The Facts Unravel
Submitted by Bruce D. Liddell, BDLiddell@yahoo.com
The Facts Unravel
Sometimes interesting stuff hides behind
mundane words, and a little research is required to expose what
really happened.
The first trace of my ancestor Jimerson
(James Jr.) Liddell is April 18, 1800, when an unknown hand recorded
his birth in the family Bible. The next certain trace of Jimerson is
March 10, 1828, when he bought a farm in Jefferson County MS from
Elisha and Mary Ann Trader. Jimerson paid $1200 “in hand,” about
$2.66 per acre.
The 1828 sales contract specified “good and
lawfull [sic] money of the United States.” That means the same as
“legal tender for all debts, public and private” on the Georges in
your wallet.
But Jimerson did not pay with paper. The young
United States swore off paper money after the worthless
“Continentals” and “shin-plasters” of Revolutionary times. Not until
1862 in the American Civil War did the U.S. Treasury begin issuing
“greenbacks.” Of course many states, cities, banks, railroads, etc.
issued their own money, but none was legal tender. (My personal
collection includes money issued by an ale brewery and a pie bakery,
both in NYC.)
In 1828 the only legal tender was gold and
silver coin. (Pennies have never been legal tender.) The coin's
mintage, U.S. or foreign, was not important, only the known weight
and value. The gold Portuguese johannes or “joe” was worth $8.80,
while the tiny silver Spanish real (ree-AL) was 2-1/2 cents. Ten
years later the Dahlonega GA gold strike revealed the country's
first large internal source, and since 1838 foreign coins are not
U.S. legal tender.
Born too late to enjoy gold and silver
circulating coins, I wondered what $1200 actually meant to Jimerson.
A reference book revealed that a $10 “gold eagle” of the 1820s
weighs 17.5 grams, and a $1 “silver dollar” 27 grams. (With Metric
there's no confusion between troy and avoirdupois.) A tussle with my
calculator translated $1200 into 2.1 kg and 32.4 kg respectively.
Jimerson paid 4 and 1/2 pounds of gold or 70-plus pounds of
silver (over half a Biblical talent, the maximum load one man can
carry on his head.)
Surely Jimerson paid gold “in hand.” My
imagination balks at the idea of a strong man with a big wheelbarrow
full of hard money. What would they say down at the Walmart? Grin.
Liddell family research by Barbara Liddell Thornhill and her
late father Jefferson Walter Liddell Sr.
BDL 07-Aug-2007
At his untimely death in 1856 in Jefferson County MS, my ancestor
Jimerson (James Jr.) Liddell owned thirty black Negro slaves.
A lot of folks have trouble discussing uncomfortable topics. To
me, the best way to handle a sticky issue is to stick strictly to
the facts.
Jimerson’s household before his death in 1856:
• 6 families
• 38 people, 8 free whites and 30 black Negro slaves
• 17 working-age adults (10 men, 7 women)
• 5 elderly (all
slaves)
• 16 children
Of the 9 slaves not formally in
families, 2 were elderly and 5 were children.
Jimerson’s
slaves were “Negroes,” the term then used for people of Sub-Saharan
African ancestry. All surviving documents classify them as “black”
suggesting a mainly African bloodline. The classification not used,
“mulatto,” described people of supposedly mixed African and European
parentage. Although Jimerson’s contemporaries had many other words
for fractions of races, the law generally recognized only whites,
blacks, mulattos, and aboriginal “Indians.” (Mainstream science
today recognizes none of these, only individual human beings.)
Jimerson was a “planter” on the 1850 census. By definition a
planter owned 20 or more slaves, a “farmer” 19 or fewer. [I clearly
recall this definition from somewhere, but cannot verify it.] The
census coincided with the national uproar over slavery that resulted
in the Compromise of 1850, a political patch-job that satisfied
neither side. Jimerson’s occupation was probably true, but he
disguised ownership from “the abolitionists in Washington” by
counting his slaves among many others from the neighborhood under J.
R. Comfort, occupation “overseer.” (Overseer Comfort. Reminds me of
now-retired Judge Nice, who wasn’t.)
The typical MS planter
farmed his own land, bought more slaves (not land) when prosperous,
and rented his excess slaves for seasonal labor. Mixing fat years
and lean, the average plantation earned perhaps 2% or 3% on the
money invested. (Big-city banks offered depositors twice that
return.) Full-time slave rental, desired but rarely achieved,
returned about 10% of the slave’s appraised value. Slave values were
standard, the same as livestock and used-car values today. Long-term
capital growth came primarily from natural increase, children born
into lifetime slavery. A healthy young adult slave, raised from
infancy, represented a 30% to 50% annual return over childrearing
expenses.
Jimerson left behind “heirs of his body” a widow
age 41 and six minor children 3 to 13. Eighteen months later Martha
Ann Baldridge Liddell married childless widower Rev. Thomas Calliham
Brown M.D. (of the MS pioneer Calliham family.) Executor Brown kept
the estate intact and sold none of the thirty slaves, but one
infant, one elder, and one workingman died of natural causes
1859-1862. Upon Emancipation in 1865 all the former slaves took, or
were assigned, the surname “Brown” from the current head of
household. To the best of our knowledge no present-day
African-descent Liddells spring from Jimerson’s slaves, but one or
more Jefferson-area Brown families probably do.
Details,
including the names and condition of 37 individual slaves, are on
the Jefferson County MS website
http://jeffersoncountyms.org/aframerican.htm
(address current as
of summer 2003.)
Liddell family research by Barbara Liddell
Thornhill and her late father Jefferson Walter Liddell Sr.
