Jubal Early Chapter #553
Newsletter
Rocky Mount, Virginia
Volume 10 - Number 9
www.jubalearlyudc.org
November 2008
Chapter News
Fourteen members and five guests were present at the
November 8th meeting of the Jubal Early Chapter which was held
at the Franklin County Library. Member, Lois Brown’s husband,
Harold received the UDC’s Military Service Award for his service
in Viet Nam. The ceremony was conducted by Linda All, Recorder
of Military Service Awards, and President, Paula Meador.
Martha Hubbard was nominated and voted in as Chapter
Historian.
Members voted to donate $100 to the Veteran’s Christmas
Tree in Salem. Signed Christmas cards for vets will be collected
at the December meeting to take to the Veteran’s Hospital.
The Fall Yard Sale was rained out on Saturday, October 25th,
but was held on Saturday, November 1st. A total of $140 was
made. Our thanks to Billy and Martha Hubbard for the use of
their facilities.
Martha Hubbard submitted three supplementals and is working
on three more! Lisa Bradford submitted her eighth supplemental.
All members are encouraged to work on their supplementals
as well. Don’t hesitate to contact Linda Nezbeth with any
questions.
Chapter dues are due and payable by December 15th.
The dues remain at $45 which include magazine subscription,
newsletters and yearbook. Checks should be made payable to:
Jubal Early Chapter, UDC and either mailed to Sissy at 504
Miriam Hill Dr., Rocky Mount, Va. 24151-6760, or bring to
the meetings. Updates to the Chapter Yearbook will be mailed
in January to those members who are current on their dues.
Please send any changes of address, email, phone, etc. to Linda
Nezbeth by Jan. 1, 2009.
Our December meeting will be our annual Christmas meeting.
We will be touring Point of Honor in Lynchburg with lunch
afterwards. Those planning to attend should meet at McDonalds
on Rt. 460 in Bedford (beside WalMart) at 11:00 a.m. From there
we will carpool/caravan to Point of Honor (about a 35 minute
drive). Our tour starts at 11:45 a.m. and will last approximately
45 minutes with additional time to visit their gift shop. Resturants
for lunch are approximately a 5-minute drive away and the exact
location will be decided after the tour. Depending on the number
attending, the cost is $5.00 for Seniors and $6.00 for adults. A
group of 10 or more will reduce the admission price by $1.00.
Please contact Paula or Linda Nezbeth with any questions.
Harold Brown receives his certificate and Military Service Award from Paula Meador.
Other News
The Fincastles Rifles Camp of the SCV will be
hosting their annual Christmas Party on Monday, December 15th beginning at 6:00 p.m. UDC Members
and family are welcome. Plan to bring a covered dish.
Meats and ‘fixings’ will be provided by the Camp.
Please contact Commander Barbour for reservations.
Upcoming Events
December 15, 6:00 pm -
SCV Christmas Party
Woodmen of the World
January 10, 2009, Noon -
Lee-Jackson-Maury Lunch
Salem Civic Center
December Meeting
Sat., December 13, 2008 - 11:00 a.m
Point of Honor, Lynchburg
See you there!
Confederate Ancestor of the Month
Each month the Jubal Early Chapter of the UDC features a Confederate Ancestor. The “Ancestor of the Month” for November 2008 is Jeremiah
Barbour. He is the great-great grandfather of our newest member, P.J. Thomas. The Jubal Early Chapter is proud to present his story.
Jeremiah Barbour
Jeremiah “Jere” Barbour was born in Campbell
County, Virginia on 18 May 1818. His parents were
believed to be William C. and Mary (?) Barbour. On
16 December 1851 Jere married Margaret Prudence
Mattox in Franklin County, Virginia. She was the
daughter of Gabriel and Mary (Mitchell) Mattox
from Franklin County. The 1860 Census for Franklin
County lists them living next to William and Mary
Barbour and Nathaniel and Mary Barbour, believed to
be Jere’s brothers. Children of Jere and Margaret are
listed as: Abram Taylor, born circa 1853, married Molly
McGhee; Mary F., born circa 1854, married Homer
Lewis Powell; Doctor Benjamin Franklin, born circa
1855 and married Emma B. Powell; Gabriel Samuel
W., born circa 1857 and married Lucetta L. Powell,
sister to Emma and Homer; and John Fletcher, born
circa 1861, married Agnes Lavinder.
