When the war started in 1861 I was twenty-three years old. Our small family farm was just ten miles from the Potomac River near Bath, Virginia. I pitched in with the farm work, but spent my days in a one-room schoolhouse teaching grades one through eight. Since I had no time for politics and thought I was too young to die, I had no intention of joining either army – North or South.
Nonetheless, by January 1, 1862, I found myself marching through the mountains to Bath with Stonewall Jackson’s Rebel Army. We started out with a force 8,000 men strong. Though not a shot had been fired, scores of men were lost due to the blizzard conditions and disease.
I never reached Bath. When a friend got sick, I fell behind the army and stayed with him until he died. I sought refuge in a cave where I was forced into a fiery tunnel and thrust through a portal into a new world. I found myself in a strange land, but since the contours of the hills and mountains were the same, I was able to find my way home. The house and barn were gone, the fields were bare; there was no home place. I stumbled on to the neighboring farm, the Johnson farm. Allie Johnson saved my life and my sanity. (See Rebel Traveler – Pages 1-15)
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