Stanley, L. L. 1971. A Rough Road in a Good Land. Chapter XVI-B. pp. 83-90.
The Civil War in the Georgia Mountains
At the time of the American Civil War, War of the Southern Confederacy or War between the states as it was called in the south, many families most of them slave holders many years before had freed their slaves. In the mountain counties of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee, there were many families who were non-slave holders, and who sympathized with the Union when the war broke out. There were hundreds of men who fled through the lines of the Confederate armies, and into the Union armies.
Many families wanted no part in the war on either side, and many men from such families who lived next door to the rugged mountains fled to the rocky cliffs, or laurel thickets as they called the dense patches of mountain laurel and rhododendron, where they established camps, to which they could flee to be safe from the roving bands of home guards, whose principal job was to find deserters from the army, and to force men who had not made a choice into the southern armies.
These home guards made up many times of neighbors of the men in hiding, were often the bitter enemies of such men, caused by disputes over property lines, cattle straying into a neighbor’s field, cattle and hog stealing and in at least two records examined by the writer the feud dated back to chicken and turkey stealing.
If the men could not be found the home guards often took out their spite on women and children left unprotected by the hiding out of fathers husbands, and brothers.
The Stanley family in the south originally were from the fighting stock of their English ancestors. In England these men had fought for and against their kings and were not afraid of a fight, the majority preferred to be left alone, living as they did on the very edge of the new world civilization they felt they had done enough fighting in the Revolution and against the Indians. They very suddenly found themselves caught between the lines of southern and northern armies, in a terrible civil war.
Shortly after old William Stanley moved from North Carolina, to the Bull Frog branch farm in Fannin County, he moved again this time up Toccoa River to a creek valley on the opposite side of the river and some twelve miles above the little village of Morganton, Ga. which he had helped to establish and name for their old Morganton in far away Burke County, North Carolina. The creek took his name and has been known until this day as Stanley Creek.
The junction of this creek with the river was about three miles down stream from Shallow Ford, a famous crossing of the river at the time. Old Swinfield Stanley another son of William, had come down from North Carolina, and lived near his father. After the war ended he went back to North Carolina and did not return until the eighteen nineties, at which time he brought his wife and fourteen children and their families.
On September 2, 1864, while Elisha Stanley, one of the older sons of William, brother of Swinfield and Rickles S. who was the writer’s great grandfather, was sitting under a shed used for a shop near his home on Stanley Creek, a home guard band made a raid into this Stanley Creek community. Elisha age 42 had the reputation of being a good gun smith. One story says he had been repairing rifles for his neighbors that very day.
He had stopped to rest and his baby boy Buell Stanley, had wandered out to the shed, climbed up into his father’s lap and gone to sleep. Telitha Stanley, his niece who lived nearby had made this man a hat out of pine straw, and used a piece of her red calico dress to make a band for the hat. He was wearing the hat as he sat with the sleeping baby in his arms.
The home guard band said to have been under the leadership of a man named Al Brookshire, who was afterward killed by a man named Barney McHan, rode up concealed by the bushes, one of them took deliberate aim and when the rifle cracked the red hat band was cut almost in two pieces. Elisha Stanley fell out of the chair with a bullet through the brain.
The blood from the wound ran across the yard when his wife came running out of the house, she found the baby lying or sitting in a pool of blood.
The home guards spied at the same time a boy running away from the house towards the woods, they fired again and a bullet struck the boy in the thigh, who fell at the edge of the woods and the home guards thinking they had killed him did not bother to go and look for him. This boy named Elisha for his uncle who was dead on the ground lived to be more than eighty years of age. As a boy the writer saw this man many times. The bullet was never removed from his leg. He suffered much in his old age from the crippling effect of this wound.
The home guards having disposed of the only males they found decided to rob the house. One of them found the newly pieced quilt made by Telitha that winter. He had the quilt in his hands and started to his horse, when Telitha came running out of the house and saw the man with her quilt. She reached for one end of the quilt and jerked the man flat on his face on the ground.
The next instant one of the home guards, a man named Snells Adkins struck Telitha across the side of her head with the stock of his gun. The blow fractured the ear drum, the resulting infection destroyed the ear drum on the other side. This woman lived to be 81 years old and was stone deaf until the day she died in 1920.
She lost the sight of one eye and her power of speech was also effected. As a boy the writer was not able to understand what she said when she came to visit his mother and had to depend upon his father, mother and grandparents with whom she lived to interpret what she said when she told stories about the suffering of her family and many others in the area during the terrible war days. He does remember her tears as she talked about the loss her family suffered on that day in 1864 when the horrors of war moved to the Stanley Creek Valley.
The same day Elisha Stanley was killed, Evan Hughes who had married Vian Stanley, sister of the dead man and brother of Jane Hughes Stanley the writer’s great grandmother, was found and captured by the home guard band and without any trial or charges of any kind except that he was the kinsman and friend of the Stanley’s, he was stood against a pine tree on the river bank near Shallow Ford and shot to death. This big tree was still standing when the writer was a boy and was pointed out to him by his father many times as they passed this ford in the river.