Jeremiah traveled to Richmond, Virginia and enlisted in the Confederacy on 1 August 1861 as a Private
in Co. K, 10th Virginia Cavalry under the command
of J.T. Rosser. He is listed as being 5’ 6: with florid
complexion, blue eyes and light hair. When his year of
enlistment was up, Jere was discharged on 25 August
1862 for being overage. He received $211.50 for the
year of wartime service by himself and his horse.
In 1863, Jeremiah traveled to Floyd Courthouse
and again enlisted. He was under the command of A.O.
Dobyns in Company G, 21st Virginia Cavalry. He was
listed as being on detached service as a blacksmith on 1
September 1864. Official records show that Jeremiah
was detached from service at Saltville, Virginia on 31
October 1864. Franklin County records show his family was receiving aid in February 1865 because he was
away at war.
While on his way home on the night of 13 January
1892, Jeremiah was murdered by an 18 year old boy
Jeremiah Barbour
who robbed him and shot him with his own gun. A
lengthy trial followed but ultimately led to the execution of the assailant on 25 January 1895. The exact
identity of the assailant is in question to this day.
Jeremiah was buried at Pleasant Hill Methodist
Church in Franklin County. Margaret died on 27
August 1897 and is buried beside him. - Information
from member Priscilla Thomas and excerpts taken from
“Franklin County Killin”, published by Franklin County
Historical Society, Inc.
The Widow Fritchie
A quaint small house in Frederick, Md., a lure to thousands of
tourists in season, is a 1927 restoration of a shrine to an enduring
heroine of the Civil War famed for an act of patriotic defiance she
almost certainly did not commit.
In the first week of Sept., 1862, when Lee’s army first invaded
the North, Mrs. Barbara Hauer Fritchie, widow of a Frederick
glovemaker, was almost ninety-six years old, and bedridden.
A niece who lived across the street recalled that the old lady was
abed throughout the Confederate occupation of the village, and did
not so much as glimpse Stonewall Jackson, let alone scold him into
legend. She could not have seen Jackson as he entered Frederick,
since he came in an ambulance, the victim of a fractious horse. The
weight of testimony says she did not see him as he left.
Dr. Lewis H. Steiner of the U.S. Sanitary Commission had the
presence to sketch the vivid events of the week. He was dismayed
by the sight of Jackson’s troops:
A dirtier filthier, more unsavory set of human beings never
strolled through a town – marching it could not be called....Faces
looked as if they had not been acquainted with water for week; hair,
shaggy and unkempt....Many of them were without shoes.... The odor
of clothes worn for months, saturated with perspiration and dirt, is
intense and all-prevading.
Their only decent music, the doctor said, was made by a Negro
bugler. But Steiner was not misled by appearance. These men were
“stout and sturdy, able to endure fatigue and anxious to fight.... They
all believe in themselves as well as their generals, and are terribly
in earnest.”
There were few incidents to catch the doctor’s eye, but one
casual paragraph in his report to Washington bore the seed of a folk
tale:
A clergyman tells me that he saw an aged crone come out of her
house as certain rebels passed by trailing the American flag in the
dust. She shook her long, skinny hands at the traitors and screamed
at the top of her voice, “My curses be upon you and your officers
for degrading your country’s flag.” Her expression and gestures
as described to me were worthy of Meg Meriles.
This could hardly have been Barbara, or Jackson. Stonewall’s
troops marched by the Fritchie house, to be sure, but by a welldocumented account, the general himself left his men at West
Second Street to pay a visit to friends at the Presbyterian parsonage,
and rejoined them by a short cut, emerging well beyond Barbara’s
door.
When the Rebels had gone, Old Barbara came out of her house,
her niece said, where she leaned feebly on her cane, waving to
incoming Federal troops from her porch. Her niece brought out a
tiny American flag which was kept in the family Bible – a small
silk banner with thirty-four stars, on a staff less than a yard long.
Barbara waved this to the troops. A few officers stopped to wring
her hand and bless her.
Within a few days, when the armies were fighting at Sharpsburg,
west of Frederick, the tale of Barbara’s defiance of Jackson was
already current. Mrs. Fritchie’s role was merged with that of the
anonymous woman in Dr. Steiner’s pages – though another elderly
woman of the town laid futile claim to the honor.
