I53038: Minnie E. CARSWELL (1859

Notes

John Hunt Morgan b. 1 Jun 1825 in Huntsville, Madison Co., Alabama; CONFLICT in wives names.
Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan had 3-wives and families.
#1-wife Barbary Duncan, 13-children, lived in Smythe Co., VA

#2-wife Julia Ann Tewell, 6-children, Hannah E. Morgan/Lemon Cole Morgan/Theorin Morgan/Edward Morgan/John M. Morgan/Cora Morgan; children born in Louisville, KY with Tewell surname, later changed to Morgan in OH

#3-wife Marter Smithsian from Bull Run, VA; they settled in IA to have family; 2-children a boy & a girl when John was killed in TN.

John H. Morgan's birthparents were John TOOLE changed to TUEL in OH m: SELF woman whose family had moved from Huntsville, AL. (Self woman descended from James or John Anderson Self in AL)

"John Hunt Morgan's second marriage to Martha Ready on December 14, 1862 took place with considerable ceremony: present were four Confederate generals (Bragg, Hardee, Cheatham and Breckinridge) along with, by most accounts, President Jefferson Davis himself.
[Morgans, Wm andSons.FBK.FTW]
Rebecca Gratz Bruce (Wife) b. 18 Jun 1830 Marriage: 21 NOV 1849
Children:
(stillborn) Morgan b. 1853
Martha ("Mattie") Ready (Wife) b. 1840 in Murfreesboro, TN Marriage: 14 DEC 1862
Children:
(infant) Morgan b. 27 Nov 1863
Jonnie Morgan b. 7 Apr 1865 in Augusta, GA "
***********
John Hunt Morgan was a general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

Born June 1 1825, Huntsville AL
Died September 3 1864, Greeneville TN
Pre-War Profession Mexican War, hemp manufacturer, organised a militia unit.
War Service September 1861 joined Buckner's forces at Bowling Green, April 1862 Col. of 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, raided in Tennessee and Kentucky, December 1862 Brig. Gen., raided into Indiana and Ohio (c), escaped, commanded Dept. of Southwestern Virginia, killed while en route to attack federal forces at Knoxville.

Related by marriage to AP Hill and B W Duke (and remotely also by marriage to Union Gen. John Buford) . A legendary cavalry commander in the Jeb Stuart tradition.
Further reading
Metzler, William E Morgan and his Dixie cavaliers : a biography of the colorful Confederate general Metzler 1976
Ramage, James A Rebel raider : the life of General John Hunt Morgan Lexington, University Press of Kentucky 1986
Swiggett, Howard The rebel raider : a life of John Hunt Morgan Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill 1934

SOURCE: Kerry Webb's Civil War Generals website

General John Hunt Morgan, CSA
John Hunt Morgan was born June 1, 1825 in Huntsville, Alabama, and moved to Lexington, Kentucky, as a young boy. He supported Kentucky neutrality at the start of the war but was compelled to join the Confederate forces after his state declared its support for the Union. He officially enlisted in the Confederate Army on October 27, 1861, and was quickly promoted to the rank of Colonel after leading the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry on a successful campaign behind enemy lines.

Morgan's guerrilla tactics earned him the nickname "Francis Marion of the War" and inspired the Confederacy's Partisan Ranger Act of April 21, 1862 which authorized President Davis to commission units of Partisan Rangers for detached guerrilla operations. Morgan was infamous for his raids from Tennessee into Kentucky by which he would not only disrupt enemy communications by tapping into Union telegraph lines, but also round up fresh troops and supplies for the Confederate Army. The raids of the romantic Morgan thrilled Southerners throughout the Confederacy and struck fear in the heart of many a Yankee.

Morgan went on to be promoted to Brigadier General and commander of the Department of Western Virginia and East Tennessee. On September 4, 1864, Gen. John Hunt Morgan was killed in Tennessee en route to attack federal forces at Knoxville, leaving behind his wife, Martha, pregnant with their daughter. He is buried in the city of Lexington where an equestrian statue, unveiled in 1911, exemplifies his appeal as a symbol of the Confederate cause.

"But our victories have not been achieved without loss. We have to mourn some brave and dear comrades. Their names will remain in our breasts, their fame outlives them. They died in defence of a good cause. They died like gallant soldiers--with their front to the foe.