BDL 18-Aug-2007
Janice Stevens Rice recently transcribed and posted the 1820
Jefferson County Census, the first U.S. Decennial Census to include
the state of Mississippi. (The 1810 Census returns for Mississippi
Territory have not survived.)
http://www.us-census.org/states/mississippi/j-ms.htm#Jefferson
http://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/ms/jefferson/1820/pg0050.txt
Both addresses lead to the same place, current summer 2003.
THANK YOU, Janice, for your hard work and generosity.
My own
ancestors appear on every U.S. Census from 1790 to the present. This
is no great distinction, shared by perhaps the majority of
Americans, but it has needled me to unravel the facts behind every
Census. And the Fact-with-a-capital-F is the political nature of the
process, starting when politically-divided Congress passes the laws
defining each Census.
The first Census in 1790 was taken for
three purposes. Politically, the totals apportioned votes in the
House of Representatives among the states. Financially, each state
owed Federal taxes in the same proportion. Militarily, the Census
counted free white males 16 and over, the traditional source of
“militia” (muh-LISH-uh) or part-time soldiers. Then and later the
politically-appointed enumerators tried for accurate totals, but
didn’t worry much with individual details.
The 1800, 1810,
and 1820 Censuses counted people by “age cohorts” based on the
requirements of the Militia Act of 1798. The new United States
decided, against all logic and experience, that local folks could
defend Freedom better than a professional Army and Navy. (Maybe they
were right, given the frequency of military takeovers in new
countries today.) After nine years of wrangling Congress in 1798
passed the Militia Act requiring every able-bodied white male over
16 and under 45 to lift up musket, pike or saber when the bugle
called. The Secretary of War allocated manpower quotas to each
state, and that’s where the Census numbers came in.
The 1820
Census for the first time picked up two political issues, the Tariff
and the Slave Trade (below.) Since then additions have multiplied.
Perhaps the most blatant example is the count of civil
(“professional”) engineers in 1840. Congress wanted to cut West
Point funding. Sylvanus Thayer got this number included to prove the
need for more USMA-educated civil engineers.
The Federal
Court system managed the 1820 Census, and the enumerators, all men,
were sworn as Assistant U.S. Marshals giving them legal protection
and authority. In most districts each census taker supplied his own
pens, ink and paper, with which he copied the lines and columns from
a master form. Many enumerators transcribed their results in
alphabetical order, perhaps to create polished reports from informal
notes.
The “first Monday in August” 07-Aug-1820 was official
enumeration day. Every person alive on that day was to be counted.
The actual count took 13 months, August 1820 to August 1821.
See instructions for enumerators in Maine at
http://www.upperstjohn.com/1820/instructions.htm
address current
summer 2003.
Each “dwelling house or . . . family” got one
line. The first column was the name of the head of household or head
of family, “master, mistress, steward, overseer, or other principal
person therein.” Therein followed six age cohort columns for free
white males:
• Little boys 0 to 9, children
• Boys 10 to 15,
available for militia before next census
• ** Young men “between
16 and 18,” a typical 2-year “draft pool”
• Young men 16-25,
primary militia pool
• Adult men 26-44, secondary militia pool
• Old men 45+, not liable for militia service
** This column
is the joker in the deck. All the other age cohorts were symmetric,
the same for males and females. These guys were ALSO counted in the
16-25 column. The wording invited confusion on whether or not to
include 18 year olds.
Next, five age cohort columns for free
white females (who produced future soldiers):
• Little girls 0 to
9, children
• Girls 10 to 15, marriageable before next census
• Young women 16-25, prime marriage age
• Adult women 26-44,
prime childbearing age
• Old women 45+, past childbearing
The next column, “foreigners not naturalized,” counted aliens not
subject to militia service. These people were ALSO counted under
their respective age cohorts, free white above or free “colored”
below.
The next three columns counted the number of people
engaged in agriculture, commerce, and manufacture. These people were
also counted under their age cohorts. THE perennial issue in
Congress was the Tariff or tax on imports, the main source of
Federal revenue. In general, farmers and merchants wanted a low
tariff or “free trade” and manufacturers wanted a high tariff “to
protect jobs.”
The next sixteen columns counted non-white or
“colored” people, first slave males by age cohort:
• Children
0-13
• Young adults 14-25
• Adults 26-44
• Elders 45+
and the same cohorts for slave females, free colored males and free
colored females. Another recent issue before Congress called for
reopening the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, illegal since 1807. The
census totals argued that current slaves produced enough slave
babies to meet demand, and closed the debate.
For
Congressional representation, every five slaves counted as three
persons. This strange fraction arose from a compromise among the
delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1788. The free states
wanted NO slaves counted, while the slave states wanted ALL slaves
included. Several states were ready to walk out of the Convention
when James Monroe dredged up an old “poll” or head tax (tax per
person) from colonial Virginia, an earlier compromise that taxed
free people at full rate and slaves at 3/5ths of that rate. Late one
night the exhausted delegates fell on this fraction like starving
Israelites on manna, voted it, then went home to bed.
The
final column in 1820 counted “all other persons, except Indians not
taxed”; aboriginals were supposedly counted under tribal censuses.
Has anyone out there ever seen a number in this column?
In
closing, a cautionary tale. The U.S. Census is a great help for
hunting ancestors, but it’s just as fallible as the humans involved.
