Nehemiah Evitt (20 December 1836-18 January 1891), also known as Miah, and Rosana Emiline Andrews (1 May 1836-18 June 1924) were my maternal grandmother's maternal grandparents. Emiline carried the maternal line DNA that was eventually passed along to me--she was my mother's mother's mother's mother.
We visited relatives in Georgia from time to time when my brother and I were young. My mother, Frances, drove east to Georgia from Texas like a migrating bird in the summers, heading out and back in the heat and humidity. Sometimes Grandma Lillian was with us. We would go to visit family--they were descendants of Nehemiah and Emiline, too, more mtDNA. On the way we would tour battlefields and antebellum homes, see kudzu and cannons, eat ham and grits, and then return before school started in the fall. Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, Chickamauga, Lafayette, and Vicksburg were registered in my memories, along with the homes of two of my grandmother's sisters, Dessie and Theresa.
I heard conversations about Nehemiah and Emiline, but I couldn't put the pieces together. Certain things seem to have been unsaid. Family photographs of Emiline, taken when she was older, looked serious and stern. A photograph of the two of them together, much younger, was intriguing. I couldn't gauge her expression; she seemed to be squinting. Nehemiah looked very intense and different, with dark hair and piercing eyes. They were mysteries to me--I eventually looked for the clues they left behind.
Nehemiah was the son of William Evitt (1804-1875) and Rebecca Rippetoe (1810-1886). William and Rebecca married in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, where she lived and where Nehemiah probably was born. By 1841, their family is reported to have settled at Ooltewah, in Hamilton County, close to Chattanooga and the Tennessee River:
Rebecca was one of the 30 charter members when the Rev. Hiram Douglas organized the Ooltewah Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1841 . . . William and Rebecca named one of their sons Charles William and another Nehemiah. They also had William Jr., Malinda, George H., James, Samuel and Minerva. Samuel was killed by a bulldog when he was 11 (Wilson 2002).I have no evidence at present besides this from Wilson to support this list of other children of William and Rebecca. There is an online note of another child, Nancy Jane (19 March 1836-17 October 1921), listed as daughter of William Evitt, who married John W. Thurman. Her date of birth listed would make her a very close sibling of Nehemiah (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=dfl&GRid=9616965), as she was just nine months older.
One mystery was that Nehemiah was a Confederate cavalry soldier, who fought and was wounded in the Civil War. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Nehemiah enlisted in the Confederate army 7 August 1861, in Cleveland, Tennessee in the First Tennessee Cavalry, Company B (Carter's). Nehemiah's younger brother Charles W. Evitt (b. ca. 1839) also enlisted 17 October 1861 at Ooltewah in Company K, 43rd Tennessee, then was in Company B, First Tennessee Cavalry (Carter's) as of 1 June 1862 (Hughes and Wilson 2005). They apparently served in the same company after that date, and they both saw action in the South. In 1864, their regiment "fought at the Battle of Piedmont, or New Hope Church, and in the subsequent campaign in the Valley of Virginia" (http://www.tngenweb.org/civilwar/csacav/csa1carter.html). Nehemiah was hospitalized in Charlottesville, Virginia, in June of 1864 (Hughes and Wilson). Federal records indicate that he had been a sergeant and was paroled as a private (http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-regiments-detail.htm?regiment_id=CTN0001RC01). The brothers had blacksmithing skills, which they may have acquired or used during their service with the cavalry (Hughes and Wilson).
A majority of the population of Eastern Tennessee was strongly in sympathy with the Union cause as war was declared and enlistment in the Confederate army became mandatory: "It is rather a remarkable fact that East Tennessee in 1861, with a male population of forty-five thousand between the ages of twenty and fifty, should furnish for the Union army thirty-five thousand volunteers—not a conscript among them" (Carter 1902, 18). Many men fled to Kentucky to enlist in the Union army to avoid this conscription. Whether Nehemiah and his brother voluntarily enlisted is unknown.
