A Wilson Family Tree
Notes for John Deal Brents
The memoir by his daughter Mary, and other discussion in "Brents, The Joshua Tree", call him John Deal Brent. However, the 1850 census lists him as John D. Brents.
The following is a portion of "Memories of Life on a Farm in Hart County, Kentucky, in the Early Sixties" by Mary E. Brent Roberts [John's daughter] with a Foreward by her daughter Elizabeth Madox Roberts (The Filson Club History Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 129-153, July 1940). Available from the web site of the Filson Historical Society, http://www.filsonhistorical.org/ . These excerpts were included in "Brents, The Joshua Tree" (pp. 45-46), but I have gone back to the original so the following has some differences from the version in "Brents, The Joshua Tree". Note that an excerpt about the Battle of Munfordville is included in the notes for John's sister, Elizabeth M. Brents.
The Civil War was on then. There was great confusion in the country. My father went as Captain in the Louisville Legion of the Federal Army. He closed out his business in Louisville--the Ninth Street Tobacco Warehouse--and Mother came with my two little sisters to stay with her family at the Blue Spring Grove. The house in Louisville was closed. I knew the excitement that was all around, but I did not know much of what it all meant. My father received a bad wound at the Battle of Shiloh and was very deaf always afterwards. The hurt was in the head. It might have been an internal head wound or shock more than a wound. He was carried from the field unconscious and was thought to be mortally hurt. Later he was brought to the old St. Joseph's Hospital in Louisville, where he was confined for some time. Mother went to see him there. Throughout the rest of his life, and he lived more than thirty years afterward, he always said that the roar of the Battle of Shiloh was continually in his head, heard beneath every other sound. When he was partly recovered from the wound, he went back to his company and was present with Buell's Army when Bragg's invasion of Kentucky took place, in the fall of 1862.
...
One evening about three o'clock one of Grandfather's [Valentine Garvin's] neighbors came and told him that some Confederate soldiers, who had a camp about two miles from there, were coming over that night to capture my father, who would be there. This was the first intimation we had that Father was coming, and why he would come we did not know. The Union Army was camped near Bowling Green. General Buell, knowing that Father had been born and reared in Hart County and would know the roads there, had asked him to go on a secret mission to locate the enemy and to show his officers a way to move the Union army without meeting General Bragg. Buell promised my father an honorable discharge from the army and certain other considerations for making the difficult and dangerous expedition. (He later got his honorable discharge, but did not get the other considerations.) When Grandfather and Mother knew that he was coming, and knew that enemies were coming to capture him, they forthwith sent a messenger to my Uncle Bob [Garvin], who lived about a mile away, and asked him to come over and tell them what to do. Uncle Bob came over right away, and all of his family of four or five persons.
About sundown Father came riding up to the gate before the house. We all went out to greet him, but Mother and Grandfather would not let him get down from his horse, and they told him what we were expecting. Father pleaded that he was awfully tired, having ridden forty miles that day, but they would not grant his plea. Uncle Bob and my oldest brother got fresh horses and piloted Father through fields and side roads, to safety. Uncle came back about midnight and reported that Father was safe.
After the departure the household and servants began preparation for the night and the coming of the Confederates. We all wanted to sleep in the same room, so there was a great throwing downstairs of cover, feather beds, etc. In the kitchen there was a piece of jeans in the loom to make winter clothes for the men servants. One of the men, Uncle Frank, said, "They will be sure to take this cloth for their own clothes, I will take it out and hide it." Then ensued a great clatter of unwinding the cloth. That and the commotion in the house convinced the three or four Confederates, who had come to take Father prisoner, that he was not in the house. They had come up through the orchard to the yard fence, which was only about twenty-five feet from the house. My father was Captain John D. Brent, of Company K, of the Louisville Legion, the Fifth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
...
After the battle of Munfordsville [sic] the armies passed on farther, and the bad excitement was somewhat over. The war, however, was only half over. My father had begun to think that he was fighting on the wrong side. Things had taken a different turn from what they were in the beginning. Father had his honorable discharge from the army. He rested a little while in the country. Then we went back to our home in Louisville....
...
The events here narrated happened more than seventy-eight to eighty years ago. All stand out plain in my memory today--in 1940, in my eighty-sixth year--as some of the important events of my early childhood.
Note: Some of the information in these pages is uncertain. Please let me know of errors or omissions using the email link above. ...Mike Wilson
Page generated on 31 October 2023; see http://wilsonfamilytree.org/ for further updates