At the Liddell household in 1860, the census taker caught stepfather
Thomas C. Brown, age 60, during a “senior moment.” Brown got the
ages wrong for every (!) white person except himself, the names
wrong on most, and turned my 12-year-old great-grandfather into a
girl. Brown’s Slave Schedules are impossible to connect with
individual slaves known to be present. The totals for white people
and black people were correct, but little else. This brickwall
baffled two generations of family researchers.
BDL
31-Aug-2007
On September 26, 1836, Rev. Jno. C. Johnson married my
great-great-grandparents Jimerson (James Jr.) Liddell and Martha Ann
Baldridge in Jefferson County MS.
That’s what the records
say. But a few more facts unravel a larger story. (The place changes
from Natchez District to Villa Gayoso to Cole’s or Coles Creek to
Spring Hill to Pickering Co., but it’s all Jefferson now.)
My
grandmother’s research showed Martha Ann connected with the Baptist
Church through her mother’s uncle Richard Curtis Jr., said to be the
very first licensed Baptist preacher, and later the very first
ordained Baptist minister, in Natchez District.
I assumed
Martha Ann was Baptist. I was wrong.
An Internet search
uncovered the history of Jno C. (John Clem) Johnson, the officiating
minister. Johnson, apparently a juvenile delinquent from Kentucky,
came to Jefferson and in 1805 joined Rev. Newet Vick’s Spring Hill
Methodist Church. “Thomas Owens and the Baldridges put the harness
forthwith on young Mr. Johnson” according to Rev. John G. Jones
writing in 1887, who went on to describe Johnson’s compact build,
superb constitution, and great physical strength and endurance.
Johnson shortly married Deborah Baldridge and brought her into the
church. The Methodists licensed him to preach in 1812, but raising a
family delayed his full “itinerancy” or ordination until 1846. John
Clem Johnson died five years later at the age of 68. His widow
Deborah Spence Baldridge Johnson died in 1885 at age 97 mourned by a
whole passel of descendants.
So a pioneer Methodist minister
married Jimerson and Martha Ann. Any more facts sitting around?
The first record of James Baldridge, Martha Ann’s father, is an
1802 MS Petition. (Please correct me, but I think the residents
petitioned the MS Territorial Legislature for a new Jefferson Co. to
replace old Pickering Co.) Probably James and Deborah are both among
“the Baldridges” mentioned by Rev. Jones above, ten siblings who
migrated to Jefferson about 1802, but no solid proof has turned up
yet.
So the Methodist minister was Martha Ann’s uncle-in-law.
Any more facts?
Jimerson and Martha Ann named their first
child, who died in infancy, John Wesley Liddell. The original John
Wesley founded Methodism.
That clinches it; my ancestors were
Methodists. A fine Church, I’m sure, but I was raised a Baptist.
Grin.
BDL 12-Sep-2007
My ancestor Jimerson (James Jr.) Liddell bought and sold property
in Jefferson County MS several times 1828-1854. The legal rigmarole
of Deeds and Mortgages and Due Trusts escapes me, but all the people
are below with details elsewhere on the Jefferson website.
The legal documents describe Jimerson’s land in one of two ways,
“metes and bounds” or reference to adjacent landowners and
geography, and surveyors’ “section, township and range.”
Metes and bounds are difficult for the genealogy researcher to
locate. Property “adjoining lands of Isaac Dunbar and Mrs. Sims,
formerly owned by E. Smith and [before that] by Isaac Dunbar, which
was sold by the sheriff of Jefferson County to Samuel Thornberry and
[then] to Lewis Cable” might be anywhere. Geographic clues such as
“on the north fork of Coles Creek” help some, but the Coles Creek
watershed drains most of the county. Further, landmarks come and go,
as everyone near the Mississippi River knows too well.
Surveyors’ coordinates locate property fairly precisely, but first
one has to unravel the facts. What do they mean by “the west half of
the north east quarter of Section 22, Township 9 North, Range 3
East”?
About 1798 Jefferson County was surveyed into 6x6-mile
squares, roughly Townships 8, 9, & 10 North by Ranges 1 & 2 West, 1,
2, 3, & 4 East, and a fraction of Range 5 East. In the diagram,
Rodney MS is located in square R, Fayette MS in square F, and
Jimerson’s property in square J.
Townships North, Ranges West
and East
. . . R2W R1W R1E R2E R3E R4E R5E
. .
.!---!---!---!---!---!
T10N ! . ! R ! . ! . ! . !
. .
.!---!---!---!---!---!---!-!
T9N . .! ! . ! F ! . ! J ! . ! !
. . . .!-!---!---!---!---!---!-!
T8N . .! ! . ! . ! . ! . ! . ! !
. . . .!-!---!---!---!---!---!-!
Each Township-and-Range
square, called a “township” for short, is usually (but not always) 6
miles on a side and contains 36 square “sections.” Sections are
numbered from the northeast corner by “boustrophedon,”
(boos-truh-FEED-un) a two-dollar word that means “as the ox plows.”
Section 22 is almost in the middle.
Jefferson Co. MS
Township 9 N, Range 3 E
Section numbers
<------- 6 miles
------->
. 6 . 5 . 4 . 3 . 2 . 1 . ^
. 7 . 8 . 9 .10 .11 .12 .
!
.18 .17 .16 .15 .14 .13 . 6 miles
.19 .20 .21 [22].23 .24 .
!
.30 .29 .28 .27 .26 .25 . !
.31 .32 .33 .34 .35 .36 . v
One section = 1 square mile = 640 acres. Townships vary but
sections are constant. Sections are further divided into halves,
quarters, halves of quarters (eighths) and so on. The “west half of
the north east quarter” defines an 80-acre tract, 1/4 mile
east-to-west by 1/2 mile north-to-south.