There were two brothers whose last names were Kelley, first names unknown who were friends of the Stanleys. They were found by this home guard band in the neighborhood of Stanley Creek. One of them jumped into a deep pool in the river and by diving and swimming under water he escaped the bullets fired at him. His brother was not so fortunate and was shot down and left in the woods. Telitha Stanley and her mother Jane Hughes Stanley, sister of Evan Hughes, who had been killed by this same band, guided by the vultures found his decaying body. Telitha using her mother’s apron as a screen, pulled out a front tooth and a lock of his hair was pulled from his head, as Telitha told the writer’s mother once to send to the dead boy’s mother.
This body was taken up wrapped in a blanket or sheet, put on a sled and hauled to the Stanley Creek graveyard. No one knows today who dug the grave, or where it is located in this old cemetery.
Telitha and her mother with help from a Mrs. Falls dug the grave for Elisha Stanley and Evan Hughes, since there were no men left in the community who dared come out of hiding to bury the dead. They decided to bury both men in the same grave. Telitha as the youngest did most of the digging. They tried to make a box out of boards pulled from the barn and could not find nails enough. The bodies were rolled in blankets made by these women and both were buried in the same grave.
The tombstone erected at a much later date contains this inscription. Elisha Stanley born October 6, 1822, died September 2, 1864. Evan Hughes died Sept. 6, 1864. This means that Hughes’ body had to be brought from Shallow Ford after it was found and four days after he was killed. Telitha said once that they were killed the same day and by the same band of home guards.
Both men were born in North Carolina. Hughes near Hughes Gap of today. His wife Vian Stanley went back to North Carolina and so far as the record shows she never came back to Georgia.
A man named John Birchfield who lives on Hampton Creek near Roan Mountain, Tennessee told the writer in 1969 that as a boy he went to the home of Vian Stanley Hughes many times. He called her aunt Vian. She was related to his family by marriage.
About the time that Stanley, Hughes and Kelley were killed, a second band of home guards under a Capt. Crowder made a raid into the Toccoa River Valley in the neighborhood of Stanley Creek for the purpose of capturing old William Stanley the writer’s great, great, grandfather and his sons, Rickles S., Swinfield, Sam, Press and Baxter Stanley as well as two neighbors, Jim Ortan and Dock Falls. There may have been others that this band hoped to capture who had been with the Stanleys, and who had fled from home and were camping out at one of their hiding places back in the mountain wilderness in this river valley.
One of the camping places was on Butler Creek across the line in Gilmer County and has been described elsewhere in this narrative. The other was on the head waters of Stanley Creek not very far from the Stanley home. The writer believes from the stories told in his presence by members of this family that the camp was on Stanley Creek on the day when a neighbor who hated this family betrayed them to the home guard band. This band surrounded the camp and demanded the surrender of all who were there.
Press and Sam Stanley, younger brothers of Rickles S. and Swinfield were just boys. They were said to have appeared to be younger than they really were, had gone to the camp that morning. They were captured along with the older men. They were overlooked or the guards were careless while the men were being secured and walked out into the woods with their rifles and escaped.
All the prisoners were mounted upon mules or horses with their feet tied under the belly of the animal and the whole group started on the road toward Morganton, Ga. The supposed intention of this home guard band was to lodge the prisoners in jail. The road they followed led through some of North Georgia’s most rugged country. There were places near the junction of Persimmon and Wilscot Creeks with the river where the road had been hewed out of the rocky bluff above the river.
At one such place the road ran over a ledge of solid rock, across the river was a grove of giant white pine trees that grew right down to the water edge. Before the party reached this place which was ideal for an ambush, old William Stanley rode his mule up beside two of his sons, and said in low tones so the guards who were riding in front and behind the prisoners would not hear him, “Boys Press and Sam have gone for help. They will ambush this road before we get to Morganton. When a rifle cracks fall under the mule if you can, it is better to be kicked or stepped on than to stop a bullet, pass the word to the others.” The prisoners rode their mules close and told the others what the old man had said.
Within a few minutes after this warning was given while they were riding over the ledge which formed the road bed, bullets began to pour down from behind the big pine trees across the river, where Sam, Press and Baxter Stanley, with Dock, Whitt and Wash Falls were hidden. The prisoners did their best to fall under their mules.
It was said later that Sam and Press fired with deadly intent at the man who was wearing some kind of a gray uniform, without knowing that this Capt. Crowder who feared an ambush had forced Mr. Ortan who was about his size to change clothes with him just before they reached the scene of the ambush. Jim Ortan fell under his mule with two bullets through his body.
Sam and Press were fond of Mr. Ortan who was in some way related to them. One of the home guards, a neighbor of the Stanley’s named John Griffith, was killed and another had his heel shot off. Capt. Crowder and the remainder of his band ran their horses across a hillside covered with small pine bushes. Tradition has it that these pine pushes died where they were pushed over by the men and horses in a mad rush to escape the hail of lead from the men and boys hidden behind the trees across the river.