While there were multiple company and regiment name changes in the course of the war, lots of Carters to confuse the issue, and even a Company B, First Tennessee Cavalry (Carter's) in the Union army, which is the subject of W. R. Carter's volume (1902), I believe that the company and regiment given for them first above is accurate information. Nehemiah and Charles served in Captain Snow's unit, First Tennessee Cavalry, Company B: "[Charles W. Evitt] was transferred to the cavalry company of his neighbor, William Snow, on June 1, 1862. He was paroled at Washington, Ga., in May 1865. Nehemiah Evitt also joined the Snow unit" (Wilson 2002). This was a local recruitment in 1861: the "first cavalry organization in the County for Confederate service was recruited by Captain William Snow among the farmers living near Snow Hill, Ooltewah and the section along the Tennessee River" (Armstrong 1993, 295).
The Union Army reportedly burned the Evitt home in Ooltewah, during one of several campaigns. The Chattanooga campaign extended from late August to late November, 1863, at which time the Union's 4th Michigan Cavalry raided the Ooltewah area. Other military actions were recorded in Ooltewah 21 January 1864, 18-19 February 1864, and 4 February 1865 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooltewah,_Tennessee; Hamilton 2012). William and Rebecca Evitt moved their family south across the state line into Walker County, Georgia, to the McLemore Cove area (Wilson 2002), around Lookout Mountain and Pigeon Mountain.
After the war was over, on 6 December 1866, Nehemiah married Rosana Emiline Andrews Beaird, a widow, in Walker County. Emiline had already borne at least one child, perhaps two more, and had possibly lost one during the war. She was born in Orange Co, North Carolina, the daughter of William (Billy) Andrews (8 February 1797-1877) and Martha Carroll (3 May 1802-1861). Emiline had a large extended family, some of whom settled in Walker County.
The Civil War was hard on the women who were left at home alone with their remaining families. Armstrong wrote, re Tennessee:
The Union women of [Hamilton] county and a few who held to Union sympathy in the town were in deplorable straits. In many cases they suffered from actual privation. Nowhere in America during the war was the fortune of women so desolate as that of these Union women in Hamilton and the other counties of lower Tennessee (1993, 11).This is likely also true for a wife of a Confederate soldier left behind in an adjoining county in Georgia.
Her first husband, Edmond S. Beaird, served in the Confederate army, Co. G, 9th Regiment, Georgia Infantry. He was wounded and captured at Gettysburg 2 July, 1863 and died of dysentery in the Point Lookout prisoner-of-war camp in Maryland 6 February, 1864. Company G was known as the "Lafayette Volunteers" (http://9thgeorgiainfantry.org/gcompany.html), so Edmond and Emiline must have been in the Lafayette area before the war. Marilyn Houser reported online that the Beairds "came from Arkansas before the Civil War to Pigon Mt in Walker Co Ga." (http://genforum.genealogy.com/beaird/messages/499.html, citing Gibbs 1984).
With Edmond, Emiline had children, Calvin Whitfield Beaird (April 21, 1858-1928); possibly Martha (1855-1862); and Edna (4 July 1862-29 August 1938). With Nehemiah, she had William E. (1867-1875); possibly Lenelle (b. 1869); Cora Rebecca (4 May 1870-5 January 1904), m. Rev. William (Will) Rudicil Williams (4 September 1868-9 July 1845); and Alfred Miah (7 July 1873-25 March 1931).
Front: Rosana Emiline Andrews (Beaird) Evitt; Rear: I believe these folks are (right to left, Calvin Whitfield Beaird, his wife, Mary Elizabeth Stout Beaird, and their son, Edmond Eason Beaird.
At some point, Nehemiah and Emiline returned to the McLemore Cove area, in Walker County, where they had a farm and a small store.