Jefferson Co. MS
Township 9 N, Range 3 E, Section 22
. . . . . . . <1/4 mi>
! -
- - - - - ! - - -!- - - ! ^
! North West .! West ! . . .! 1/2
!. quarter . .! half ! . . .! mile
! - - - - - - ! - - - - - - !
v
! South West .! South East .!
!. quarter . .!. quarter . .!
! - - - - - - ! - - - - - - !
Township and Range numbers have
to start somewhere. Townships in southern MS count northward from
Andrew Ellicott’s 1798 east-west survey line, now the straight-line
borders of MS-LA and AL-FL. Ranges are taken from the “Washington
meridian,” a north-south line drawn near Washington MS in Adams
County. Rodney (T10N,R1W) lies about 3 miles west from this
meridian, Fayette (T9N,R1E) about 5 miles east.
However,
there’s a BIG problem inherent with this system. The grid is flat
but the Earth is round. Professional surveyors wrestle numerous
corrections into their plat maps. As a result, would-be squares
often contain angles or zigzag steps, so Jimerson’s 80-acre “west
half of the north east quarter” came out 79.67 acres. Presumably the
difference, twice the size of my garden home lot, wouldn’t matter to
a large-scale farmer.
A much clearer explanation of all this
(from Itawamba Co. MS) is at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~msichs/plotdeed.html
address current
summer 2003.
Jefferson plat map at
http://jeffersoncountyms.org/images/JeffCoMS1839.jpg
extracted
from an excellent 1839 plat map of MS-LA-AR available free from the
Library of Congress at
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3935.rr001340
and other LC maps at
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdquery.html
addresses current summer 2003. Topographic maps available from
several commercial sources, none of which pay me to advertise their
wares.
People in Jimerson’s legal documents.
• Hiram
Baldwin, creditor 1842
• Thomas Berry, landowner 1831
•
Frederick J. Chambliss, landowner 1854
• Henry W. Daingerfield,
deceased landowner 1854
• Isaac Dunbar, landowner 1828 and 1837
• John H. Duncan, Justice of the Peace 1832
• Edmund Fitzpatrick
of Charlotte Co. VA, creditor 1838 and 1842
• William Ivey,
deceased landowner 1832
• Cicero Jefferson, seller 1832
• J.
C. Johnson, Justice of the Peace 1854 [possibly John Clem Johnson?]
• Edwin McKey, Probate Court Clerk 1842 and 1843
• A. B. McLeod,
witness 1828
• Ross O’Quin, buyer 1838
• Isaac Pipes, Justice
of the Peace 1828
• Sanders A. Rice of Natchez, cotton agent 1842
• Arthur B. Sims, seller 1837 and landowner 1838
• Hannah Sims,
landowner 1854
• Mrs. Sims, landowner 1828
• Thomas Sims,
landowner before 1837
• E. Smith, landowner before 1828
•
James Stuart, landowner 1837
• Thomas A. Stuart, attorney 1842
• William Stuart, seller 1832
• Champ Terry, creditor 1842
•
Samuel Thornberry, landowner before 1828
• Elisha Trader and
spouse Mary Ann Trader, sellers 1828
• John A. Watkins, Justice
of the Peace 1838 and cotton agent 1842
• Gustavus H. Wilcox,
attorney 1838
• George Woods, buyer 1843
BDL 28-Sep-2007
This essay turned into an article. See
http://jeffersoncountyms.org/USSRattler.htm
[Sensitive readers should skip this essay, which includes frank
reproductive discussion.]
Two days after St. Valentine’s,
1838, my ancestor Jimerson (James Jr.) Liddell posted an unloving
newspaper announcement in Rodney, Jefferson County MS.
“Notice. All persons will take notice that, whereas my wife, Martha
Ann Liddell did quit my bed and board, without provocation, during
the month of May [1837], I will hereafter pay no debts that she may
contract. Jamison Liddell.”
What on earth was that all about?
I still don’t know, but I’ve unraveled enough facts for a working
theory: a newlywed spat gone public, two years of celebration,
separation, joy, sadness, farce, tragedy, and a happy ending.
Celebration, autumn 1836. Jimerson Liddell age 36 married Martha
Ann Baldridge age 21 in September. By the finger-counting method,
assuming full-term delivery, Martha Ann became pregnant around
Christmastime.
Separation, spring 1837. By May at five months
Martha Ann probably began to “show.” At this point middle class
women commonly withdrew from male society for “lying in” until the
baby was born. (Poor women and slaves kept working until birth-pains
started.) Since her widowed mother Mary “Polly” Stampley Baldridge
lived in Jefferson, the young wife probably went home to Mama.
For over a year Martha Ann lived apart from her husband. Though
her motives cannot be known, perhaps she had difficulty adjusting to
married life under Jimerson, a New York City Scotsman 15 years her
senior. (Jimerson and I have the same hair. Assuming the
personalities beneath the hair to be similar, my sympathies lie
entirely with Martha Ann.)
Joy, summer 1837. Martha Ann’s
pregnancy advanced with the season. On September 22 firstborn son
John Wesley Liddell arrived in the world. But mother and child did
not come home to Jimerson.
Sadness, winter 1837/8. On January
8, 1838, Mary “Polly” Stampley Baldridge died a month short of age
46, leaving six adult and three minor children, more or less. If
Martha Ann was living in her mother’s house (now probably her
brother’s house) she and her infant stayed on without the excuse of
visiting mama.