Men who were there said that Sam and Press Stanley came wading across the river holding their rifles and powder horns above their heads. They came up over the ledge of rock and saw the stream of blood which had run all the way across the road. When they saw that it was Jim Ortan instead of the man they intended to kill on the ground, that they stood over his body while their companions cut the others loose from the mules. They switched their rifles to their left hand, reached out their right hand and gripped hands for a moment and stood without a word, but with lips drawn tight against their teeth in what has always been believed was a silent, solemn pledge to kill every man they could find who had been a part of this home guard band.
The blood of Jim Ortan was believed to have remained on this rock as a pale red stain for ten years. The writer’s grandfather, who was a seven year old boy at the time, told the writer once that the blood streak remained on this rock until he was a grown man.
Sam and Press Stanley fled through the Confederate lines and joined the 13th Tennessee Cavalry. They came back to Georgia when the war ended and started in carrying out their pledge made over the dead body of Mr. Ortan.
One story says that Press killed John Griffeth in the ambush. He is also said to have killed a man named Carter and a man named McClure. Sam killed a man named Joe Beavers on the street in Morganton. Another man name unknown was killed by these men for a total of five men killed within two years of the end of the war. Five men dead as a result of their being driven to take sides and because of the home guard band’s brutal treatment of their family.
These two men fled from Georgia back to North Carolina. There are stories told in both states about the exploits of the two men in the years after the war. They were said to have ridden good horses, dressed in the best clothes available at the time. They wore a pair of pistols buckled around their waists over their clothes. They were both dead shots and bullies of the day kept out of their way.
Country folk dances were about the only recreation that mountain people had for years after the war and the writer talked to a man who said that when Sam and Press Stanley appeared at a party and dismounted from their horses with their guns in plain sight, the young men who recognized them and knew their reputation, left the party, mounted their horses and rode away to avoid an encounter with these two dangerous exsoldiers.
Press Stanley died after three days illness on Big Rock Creek in Mitchell County, North Carolina. His grave is in the Beans Creek Freewill Baptist Church cemetery. There were stories in Georgia among his relatives, that he died from a drink of poisoned whiskey given to him by one of his bitter enemies. Some years ago, Jane Hughes Peck, who had lived on Big Rock Creek went with the writer to the cemetery and pointed out the grave.
This woman, who was the nurse for Press Stanley during this last illness and was with him when he died, when asked about the poisoned whiskey story that the writer has heard many times in Georgia many years before, replied that she did not believe that he was poisoned, but the she believed he died of a ruptured appendix.
Another grave in this cemetery has an inscription that reads Jason Stanley, born 1894, died 1911. He was the son of Jane Hughes Peck and Oliver Stanley son of Swinfield Stanley. She divorced him after the birth of this son and he married Hattie Burlison and brought her to Georgia at the same time his father took all of his family and moved to Fannin County, Georgia. Oliver and Hattie Stanley are buried in the Stanley Creek cemetery.
Jane Hughes Stanley married a man named Peck, several years after she divorced Oliver Stanley and since the interview described above, she died and is buried in the Beans Creek cemetery very near the grave of her son and the grave of Press Stanley.
In this same cemetery there is a stone inscribed with the names of William and Elizabeth Garland. He was born in 1826. These people could have been the parents of Guttridge Garland who married the daughter of Joseph Stanley. According to Hattie Butler, an aged woman who lives at the home of her son on Spring Creek near Buladean, N.C., Gooch or Guttridge Garland married Polly Stanley. Mrs. Butler is a granddaughter of Joseph Stanley.
Evan Hughes, who married Vian Stanley moved to Georgia in 1842. He was killed in 1864 and his wife moved back to North Carolina. She later married a man by the name of Jim Bice. There were two children, names unknown. She is buried at Roan Creek Baptist Church cemetery, Roan Creek, Avery County, North Carolina.
Vian’s Valley in Mitchell County is the present day Lofer’s Glory and was not named for Vian Stanley, but for a pioneer woman named Vian Burleson.
Sam Stanley had three sons, Riley, Clay and John. Clay married a woman named Jones whose family lived on Jacks River in Fannin County, Georgia. A man named As Jones lived on this river and one day Sam and his two sons, John and Clay, went to this home to protest the treatment of a boy who was a relative of Clay’s family. Sam and his sons ordered the women to leave the house so they would not be hurt. In the fight that followed, John was shot in the head and Sam and Jones finished the fight with knives. Jones was cut to pieces. He had 27 cuts on his body.
A trial was held in Morganton, Ga. Sam was not allowed to pay a fine. Both he and John were sentenced to jail, perhaps this sentence was given because he had killed Joe Beavers in this town and had only paid a fine. He and John were lodged in the Morganton jail with Webb Finley, Ben Tilley and four other men to guard the jail. That night the two men escaped and went down on Tennessee River near the junction with Hiwassee. The writer remembers seeing John Stanley at the old Stanley Creek church when taken to that place by his father.
Sam Stanley, as has been stated, moved back to North Carolina. He died in the old soldiers home at Johnson City, Tenn. and the writer has found no record of the burying place of this fighting man who died in a peaceful Tennessee town.