Another mystery was that Nehemiah was a Baptist minister. Wilson reported this, likely based on newspaper articles at the time, below. I could not find a record of where Nehemiah studied or served. He and Emiline were associated with the Antioch Baptist Church at Cedar Grove, and they are buried in a church cemetery there. I believe that Rev. William R. Williams, Cora's husband and my great grandfather, and Rev. Marshall Lucien Crowder, my Grandaunt Theresa's husband, both served at the same church later on, but I have no written evidence of this.
A bigger mystery was that Nehemiah was murdered. On Saturday night, 17 January 1891, he was asked to open the store by Roscoe Marable, a black and an "ex-convict" (Davis 1982, 354), and possibly one other man. Marable had been helping Nehemiah with hog butchering and delivery that day. Per Marable's confession, on their way from the house to the store, about seventy-five yards away, they argued over Marable's account at the store. Marable then knocked Nehemiah down and struck him in the head with a "stick." When Nehemiah failed to return, Emiline searched in the dark, found him unconscious in a gulley. His skull was fractured, and he died the next day. It was suspected that the killer had used a sledge hammer and had robbed Nehemiah. Marable escaped by train, but he was arrested 25 August 1891 in Hampton County, South Carolina (not Florida or North Carolina, as reported), where he was working with a group of laborers under an assumed name. A reward of $150 was given by the Governor of Georgia to W. J. King, the man who found and arrested Marable. At trial, King testified that Marable had confessed to him. Emiline testified that Nehemiah had between $240 to $260 in his pocketbook, which was discovered empty, except for receipts, in the same area two months later. Cora was a witness as well, testifying as she was pregnant with my grandmother. Marable was found guilty of murder. On appeal, the verdict was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Georgia 13 June 1892 (Marable v. State. 89 Ga. 425, 15 S.E. 453). Roscoe Marable was executed by hanging 6 October 1892 in Walker County.
Sensationalized news articles of the murder, trial, and hanging were found in newspapers in Atlanta and as far away as Pennsylvania and New York. The Atlanta Constitution (20 January 1891) claimed that "two negroes" were involved in the murder of "Rev. Nehemiah Evitt" and that the murder weapon in "this most heinous crime" was a sledge hammer. At the time of the arrest, the same paper declared, "Marable will surely hang" (1 September 1891), and, when there was a last-minute announcement of an appeal, "A great many people will be disappointed[,] as they will come expecting th[e] hanging to take place" (28 October 1891). The Altoona Tribune, from Pennsylvania, reported on the execution, "On the scaffold he protested his innocence" (7 October 1892). The Havana Journal, from New York, reported that "twenty-five hundred persons were present when the drop fell" (15 October 1892). The Wilmington Morning Star, from North Carolina, noted that "seven thousand persons were present" (8 October 1892, 4).
The Atlanta Constitution's account reported that the crime occurred along the Chattanooga Southern railroad line (20 January 1891). Another source mentioned the murder of "Mira [sic] Evitt near the tunnel on Pigeon mountain about 1895" (Sartain 1932, 313). A train tunnel was completed through Pigeon Mountain in 1890-91 (http://railga.com/oddend/tagtunnel.html). At the time of the murder, there was a convict camp in the vicinity of the Evitts' store, "defendant worked for some time near" the store, and Marable helped that day to slaughter hogs and to deliver the pork to the convict camp. When Marable was arrested, he was working with a labor crew in South Carolina "working on a trestle" (Marable v. State 89 Ga. 425, at 427-428). It is possible that the convicts' camp consisted of laborers working on railway construction and that Marable was associated with them. If the camp were a prison gang doing forced labor, money from a robbery would have enabled Marable's escape.
Rosana Emiline Andrews Evitt
Emiline endured through the Civil War and the death of two husbands and many others in her family. It was no wonder that her photographs looked the way they did. She lived to 1924, long enough to see some of her great grandchildren born. When we visited her granddaughter, Theresa Williams Crowder, around 1961 in Georgia, she showed us a long, white apron that had belonged to Emiline. A rolling pin that was made for Emiline by Nehemiah was passed down to me.