Farce, spring 1838. Tuesday February 13, the
day before St. Valentine’s, Jimerson raised $5000 with a first
mortgage on his plantation. (Converted to today’s prices, $5000 is
more money than I’ve seen in my whole life.) Probably Jimerson
intended to buy land or slaves, or otherwise increase his fortune,
but very likely he offered a nice present to Martha Ann as a
Valentine gift, and she declined. If so, doubtless his nose was
seriously out of joint. Friday he cut off her credit in the
newspaper notice above.
Tragedy, autumn 1838. John Wesley
Liddell died October 2, a few days past his first birthday. (Infant
mortality is one antidote to nostalgia for the “good old days.”
Martha Ann ultimately lost 4 of her 10 full-term babies.)
Happy Ending. Perhaps their son’s death reminded the newlyweds of
the most important thing in life, Life. A week or two before the
tragedy the couple reconciled and Martha Ann again got pregnant.
Over the next fifteen years Martha Ann bore Jimerson eight more
children, a sure sign of a satisfactory marriage.
For me
personally their decision proved of vital importance. The seventh
child, my great-grandfather, was born in 1848. Had Jimerson and
Martha Ann not reconciled, I wouldn’t even be here. Grin.
Liddell family research by Barbara Liddell Thornhill and her late
father Jefferson Walter Liddell Sr.
BDL 08-Nov-2007
In Jefferson County MS last Wednesday, November 19th, Rev. T. C.
Brown married Jeff Liddell and Olive Hackler. Well, actually 141
years ago last Wednesday (in 1862 that day was a Wednesday too.)
Shortly after the American Civil War 1861-1865 began at Fort
Sumter, Cicero Jefferson Liddell, born near Fayette 18 years before,
dropped out of college to enlist in the Southern Army. (“Jeff” or
“Cicero [SIS-uh-roe] Jeff” to his contemporaries, “Uncle Jeff” to my
admiring grandfather.) Just over a year later, Friday 27-Jun-1862,
Sergeant Jeff Liddell lost his left arm at the Battle of Gaines
Mills or Beaver Dam Creek VA, midway through the Seven Days’ Battles
by which Lee saved Richmond. Four days after that, Tuesday
01-Jul-1862 Jeff’s stepfather Dr. Thomas C. Brown arrived in
Richmond to supervise Jeff’s medical care, and assist with some of
the thousands of other broken boys deposited in the Chimborazo
hospital complex. By August Jeff was well enough to travel, and
returned to Fayette and family with Dr. Brown.
Since Thomas
Brown left no descendants, the pleasant duty of telling his story
has fallen to me.
My records of Thomas Calliham Brown are
fragmentary, but the fragments show a most remarkable man. Born in
1800 GA within a fortnight (!) of Jimerson Liddell in NYC, a sprig
of the MS pioneer Calliham family, Brown endured more than his share
of tragedy. He buried his first wife, and later buried their only
child, an adult namesake Thomas Jr. At age 58 he married Martha Ann
Baldridge 43, the well-to-do widow of Jimerson Liddell. Their only
child, another Thomas Jr., died at five months.
Thomas Brown
wore several hats during his fifteen years among the Liddells. On
the 1860 Jefferson census Brown was a planter, in 1870 a farmer. On
18-Nov-1862 Doctor Thomas Brown certified Jeff’s medical discharge
from the army and the next day Methodist Reverend Thomas Brown
solemnized Jeff’s marriage to Olive Irene Hackler, 17, daughter of
William A. Hackler and Sarah Scott of Jefferson. (This is a cue for
someone to tell us more about the Hackler and Scott families.)
Brown’s qualifications as an M.D. are uncertain. State licensure
came along after the Civil War. Before the war most medicos earned
their black bag by apprenticeship, and only a small minority
attended medical college. However, Methodist ordination required
study and examination, proving Brown’s high intelligence and talent
for book-learning (or Book-learning.).
Perhaps Thomas Brown
planned to spend his remaining years in comparative comfort and
leisure, leading the life of an educated Southern planter. If so,
the Civil War altered his plans, as it did the plans of many other
Americans.
The spring and summer of 1862 must have sorely
tried the 62-year-old Brown. (Yeah, I know, some 62-year-olds run
marathons every weekend, but ain’t none of that foolishness in my
family. We believe the Good Lord created comfortable chairs for a
reason.)
The first weekend in April 1862 the Battle of Shiloh
TN stunned MS and the South. To gain perspective, recall that MORE
Americans were killed or wounded in two days at Shiloh, than in ALL
the battles of ALL the wars Americans had fought to that time.
Thousands of wounded men survived the retreat to Corinth MS, from
which place authorities distributed them all along the state’s
spinal railroad through Jackson.
The call went out for
volunteer doctors. Records don’t show whether Thomas Brown went to
Jackson or some other makeshift hospital site. (Do you remember old
Dr. Meade at the train shed hospital in “Gone with the Wind”? The
only horror lacking in that scene was the overwhelming stench of
bodies and body parts.) If he did not go away, he was very likely
the only doctor left in Jefferson for several weeks. Either way, his
patient load increased exhaustingly.
On Friday or Saturday a
telegram arrived in Jefferson announcing Jeff Liddell’s injury.
Thomas Brown immediately boarded the train to Richmond, arriving
after three or four wretched miserable days of travel. (I cannot
emphasize this too much. Railroad trains left their victims bruised
and punch-drunk and half-asphyxiated, and most folks wanted a day or
two of bed rest after a day on the train. Another essay is in the
works, discussing this exhausting train ride.)
By Tuesday Dr.