Officers and men! Your conduct makes me proud to command you! Fight always as you fought yesterday, and you are invincible."
John Hunt Morgan, August 22, 1862

SOURCE: Confederate Crossroads Online, John Hunt Morgan, Camp 1342
http://members.aye.net/~hiland/jhmorgan/

************
Thursday, November 27, 2003 Ohio moments
Infamous Morgan came to town after jail break

On Nov. 27, 1863, Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan - the leader of 2,000 Confederate troops who four months earlier had terrorized Cincinnati and its environs during the longest cavalry raid of the Civil War - escaped from the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus.

Morgan had been captured in Columbiana County, Ohio, then jailed in Cincinnati before being transferred to Columbus. He and several other rebels spent 20 days digging a tunnel through the floor of their cell - reportedly with pilfered kitchen knives.

Morgan went to the Little Miami Railroad station and boarded a train for Cincinnati. He jumped off the train outside town, then paid a man to row him across the Ohio River to Kentucky on a skiff.

Morgan made his way back to the Confederate lines and resumed command. He died in Tennessee on Sept. 4, 1864, at age 39.

Rebecca Goodman
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/11/27/loc_ohiodate1127.html

Blue, gray; black, white
Descendant researches a black forebear who fought for Confederacy and Union

BY GARY ROBERTSON
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Feb 1, 2004

For much of her adult life, Mary Meekins has been trying to pull together the pages of her great-grandfather's life.

Meekins, who works in the financial affairs office at Virginia Union University, never thought there would be so much to learn.

What she has found is a grand tale of war, unlikely alliances and one surprise after another.

Wesley Hunt, her great-grandfather, was born into obscurity as a slave in Lexington, Ky., about 1840. But at his death 85 years later, he was front-page news in the Flushing, N.Y., evening newspaper.

The newspaper described him as a "unique figure" who, despite never rising above a neighborhood handyman, had become one of the best-known and most well-regarded members of the community.

In his youth, he rode alongside one of the Confederacy's most flamboyant officers, Gen. John Hunt Morgan - known as "The Thunderbolt of the Confederacy" for his daring raids.

While with Morgan, Hunt was captured by Union forces. From Meekins' research, it appears her great-grandfather may have been given a choice between imprisonment or enlistment in the Union Army, though that part is not clear.

In any event, Hunt enlisted and served 2½ years with a Union regiment of what were then known as "colored troops." He was wounded in action and rose to the rank of corporal.

Yet after the war, a member of the slave-owning Hunt family wrote a praise-filled letter of introduction for him to a former Confederate general living in New York City.

The recommendation said, "He is a true rebel who killed many a yank in his day. He was forced to the cause [joined the Union Army] but remains a true friend."

One of the many people who helped Meekins trace her ancestry observed that her grandfather "seems to have been proud of his participation on both sides."

Even after 30 years of sifting through her great-grandfather's life, Meekins said there were still a lot of loose threads.

"The story isn't over," she said. "I think it's a movie, a historical documentary . . . a book. When you think about it, it's unbelievable."

Meekins has been researching her mother's side of the family tree since the mid-1970s, when she started working for a commission in California that was preparing for the nation's bicentennial.

At the time, many African-Americans weren't interested in their ancestry. Some were embarrassed by it, though now African-American genealogy is a hot topic.

Meekins was drawn to her family history by memories of her mother, who died when Meekins was 14, and an elderly aunt. The two women talked constantly about family history as Meekins was growing up in New York state.

Wesley Hunt was often the subject of those conversations. Meekins believes that in some way her great-grandfather has reached beyond the grave and has chosen her to tell his story.

"[Mother] started telling me about her grandfather who was in the Civil War and she told me about his taking care of General Morgan's horse, Black Beth," Meekins recalled.

Her great-grandfather named three of his daughters after the sisters of his slave owner, Thomas Hart Hunt.

Indeed, Thomas Hart Hunt had named her great-grandfather for his own son, who had died as a young child.

Meekins said her elderly aunt always kept a portrait of General Morgan in her living room. Meekins doesn't know what created such a strong bond between her great-grandfather and the Hunt family.

She wonders if there might possibly be a blood relationship. She thinks she sees a family resemblance between her great-grandfather and some members of the Hunt family.

"I don't really know," Meekins said. "I don't know if I'll ever find out. But there was something there."

Thomas Hart Hunt had moved from Lexington, Ky., to Louisville and he took his slaves, Wesley Hunt among them.

