and Robert Morris, both unmarried; Henry Alvis who married Opal Newton, daughter of Nevils Asberry and Nelly (Nicholson) Newton; and William Andrew who married Olive Clark, daughter of Volney and Serilda (Moody) Clark, a cousin of Lonnie. Ellen (Roller) Wood died August 19, 1894 and is buried in the Bradleyville Cemetery.

On May 24, 1896, John Henry Wood married second, Sarah Clark, born June 2, 1862, a daughter of Francis and Nancy (Clem) Clark. (no relation to Lonnie and Olive) The children of this marriage were: Sarah E., unmarried; Herschel, who died an infant; Noel Marion, who married Piccola Newton, daughter of Jasper and Delcenia (McAdoo) Newton; and Orion Wilton, who married Jessie Holloman. John Henry Wood died September 2, 1935, in Taney County and is buried at Roller Cemetery. His widow died in 1945 in Selah, Washington where she lived with her two sons Noel and Orion Wood.

Thomas and Mizzana bought and sold several pieces of farming land in Kansas, even two lots in the city of Wellington (14) perhaps with the thought of moving to town, but none seemed to be just what they desired and after their son John Henry came to Missouri, they followed in a few years. Thomas was heard to remark that he left Kentucky to get out of the rocks, and Kansas to get out of the mud, only to come to Missouri and settle on hilly, rocky soil, very much like that in his native Kentucky. But Mizzana was not permitted to enjoy her home in Missouri for long, as she died December 18, 1893, and was the first to be buried on ground given to the public for a cemetery by Hiram and Barbara Lawson. This was recorded as Roller Cemetery and is located in northern Taney County about half way between Taneyville and Bradleyville, Missouri. (15)

On November 2, 1895, Thomas Wilson Wood married Matilda Diadamie Essary, born January 12, 1867, a daughter of Andrew Jackson (Jack) Essary and his wife Cassandra Deckard. Cassandra often told of her experiences when a girl in the Civil War, of the time rebel soldiers entered their home and upon finding the kraut barrel, grabbed and ate it by the handfuls, as though they were starving. When the soldiers asked her father if he had a gun he replied "no"

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but Cassandra without thinking answered in the affirmative. Soon realizing what she had done, she crawled under and through the crowd of men, got the gun and stuck it through a hole in the floor, and thus the family was not killed.

Thomas and second wife Matilda continued to live on the homestead, where they were parents of three boys, Mckinley b 1897, and who married Clara Victoria Smith; Emanuel b 1900, who married Fern Hobbs, a daughter of Lorenzo Dow Hobbs and Martha Alice Caudle; and Andrew Jackson b 1901, who married Ardith Cranfill. Thomas Wilson Wood died January 18, 1912, and is buried in Roller Cemetery next to his first wife. Matilda lived until April 13, 1964, and died at the home of her son Emanuel at Ozark, Missouri and is buried near Ozark.

Emanuel Wood has musical talent which has prevailed through each generation of the Wood family, enabling him to play any string instrument. He is a regular member of the band "The Fiddlers Four", playing either the fiddle, guitar or banjo. This group has entertained the large tourist crowds at Silver Dollar City near Branson, during the Craft Festival and "Root Diggin’ Days" for the last six years.

Two sons of Captain Thomas Wilson Wood are still living, McKinley of Oxnard, California and Emanuel of Ozark, as well as many grandchildren, and great grandchildren through the fourth generation from his two families.

*FOOTNOTES

1. Family Record. Similar copies of handwritten family record have been found in the possession of several descendants of Samuel Wood.

2. Washington County, Tennessee Wills. Book I pp. 51-52.

3. Patriot Index, D.A.R., Washington, D.C., 1966, p. 758.

4. Pension Application (Warrant #10772). Made by Mary Wood for bounty land in 1853.

5. Commission Book of Governor John Sevier 1796-1801. Tennessee Hist. Commission, Nashville, 1957, p. 45.

6. J.W. Wells. History of Cumberland County (Louisville, Ky. Standard Printing Company, 1947)

7. A.C. Quisenberry. Kentucky in the War of 1812 (Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Company, 1969) p. 196.

8. M.M. Gaskins. Lighthouse in the Wilderness. (Albany, Ky., The Clear Fork Baptist Church, 1972).

9. Thurman Sensing. Champ Ferguson, Confederate Guerilla. (Nashville, Tennessee, 1942)

10. Adj. Gen. Ky. Report, p. 357-358.

11. Russell County, Ky. Deeds Bk. H. p. 442-443, Sumner Co. Kansas Deeds

12. Isaac Newton Johnson was the grandfather of James W. Morgan of Taneyville, Mo.

13. James Johnson was Taney County Representative in the State Legislature, 1874 until 1894. He was also Clerk of the Circuit Court and Recorder of Deeds.

14. Sumner County, Kansas Deeds.

15. Taney County, Mo. Deeds. Book 3, p. 206.

Researched and Compiled by Wm. L. and Vera Wood, Strafford, Missouri.