Brown was in Richmond. If he arrived before nightfall, he heard the
distant cannons disputing Malvern Hill on the last of the Seven
Days. He examined Jeff’s wound and condition, and arranged Jeff’s
general care. When the two men left the hospital six weeks later,
Brown paid a Mrs. Mathias (ward matron?) $40 and one Jacob
Wertheimer (male nurse?) $25 for looking after Jeff and feeding him
well.
Presumably Thomas Brown rested before giving his
attention and skills to some of the other 30,000 casualties from
that bloody week. For most of that hot humid Richmond summer, all of
July and half of August, Rev. Brown M.D. wandered the wards of
Howard’s Grove General Hospital seeing to the physical health and
spiritual well-being of his young charges. If his patients fit the
average, one man out of four sank and died, but the other three
rallied and recovered.
By mid-August Jeff Liddell had
recovered sufficiently to travel. He and Thomas Brown departed for
Jefferson and home, the former to complete his recuperation and the
latter, one hopes, to enjoy a well-deserved rest.
BDL
22-Nov-2007
[Sensitive readers should skip this essay, which includes medical
discussion of battle wounds.]
Shortly after the American
Civil War 1861-1865 began at Fort Sumter, Cicero Jefferson Liddell,
age 18, born and reared in Jefferson County MS, enlisted in the
Southern Army. Just over a year later, Friday 27-Jun-1862, Sergeant
Jeff Liddell lost his left arm at the Battle of Gaines Mills or
Beaver Dam Creek VA, one of the Seven Days’ Battles by which Lee
saved Richmond.
The instant before Jeff Liddell became a
casualty of war, he and his friends in the Fayette MS “Thomas Hinds
Guards,” now D Company of the Nineteenth Regiment of Mississippi
Volunteer Infantry, were advancing in battle array, holding their
guns before them. A spent cannonball struck Charles A. Lehmann in
the chest, knocking him unconscious. Someone said “There goes old
Charlie” but Lehmann later woke up and rejoined the regiment. The
next cannon shot shattered Jeff’s musket and killed the two men on
his left, brothers Isaac A. and Moses J. Guice. The shot mangled
Jeff’s left arm, smashed his right thumb, and removed his right
trigger finger “entirely torn out to the metacarpal joint.” The
regimental surgeon amputated the arm, bandaged the hand, and sent
Jeff to Howard’s Grove General Hospital, part of the Chimborazo
medical complex outside Richmond.
[What follows is adapted
from an unpublished article I wrote a few years ago.]
Medical
treatment in the Civil War can only be evaluated fairly on the basis
of then-current knowledge. Beginning with Lister’s discovery of
antiseptics in 1865, medicine rapidly evolved from an art to a
science. “The Civil War was fought,” declared the Surgeon General,
“at the end of the medical Middle Ages.” In the decades after the
conflict, the Germ Theory, the idea that microscopic organisms cause
disease, crystallized into medicine’s central theory and sparked a
revolution in practice.
Medicos in 1860 knew physical anatomy
and most major organ functions. Three out of four surgeons preferred
chloroform over ether for surgical anesthesia. Smallpox vaccination
“took” in about half of the patients, and no other vaccine
approached this level of success. Only experimenters performed blood
transfusions, and found them potentially fatal to donor or recipient
seven times out of ten. The hypodermic syringe and medical
thermometer were laboratory curiosities. Diseases sprang from a
variety of causes, with “inflammation” the prime suspect. Physicians
prescribed “depleting” or “sustaining” treatment regimes, depending
on diagnosis. Quackery openly competed with orthodox medicine.
“Allopaths of every class of allopathy; homeopaths of high and low
dilutions; hydropaths mild and heroic; chrono-thermalists,
Thompsonians, mesmerists, herbalists, Indian doctors, clairvoyants,
spiritualists” dotted the landscape, according to one critic.
Doctors in 1860 usually preferred non-invasive treatment from
their drug cabinet. Patients took medicine by mouth or topical
application, rarely by suppository and never by injection. Often a
nutritious diet worked wonders, since wartime scurvy and dysentery
compounded most soldiers’ complaints. The practitioner’s medicine
chest contained several powerful drugs based on opium, alcohol, and
biological and inorganic poisons, as well as numerous other
concoctions of varying efficacy and potency. Antebellum doctors and
patients alike chose surgery as a last resort, a desperate
fifty-fifty coin toss for survival. Medical professors had taught
the beneficial effects of a clean surgical field since 1817, but few
Civil War army surgeons overly concerned themselves with such finer
points of medical practice.
Civil War surgeons may be
caricatured into two factions: “conservative” antebellum doctors who
operated reluctantly, and “radical” new doctors whose saws and
scalpels rarely stayed. In fairness, very few antebellum doctors had
any experience with gunshot and battle wounds. “Radical” surgeons
argued that amputation and post-operative care produced more
survivors than “conservative” wound care under army conditions.
Numerous soldiers who declined to part with a member, and recovered
full or partial function, attested that not all battlefield
amputations were necessary.
During the Civil War four
soldiers out of ten received a battle wound, and three of those
reached the hospital tent still alive. Military theorists preferred
wounds to battle death, on the assumption that two or more able men
would leave the fight to assist one disabled man. The wounded
soldier first concerned himself with the location and extent of his
injury. Photographs of dead Yankees and Rebels often display
disarranged clothing, not from robbery but by the individual
searching for his own wound. Leaving the battlefield ran a close
second in the soldier’s mind. Many suffered additional wounds as
they tried to exit the danger zone and reach medical care.