When Meekins' great-grandfather was about 15, his owner sent him to his nephew's bag factory in Lexington to learn the bag-making business.

That nephew was John Hunt Morgan. When the Civil War erupted, Morgan took Hunt into the war with him.

According to a news account, Wesley Hunt was captured early in the war by Union forces as he tended Morgan's horse outside a reception given at a hotel in the general's honor by the women of Cynthiana, Ky.

Morgan escaped by jumping out an upstairs window and swimming across a river behind the hotel. Not long afterward, giving his age as 20, Hunt enlisted in the Union Army - Company C, 100th Regiment, Colored Infantry Volunteers.

Meekins, who came to Virginia in 1996 because she wanted a change from California's unvarying weather, said she "kept running into stone walls" during her genealogical research.

She knows she never would have been able to discover everything she has about her family without a lot help along the way.

After working for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California when the senator was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Meekins took a job with the University of California at Berkeley coordinating legal education programs.

One of her first keys to unlocking her family's past came when an attorney she was working with sent her an article about a book written about black Civil War soldiers, "Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers."

She contacted the author, Joseph T. Glatthaar, a professor of history at the University of Houston, and asked for help in finding out something about her great-grandfather.

Glatthaar was making a research trip to the National Archives in Washington. He said if he had time, he would look up Meekins' great-grandfather and send her what he found.

"I accepted it as a favor," Meekins said, "because he could understand my plight as a researcher. He could understand how you could run into stone walls."

Meekins soon received a wealth of information about her great-grandfather: his date of birth, the company he was with, his wife's name, how many children he had, the date of birth of his children, when he mustered out.

She also received invaluable help from an archivist at the University of Kentucky and from the curator of the Hunt-Morgan House in Lexington, Ky.

One person who made a lasting impression on her, and helped advanced her research, was an official with the Morgan's Men Association, a group whose ancestors were Confederates who rode with John Hunt Morgan.

The 1991 letter from John Britton Wells III, president of Morgan's Men, said this:

"I am thrilled that you are searching your heritage and that I can play a small part in your efforts.

"It is my desire to see blacks and white in the South begin to celebrate a common 'Southern' heritage. Slavery has separated us for so long and anything that glorifies participation in things Confederate is regularly denounced as racist.

"I hope the day will come when ALL our heritages can be celebrated without offending each other."

After the Civil War, Meekins' great-grandfather married and moved to New York state, settling in what was then the village of White Stone, N.Y., where he was sought after because of his expertise in caring for horses.

"Now I want to find out who his parents were," Meekins said. "That is the one missing piece of the puzzle."

Meekins, 58, also wants to explore the side of her family that has roots in Charles City County. Her mother's paternal grandparents lived there.

She knows her family has links as far back as the 1600s in the county.

"One of my great-great-great grandfathers was in the American Revolution," she said.

While other family members don't share her thirst for genealogy, Meekins said uncovering the details of her great-grandfather's life has become the burning passion of her own life.

One day she hopes her research will be of value to her daughter, manager of the telecommunications center at the United Nations in New York, and her daughter's two children.

"Next, I want to find out what my African roots are," Meekins said. "People need to know where they come from."

Contact Gary Robertson at (804) 649-6346 or [email protected]
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGA rticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031773421050&path=!new s&s=1045855934842

"Union Brig. Gen. Edward H. Hobson considered his greatest feat to be the 1863 capture of Confederate Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan. Taken near New Lisbon, Ohio, on July 26, 1863, the Confederate leader was hustled to the Ohio State Prison, but his stay was brief. He escaped on November 26.
Eleven months after being taken prisoner, Morgan and his men captured a body of Federal troops at Cynthiana, Kentucky. Their commander was Edward H. Hobson."
(from: a book titled "Civil War Curiosities" by Webb Garrison. 1994.)

Despised in the commonwealth
General's tactics stirred controversy during Civil War
----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------

The case of Rebel prisoner Joe Bradas clearly illustrates why Union Gen. Stephen Gano Burbridge gained such notoriety.
Bradas was from a well-known Covington family. His brother James operated a candy making business on Second Street between Market and Main streets.

When the war between the states broke out, Joe Bradas sided with the South and enlisted in the Confederate Army.

He was captured in battle near Greensburg, the county seat of Green County, along with about 40 other confederates. Most were marched away, but some, including Bradas, were loaded on a steamer and taken to Brandenburg along the Ohio River in Meade County.

