The photo is from a reenactment of the Battle of Fort Sanders.  Photo credit: Tammie McCarroll Burroughs

The Civil War in Johnson County

 

During the summer and fall of 1864, not less than one hundred dwelling houses were burned belonging to the Union people of Carter and Johnson Counties, and the most of them were occupied by the families of men who were serving as soldiers in the Federal army at the time their houses were burned, who had not seen their homes for a number of months. Old Bill Parker was at the head of all this dreadful mischief. The lower part of Carter and Johnson Counties were thronged with women and children who had been driven away from their homes and all their property destroyed by this old miscreant, Many of these poor women made their way through the lines as they had been rendered perfectly destitute by the destruction of their houses and all their household property, while many others wandered about the country enduring all the privations and intense suffering which starvation and nakedness could impose, without a home to go to and indeed these poor women were afraid to go near their old places of abode for they seemed to be in as great a dread of Parker, as if he had been a ravenous tiger that had been let loose in the country for the purpose of destroying men women and children. They had not a bed to lie down on, for everything which they could call their own had been destroyed when they were driven away from their homes, and their houses burned to ashes. They would often say, while the tears were streaming from their eyes,"If Bill Parker was away, we could go back to our friends. His end was now drawing near, in fact it now amounted to an absurdity for the Union men in the country to think about permitting him to live any longer than could possibly be avoided, for there was not a day passed but what some poor Union man was killed, by himself or some of his men. He was now frequently heard to boast that he had killed twelve old Union men himself, and said that he would kill twelve more if he could find them. He called himself "Brave Bill Parker." But no real and genuine bravery ever took up its abode in the black heart of this despicable wretch. He was nothing more than a base and cowardly assassin, who at all times shrank back from danger when he thought that his own personal safety was in jeopardy. (Sourec:Thrilling adventures of Daniel Ellis, the great Union guide of east Tennessee, Daniel Ellis, pp. 299-300

 

 

 

Saving America's Civil War Battlefields