The story was passed by Barbara’s niece to C.S. Ramsburg of
Georgetown, who had it published in a Washington newspaper, and
told it to his neighbor, Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, then America’s
leading romantic novelist. This lady immediately thought of John
Greenleaf Whittier. The Quaker poet was moved by her tale of
the incident, and wrote in response the thirty couplets which so
resounded with the bootfalls of the Rebel army and rang with
patriotic fervor as to lift Barbara, Frederick, and General Jackson
to glory.
Whittier sent the poem to his editor, James R. Field of the
Atlantic Monthly, and got this reply:
Barbara is most welcome and I will find room for it in
the October number, most certainly.... You were right in thinking
that I should like it, for so I do, as I like few things in this world...
Enclosed is a check for fifty dollars, but Barbara’s weight should
be in gold.
A few days later Whittier wrote Mrs. Southworth:
I heartily thank thee for thy kind letter.... It ought to have
fallen into better hands, but I have just written out a little ballad
of Barbara Frietchie which will appear in the next Atlantic. If it
is good for anything thee deserves all the credit for it.
Mrs. Southworth’s narrative had been almost unchanged by
Whittier as he compressed it into verse, the chief improvement
in the ringing words of Barbara as she faced Rebel fire. Mrs
Southworth had reported her as crying unpoetically, “Fire at this
old head, then, boys; it is not more venerable than your flag.”
The ballad was an immediate hit, reprinted in wholesale
fashion, and quickly on its way to immortality with generations
of American school children:
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn, ....
“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,” she said....
“Who touches a hair on yon gray head,
Dies like a dog! March on,” he said.
A shrewd Confederate in the Richmond Examiner soon hailed
the poem as a masterwork:
Verse is stronger than prose and history is powerless in
competition with the popular ballad.... The uncultivated may
pronounce the poem so much unadulterated and self-evident
nonsense, but the wise ... know it will out-live and disprove all
histories however well authenticated.
Battle raged over the authenticity of the ballad for years.
Witnesses continue to bob up, including some Confederate soldiers
who testified to its truth. Whittier clung to his story, and in 1888
replied to a critic:
“The poem was written in good faith. The story was no
invention of mine. It came to me from sources which I regarded as
entirely reliable; it had been published in newspapers, and gained
public credence.... I had no reason to doubt its accuracy then, and
I am still constrained to believe that it had foundation in fact ....
I have no pride of authorship to interfere with my allegiance to
truth.”
Even the spelling of Barbara’s name bred controversy.
Whittier favored Frietchie, as did many afterwards. The spelling
used here follows contemporary sources in Frederick, including
Barbara’s family and Dr. Steiner.
Of all this Barbara knew nothing. She died two weeks beyond
her ninety-six birthday in December, 1862, months before she
appeared in the lines of the ballad. An obituary in a Frederick
newspaper gave brief mention to her passing –but of her clash
with Stonewall Jackson and her immortal defense of the Stars and
Stripes, not a word.
-From: The Civil War–Strange & Fascinating Facts by Burke
Davis.
Barbara Fritchie
by John Greenleaf Whittier
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.
Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman’s deed and word;
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
‘Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on! he said.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:
Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;
And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.
In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet,
Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids nor more.
Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewalls’ bier.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
‘Halt!’ - the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
‘Fire!’ - out blazed the rifle-blast.
Peace and order and beauty draw
Round they symbol of light and law;
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!
~~~~~~~
– Barbara Frietchie was born at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her maiden name was Hauer.
She was born December 3, 1766, her parents being Nicholas and Catharine Hauer. She went
to Frederick in early life, where she married John C. Frietchie, a glover, in 1806. She died
December 18th, 1862, Mr. Frietchie having died in 1849. In 1868 the waters of Carroll Creek
rose to such a height that they nearly wrecked the old home of the heroine of Whittier’s poem.
~~~
Jubal Early Chapter #553
Newsletter
Rocky Mount, Virginia
L o v e , L iv e , P r a y , T h in k , D a r e
Editor
November 2008
Linda Nezbeth
1449 Carroll Rd., Goodview, VA 24095
Birthdays in November
November 3, 1813 - General Jubal A. Early
November 9, 1825 - General Ambrose P. Hill