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Middleton’s book adds detail to dark period
With the publication of the Rev. Walter Middleton’s “Trouble at the Forks,” area residents have another written record of a dangerous and distubing time in Jackson County’s past.
Like Howard Alley’s 2002 Civil War mystery “Presumed Dead,” Middleton’s volume tells of the raiders and scalawags that threatened mountain families during the 1860s. The extent of the despair and deprivation the Civil War brought this region’s isolated farm families gained national attention with the 1997 publication of Charles Frazier’s novel, “Cold Mountain,” and the subsequent “Cold Mountain” movie that was released in 2003.
Middleton based his book on stories his grandfather told him of life during the Civil War, and the tales he relates are filled with family and place names that are familiar in Jackson County’s Canada section.
In fact, Middleton’s new book reminded me of some other old stories – some of which I’ve included in this space before – of other harrowing Civil War encounters.
Alley also used his grandfather’s stories as the basis for a book about events that happened to his great-grandfather, Col. John Alley. A career Army officer, Col. Alley served with Gen. Winfield Scott in the Mexican War and the removal of the Cherokee Indians to Oklahoma. When the Civil War broke out, he cast his lot with the Confederacy.
When Col. Alley returned to Cashiers at the close of fighting, his farm was attacked by Kirk’s Raiders, a band of renegades with Union affiliation. Kirk’s men plundered Alley’s house, stealing food and ruining even the mattresses and covers off the beds. They threatened to hang Col. Alley after discovering his Confederate uniform, but his life was spared when a man with Kirk’s group recognized Alley as the Army officer he’d served under in Mexico.
Gladys Hooper of Tuckasegee told me a tale she heard from her husband’s grandmother, Ingabo Wood Queen, who died in 1957 at age 98. Ingabo was the daughter of Andy Jackson Wood (mentioned several times in Middleton’s book) and grew up in Canada near Wolf Creek Baptist Church. She was just a little girl clinging to her mother’s skirts when the soldiers appeared.
“Her mother was just starting to cook lunch when a group of soldiers came along with a lot of horses,” Gladys said. “they started shooting and killing all her mother’s chickens, and then they told her mother to clean and cook those chickens for (the soldiers’) lunch. Then the soldierrs gathered up all the corn and everything else grandma Ingabo’s family had and took it with them.”
Ingabo told Gladys her mother cried and cried after the soldiers left.
“She said she was so scared she just peeked around her mother’s skirts,” Gladys said. “It was a very frightening time.”
The way the family understood the story, it was also Kirk’s men who stole from the Wood family, Gladys said.
Another story came my way from Fannie Mae Brown and her brother Grover, both of whom are now deceased. It also took place in Canada community and happened at their grandfather’s farm on what is now known as Cedar Valley Road.
Fannie Mae’s grandfather and some other men were making syrup one day when Yankee soldiers rode up and demanded the horses that were hitched to the cane mill, she said. After the soldiers rode off with her grandpa’s horses, he and the others got their guns and took off across the mountain to head them off.
“They brought the horses back, but the soldiers were never seen again,” Fannie Mae said.
The soldiers’ disappearance gave rise to a number of strange events, according to Grover, who told me of odd happenings and apparitions along the creek. Several of his stories involved dogs that were usually seen at night.
“If you were going up the creek, they’d be coming down,” Grover once told me. “It’s a hard thing to tell about. It looks just like you’re seeing a dog, but somehow you know you’re not.
“My pop used to stay at Joe Shook’s house sometimes, and he’d meet those dogs going up and then he’d meet them coming down,” he said. “So one night he kicked one, only he didn’t kick anything except he about kicked his knee out of socket and couldn’t walk for a week,” Grover said.
Grover had another story of a young man who was courting up that way and saw a large, white dog.
“People told him to be careful – that he’d see strange things up there and told him about the dog. He said he didn’t care – he’d shoot it. So he did. And when he shot the dog, balls of fire flew everywhere – balls of fire as big as a gallon bucket – all over him and his horse. That horse ran so hard he couldn’t go again for a week,” Grover said.
According to Grover, who told me the stories in 1988, those dogs haven’t been seen since Joe Marion Shook died in 1962.
“I saw one that night, the only one I ever saw, and as far as I know, no one’s seen any since then,” Grover said.”
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