Before the battle the regimental doctor erected his hospital tents
well behind the front line. Lucky wounded men arrived on horseback,
or in ambulance wagons driven by regimental bandsmen assigned the
duty. Litters borne by two or four men brought others. “Walking
wounded” came in on foot, assisted by one or two buddies.
Upon reaching the hospital tent, the wounded soldier now had to
survive the treatment. If the patient would surely die, the doctor
might administer opium and send him to the moribund ward. Some
fraction of these men recovered; the cynic would suggest because of
the lack of treatment. Abdominal wounds that perforated the viscera
inevitably proved fatal. Men with chest wounds received dressings,
but their ultimate recovery was unlikely. Head wounds rarely appear
in hospital records, perhaps because most proved immediately fatal
on the battlefield. The man wounded in one arm or leg had the best
overall chance of survival.
Once the wounded man arrived on
the operating table, an assistant administered anesthesia or whiskey
until the surgeon deemed the patient sufficiently “limber.”
Debridement followed, the removal of foreign matter and dead tissue.
The surgeon might employ a probe to locate the bullet and extract
clothing fragments. If the bullet passed through elastic muscle
tissue, cautery stopped the bleeding and a simple dressing completed
the primary treatment. If the bullet struck bone, multiple compound
fractures (bones protruding from the wound) invariably resulted.
Medical authorities recommended amputation for compound wounds of
the extremities, but “radical” surgeons amputated for any arm or leg
wound. Careful surgeons left as much limb as possible, with a fleshy
pad over the end of the bone. Arm amputations usually succeeded two
inches or more from the shoulder. Patients recovered faster from
lower leg amputation than upper leg. Secondary amputations, those
performed days or weeks after the initial wounding, proved fatal in
over half of the cases.
Since no antiseptics graced Civil War
hospitals, medicos accepted secondary infection as normal. They
expected wounds to fester to a certain degree, and desired the
appearance of “laudable pus.” The doctor’s nose alerted him to
necrosis and gangrene. Gangrene in a limb demanded immediate
secondary amputation at the hip or shoulder, if fatal pyæmia (blood
poisoning) had not already begun. For over a century physicians and
soldiers had published accounts of maggots removing necrotic
gangrenous flesh, but in 1860 no authority advocated larval
treatment.
Treatment regimes varied widely, because the
multitude of theories of disease defied consensus. Two opposite
schools of wound care advised “wet” and “dry” treatment. “Wet”
practitioners bound up the wound loosely or tightly, and positioned
a drip bucket to keep the bandage constantly damp. Some “dry”
doctors bandaged the wound with dry dressings, while some
recommended no dressings, but left the wound exposed to fresh air
and sunlight. Given the variety of local conditions, all methods
boasted successes. Secondary infection often resulted in fever and
pneumonia. One Confederate hospital inspector estimated that one
soldier out of six contracted pneumonia, and he implicated the
disease in one-fourth of all deaths. Secondary infections received
diagnoses of tetanus, erysipelas, pyæmia, gangrene, or the ambiguous
F.U.O. (fever, unknown origin.)
Jeff Liddell survived his
injury, amputation, hospitalization and recuperation, and lived to
vote against Republican Calvin Coolidge in 1924. “There were giants
in the earth in those days.”
BDL 06-Dec-2007
Newspaper legal notice, Rodney, Jefferson County MS 19-Jan-1839:
TRUSTEE'S SALE Of Land and Negroes. WHEREAS Jimerson Liddell, by
deed bearing date the thirteenth day of February, one thousand eight
hundred and thirty eight, conveyed to the undersigned the following
property, to wit, a woman slave named SARAH, aged sixteen years, and
an infant child of the said Sarah; a woman slave named NANCY, and an
infant child of the said Nancy; and a man slaved named NED, aged
about thirty-five years; also a TRACT OF LAND, lying in the county
of Jefferson and state of Mississippi, containing four hundred and
fifty acres, and bounded by the land of ISAAC DUNBAR, ARTHUR B.
SIMS, and the unoccupied lands of the United States, IN TRUST, and
to secure the payment of the sum of five thousand and seventy eight
dollars and seventy five cents, the sum of money specified in a
certain promissory note drawn by the said Liddell, in favor of one
Edmund Fitzpatrick, or order, bearing even date with the said deed,
and payable on the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred
and thirty nine, at the Commercial Bank of Rodney; which said sum of
money now remains due and unpaid; and whereas the said EDMUND
FITZPATRICK, the holder of said note, and a party to said deed, for
whose benefit said deed was created, has required the undersigned to
sell said property, so conveyed in trust as aforesaid, agreeably to
the terms of said deed, and to my covenants therein as trustee as
aforesaid; Now, therefore, be it known, that I the said trustee, by
virtue of the authority vested in me by said deed, shall, on Monday,
the eleventh day of February, eighteen hundred and thirty nine, at
one o'clock, P. M. at the dwelling house situated on the tract of
land above described, expose the aforesaid land and slaves to sale,
at public auction, to the highest bidder for ready money; or so much
thereof as shall be sufficient to pay the said sum of five thousand
and seventy eight dollars and seventy five cents, with legal
interest thereon until paid, and all the costs and expenses of said
trust; and shall make to the purchaser or purchasers such title as
is vested in me by said deed. GUSTAVUS H. WILCOX, Trustee.
After unraveling the legal mumbo-jumbo, the facts seem plain enough.
The year before, on 13-Feb-1838, my ancestor Jimerson (James Jr.)
Liddell borrowed $5078.75 secured by five slaves and 450 acres of
land. Jimerson didn't repay as agreed, and his property was
scheduled to be sold at public auction on Monday afternoon,
11-Feb-1839.