Emiline, Nehemiah, and his parents are buried at the New Antioch Baptist Church Cemetery, Cedar Grove, in Walker County. Emiline's mother, Martha Carroll Andrews, is buried at the Old Antioch Baptist Church Cemetery there. Her father, Billy Andrews, is buried at the Mahan Cemetery in Sharp County, Arkansas.
Gravesite Links:
Nehemiah Evitt:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=58494715
Rosana Emiline Andrews Evitt:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=65885333
Rebecca Rippetoe Evitt:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=99215978
William Evitt:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=50296066
Martha Carroll Andrews:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Andrews&GSiman=1&GScnty=528&GRid=82209544&
William (Billy) Andrews:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=43747821
References:
Altoona Tribune. 7 October 1892, 1. Accessed February 15, 2014.
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/56698760/.
Armstrong, Zella. 1993. The History of Hamilton County and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Vol. 2. Originally published 1940. Johnson City, TN: The Overmountain Press.
Carter, W. R.. 1902. History of the First Regiment of Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry in the Great War of the Rebellion [Union Army]. Knoxville, TN: Gaut-Ogden Co., Printers and Binders. Accessed February 6, 2014.
http://www.archive.org/stream/firstregiment00cartrich#page/n5/mode/2up.
Davis, Robert Scott. 1982. The Georgia Black Book: Morbid, Macabre and Sometimes Disgusting Records of Genealogical Value. Vol. 1. Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press.
Gibbs, Sherman D., ed. 1984. Walker County Georgia Heritage 1833-1983. LaFayette, GA: Walker County History Committee and the Walker County Historical Society.
Hamilton, Chuck. 2012. Civil War Engagements in the Chattanooga Area. Chattanoogan.com, July 2. Accessed February 11, 2014.
http://chattanoogan.com/2012/7/2/229448/Civil-War-Engagements-in-the.aspx.
Havana Journal. Saturday, October 15, 1892. Accessed February 15, 2014. Search s.v. Roscoe Marable at http://fultonhistory.com/.
Hughes, Nathaniel C., Jr., and John C. Wilson. 2005. Hamilton County Confederates, D-F. Chattanoogan.com, August 16. Excerpt from Hughes, Nathaniel C. Jr., and John Wilson. 2001. The Confederate Soldiers of Hamilton County, Tennessee: An Alphabetical Listing of the Confederate Soldiers Who Lived at One Time in Hamilton County, Tennessee. Signal Mountain, TN: Mountain Press. Accessed February 6, 2014. http://chattanoogan.com/2005/8/16/70953/Hamilton-County-Confederates-D-F.aspx.
Marable v. State. 89 Ga. 425. Accessed February 15, 2014.
https://archive.org/details/reportscasesarg488courgoog.
Marable v. State. 15 S.E. 453. Accessed February 15, 2014.
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Southeastern_Reporter.html?id=NAI8AAAAIAAJ.
Sartain, James Alfred. 1932. The History of Walker County Georgia. Vol. 1. Dalton, GA: The A. J. Showalter Company. Accessed February 8, 2014.
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ga/county/fulton/walkerhistory/.
The Atlanta Constitution. 20 January 1891, 1. Accessed February 15, 2014.
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/26831432/.
The Atlanta Constitution. 1 September 1891, 2. Accessed February 15, 2014.
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/26883379/.
The Atlanta Constitution. 28 October 1891. 3. Accessed February 15, 2014.
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/26868388/.
Wilmington Morning Star. 8 October 1892, 4. Accessed February 15, 2014.
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/54456855/.
Wilson, John. 2002. Evitts Were Among Earliest Ooltewah Settlers. Chattanoogan.com, February 17. Excerpt from Wilson, John. 2001. Early Hamilton Settlers. N.p.: Sheridan Books. Accessed February 6, 2014.
http://www.chattanoogan.com/2002/2/17/18127/Evitts-Were-Among-Earliest-Ooltewah.aspx.