Noticing the casual nature of the Confederate prisoners, one Union guard asked the men if they knew where they were headed. It was then that Bradas and the others learned they were about to be executed under a policy that specified when a Union supporter was killed by Confederate guerrillas, Confederate prisoners were to be killed in retaliation

Arriving in Brandenburg, Bradas asked to see a Catholic priest. None could be found, but Bradas was given a Bible, which he held as he knelt to face a firing squad that carried out the orders from their general.

That general was Burbridge.

The Civil War produced many criminals, heroes and cads in Northern Kentucky, but arguably there none more controversial, or perhaps more notorious, than Burbridge

To some, Burbridge was merely a loyal American, doing what he had to do to preserve the Union.

To others, however, he was a tyrant and war criminal guilty of changing his rules after the fact, making it hard to comply.

Burbridge was born on Aug. 19, 1831, in Georgetown, the son of Robert and Elizabeth Barnes Burbridge.

He attended Georgetown College and the Frankfort Military Institute and worked as a farmer and an attorney.

When the Civil War began, Burbridge recruited locals into the Union Army in central Kentucky and received the rank of colonel in the 26th Kentucky Infantry.

He was later promoted to brigadier general and fought at the Battle of Shiloh, one of the major battles early in the war along the Mississippi River and one of the few Union victories early in the war.

He also served in Arkansas and at the siege at Vicksburg, Miss.

In 1864, Burbridge was sent to Northern Kentucky to drive Confederate guerrillas and sympathizers and, most notably, Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan from the commonwealth. He replaced Gen. Jerremiah Boyle.

As Kentucky's top Union officer, Burbridge led Union troops against Morgan and his men in June 1864 and drove Confederates from Cynthiana. President Abraham Lincoln credited Burbridge with Morgan eventually being driven from the state.

Many criticized Burbridge's tactics which waged war not only against the soldiers, but also against their families, neighbors and supporters.

Employing such tactics, Burbridge's troops engaged in house burnings, imprisonment and retaliatory executions. Most often, Burbridge ordered the retaliatory executions to take place in the community where the Union supporter had been killed.

Accounts attribute some 50 executions of Confederate prisoners to orders given by Burbridge.

Burbridge also was responsible for issuing an order that gave the government first rights to hogs sold in the state. To ensure the army got plenty of pork, Burbridge forbad shipment of hogs outside Kentucky without a permit. Soldiers in Covington and Newport were to arrest farmers who tried to sell hogs in Cincinnati and confiscate their swine.

Because the military set a price that was less than could be gained in markets in Cincinnati and Louisville, the order cost farmers an estimated $300,000 before it was canceled on Nov. 27, 1864.

Writing in the "Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky," historian E. Merton Coulter called Burbridge's hog order "the most brazen attempt of the military authorities to enrich themselves at the expense of the Kentucky people."

In February 1865, Burbridge was replaced as Kentucky military commander to which the Louisville Journal declared, "Thank God and Mr. Lincoln.''

After the war, Burbridge lived in Covington for a few years. A 1874 city directory listed Burbridge's residence at 64 E. 13th St. Later, he lived at 76 W. 10th St. Burbridge married twice, and had two sons, both by his first wife, Lizzy Garh.

Despised in his home state, he relocated to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he died in his sleep at his home on Nov. 30, 1894. He was 63.

But even 30 years after the Civil War, feelings about Burbridge remained hard from both former Confederate and union backers. He was buried in Washington, D.C.

The study of Northern Kentucky history is an avocation of staff writer Jim Reis, who covers suburban Kenton County for The Kentucky Post. Publication Date: 08-02-2004

^[S3569]

My Southern Family

Minnie E. CARSWELL

1859 - ____

ID Number: I53038

Sources

Capt. Francis CONWAY II

27 Dec 1722 - 17 May 1761

ID Number: I15230

Notes

Sources

PETER GRESLEY

ABT 1273 - ABT 1310

ID Number: I100770

Notes

Sources

Gen. John Hunt MORGAN C.S.A.

1 Jun 1825 - 4 Sep 1864

ID Number: I86867

Notes

Sources

Thomas Hazlewood SCOTT

8 Nov 1802 - 1861

ID Number: I40434

Notes

Sources

Ivan L. SWARTZ

ABT 1890 - ____

ID Number: I38888

Sources