If the auction took place, the outcome is not
known. Slaves Sarah and her infant George remained with the family
twenty-three years later, and elderly freedwoman Sarah Brown lived
next door on the 1870 census. Slaves Ned, Nancy, and her child were
presumably sold. The three slaves would have brought in $2000 or so,
450 acres maybe $2000 plus the value of houses and buildings. The
mortgaged land was probably an identical-size tract Jimerson had
bought for hard cash ten years prior from Elisha & Mary Ann Trader.
Jimerson is known to have purchased 1984 acres, sold 157 acres, and
owned 756 acres at his death, leaving 1071 acres unaccounted for.
(640 acres = 1 section = 1 square mile.) Likely he lost all or part
of that in the auction.
What brought Jimerson to this sorry
state? Probably the economic depression called the Panic of 1837. In
Mississippi, "economic collapse" would be nearer the truth. It took
two decades for the state as a whole to regain the wealth of just
ten "river counties" in the 1830s.
For the twenty years
following statehood (1817) Mississippi enjoyed spectacular growth.
Population and wealth doubled again and again. In the 1830s
Jefferson County ranked among the top-ten richest counties in the
nation. Jefferson had more wealth per free white man than almost any
place in the world, topped only by a handful of nearby counties.
Virtually all this wealth came from borrowed money that didn't
really exist to be borrowed, and finally the chickens came home to
roost.
My specialty is military history, not the "dismal
science" of economics. Nevertheless, in the next essay or two I'll
try to explain the effects of the Panic of 1837 in southwest
Mississippi.
BDL 04-Jan-2007
My ancestor Jimerson (James Jr.) Liddell of Jefferson County MS
lost his plantation in the Panic of 1837, a decade-long economic
depression. Among the factors that triggered the Panic party
politics, paper money, banking practice, and land speculation loom
large. This essay, the second in a series, will examine the first
two.
During the frontier period, the twenty years (one human
generation) following statehood in 1817, Mississippi enjoyed
spectacular growth. Population and wealth doubled again and again.
By the 1830s Jefferson County MS ranked among richest counties in
the nation. Jefferson and the nearby "river counties" had more
wealth per capita than almost any place in the world. Most of this
wealth vanished in the Panic of 1837. Another generation passed
before MS regained that same total, but with wealth spread more
evenly across the state.
National and statehouse politics of
this period pitted "hard money" anti-bank advocates against "soft
money" pro-bank proponents. (As by a distorted echo, the same terms
carry completely different meanings in today's political news.) The
issue arose from the fact that, for most of the 19th century, the
country never had enough "hard money," gold and silver coin, in
circulation compared to the number of people and the Federal land
available for sale, and nowhere was this shortage worse than the
frontier.
Theoretically the Democratic Party demanded "hard
money" and despised banks, while the opposition Whig Party favored
"soft money" and supported banks, but both parties divided
internally 60/40 on the issue. To mirror this unsettled state of
affairs, for the next 20 years Whigs and Democrats traded the White
House every four years, while similar confusion reigned in Jackson
MS. Whiggery, caricatured like modern Republicans as the party of
affluence, solidly controlled affluent Jefferson County until the
Whig remnants evaporated in the 1860 election that triggered the
Civil War.
Specie (SPEE-shee, gold and silver coin) was the
only legal exchange, and both precious metals are limited
commodities. Congress legislated coin alloys and the price the U.S.
Mint paid for pure metal, but commodity values fluctuate on the open
market. As a result huge sums of gold and silver coin never reached
the public, but shuffled back and forth between big-city banks and
U.S. Mint vaults, enriching the bankers by a fraction of a percent
on every transaction.
The allure of "hard money" is hard to
beat. Most people then, and many people today, consider gold and
silver to be the only "real money." But it isn't, really. "Money" is
simply a way to compare the relative demand for materials and labor.
Spices, gemstones, silk, wine, horses, and virtually every other
commodity have served as currency at one time or another. Shaka's
Zulus reckoned wealth in cattle. Tongans used stones, scarce on
coral islands. Spartans paid their bills with iron (but this was a
part of Lykurgus's grand plan to isolate Sparta, an extreme military
slavocracy, from the rest of Greece.)
The ancient Eurasians
chose silver, and much later gold, as universal currencies, based
partly on known rarity and partly on the metals' luster and other
attractive qualities. (When did you last hear the chime of a silver
coin? Modern coins make a dull thud when dropped.) In the 2500-odd
years since the first coins, those metals assumed an absolute value
in the popular imagination. In 1837 many serious men believed that
if all banks and bank paper vanished without a trace, the country
would return(?) to an idyllic era of healthy prosperous
self-sufficient yeoman farmers who exchanged the land's bounty for
the manufactures of "dark satanic mills" far away in Europe.
"Soft money" advocates proposed paper money backed by private real
estate, the one valuable commodity the frontier enjoyed aplenty.
Starting in the 1820s individual states chartered private banks to
issue paper money based on land. The banks obliged with a wild
profusion of "banknotes." Few states exercised effective control,
and frontier MS the least control of all. Year after year, until the
bank failed spectacularly, the directors of the Union Bank of
Mississippi refused state officials access to their books or
directors' meetings, even though the state held a quarter of the
bank's voting stock and was obligated to cover the bank's notes.
To be continued . . .
BDL 18-Jan-2007
Bruce D.
Liddell, BDLiddell@yahoo.com
Birmingham AL
Good Lord
willing and the creek don't rise, another essay will be along in a
fortnight.