Our Lee and Rogers Civil War Heroines
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| digital file from b&w film copy neg. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a09983 |
Our Lee and Rogers Civil War Heroines
Many cultures have stories that honor and idolize both their known
and unknown heroes/heroines. This story is about three women on my maternal
side who kept my mother’s families alive during General Sherman’s intense military
campaign in the USA state of Georgia, during the American Civil War. These women were my known second
great-grandmother and her sister-in-law and an identity-unknown heroine who was
part of their lives.
Caveat: If you are sensitive to the subject of slavery
and the culture of that time and feel the need to judge the current generation
or not tell it the way it was, you may want to skip this article. I am using a name in this article that has
come down through two of my related families and am telling the story as it was
told to me. Context is everything and I believe it is a crime to rewrite
history.
Allied Families
Sometime after 1850, my Rogers and Lee lines
moved from Union County, South Carolina, to northwest of Atlanta in Paulding
County. The two families were intermarried and had worked plantations that
adjoined each other in South Carolina. By 1850, much of the land in this area
of South Carolina had been overworked and “used up.” These two families also were large and John
Rogers, my second great-grandfather, was a much younger son. It was time to head out for greener pastures.
The group moved by wagon train and included:
- Lee
family patriarch William Cooper Lee and his second wife Lavinia Eubanks Lee and
their two sons
- The
family of William’s daughter Sarah Ann Lee Rogers and her husband John L.
Rogers and their children (three children listed in 1850)
- The family of William’s son Wesley Arrange Jerome Lee and his wife Mary Mariah Rogers, sister to John L. Rogers, and their children (five children listed in 1850)
- Travelling with them also would have been a woman the family called “Black Mammy,” who, according to family stories, had been “given” to Sarah Ann Lee Rogers by her father and later freed.
The Atlanta Campaign
By 1860, just before the US Civil War began,
the Rogers and Lee families are all found living in Paulding County, GA – right
in the path of where Gen. William T. Sherman’s troops would soon be
marching. The Atlanta Campaign would profoundly
affect not only the outcome of the war but would provide the background of this
story.
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| digital file from b&w film copy neg. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a33519 |
In May of 1864 Sherman’s troops arrived at
Pickett’s Mill, Paulding County, Georgia. Based on time of year and proximity
to where my family was living, we believe Pickett’s Mill is the most likely location
for what happened next. The fighting was fierce and for three days and nights,
with fighting all around, Sarah Ann Lee Rogers and her sister-in-law Mary
Mariah Rogers Lee took their numerous children and hid out under a bridge,
trying to avoid cannon fire and soldiers. When the fighting ceased, their homes were in shambles. In order to keep their children warm, the
women took clothing from the dead soldiers.
Food was in short supply. In order to get just some cornmeal, it was a
long walk to where some supplies were being rationed to civilians. The women walked it regularly.
Heroines and Survival
Descendants of two separate children in the
John Rogers family have passed down these hardship stories, including
information that “Black Mammy” was a key force during this time. We don’t know exactly what that means, but
she is credited by both families with working actively to keep the children
alive.
Where
were the men? Wesley possibly could have
been conscripted by the Confederacy. Of John, the family stories report that he
was afflicted by a very debilitating disease called "white swelling."
The
family stories, provided by Tom Wix through his Great-aunt Cora, and by Alexis
Hacker Booker through her Great-Aunts Bess Hill and Vede McQueen, both indicate
that John’s disease caused his legs to swell and then burst and ooze. Because
of this affliction, he was unable to do much work and was in great pain. Tom Wix’s account of their life is pretty
grim.”
Eventually
the war ended, and life resumed. But life in the South remained hard for the
ordinary family as people in states that had seceded from the Union were
punished with higher taxes by the federal government, unless they could prove
their loyalty to the Union.
Fast
forward to 1913 when Arminta Lee Echols and her husband Samuel Echols took a
train from Utah to Georgia to see her parents, Wesley Lee and Mary Mariah
Rogers Lee. Arminta left a record of her
trip with descendants (I have not seen it, only references) that indicated
“Black Mammy” was there to greet her. Her memories indicate that her children who
up to this trip had never seen a black person nearly fainted when Arminta threw
herself into this woman’s arms and kissed her. It was quite a reunion.
Researching Family Stories
I still have almost no clues as to “Black Mammy’s”
real name and whereabouts in Georgia throughout this whole period.
In the 1850 Union, SC slave census, a John
Rogers next to a Jesse Rogers shows one enslaved person, an unnamed 18-year old
woman born in SC. If this is “Black
Mammy,” she would have been born about 1828, so she could possibly have been alive
in 1913 when Arminta Lee Echols came home. End of info.
In the 1850 census there is no black woman in
the household of Wesley Lee. And I did
not find any slaves for John Rogers or Wesley A.J. Lee in the 1860 Georgia
slave schedules.
In 1850, William Cooper Lee had a black woman
age 24 named Peggy Byrd/Byad in his regular household census and 3 mulatto
children; this record was not in the slave schedule. I have no idea what this indicates. If this is “Black Mammy” then the story about
his daughter having her as help appears to be false, but we still have the
Civil War first-hand stories. If this is her, then she also could possibly have
been alive (around 87) in 1913 when Arminta Lee Echols returned to Paulding
County, GA for a visit. Otherwise, there is another mystery here as well, being
who is Peggy Byrd/Byad?
Like any profession or hobby, the longer we
apply our skills the more we learn. I am again evaluating the later censuses in
Paulding County to see if there are any black women who fit either of these
profiles or who might have lived close to my Lee and Rogers families. I plan to
sift thru my DNA matches and see if I find any matches that might fit. Progress
is slow.
In the end, at this point in time, I do not
have answers as to “Black Mammy’s” identity and her lineage. I simply wish to acknowledge that my families
had an extended family member who was at one point enslaved and who may or may
not have been genetically related. This person was loved enough by those she
helped during the Civil War and years following to spin off stories that exist
to this day and I want to offer our thanks.
Maybe someday I will find the answer and maybe
someday someone else will read this and go “That story seems familiar” and get
in touch. Named or unnamed, this woman is one of our family heroines. Together, with Sarah Lee Rogers and Mary
Mariah Rogers Lee, she and they kept a war-torn family alive in very difficult
time which we hope we personally will never see in this country.
Final
thought: What is a hero/heroine? You be the judge.
Summarizing many thoughts, Oxford Languages
offers the following:
noun: hero; plural noun: heroes;
a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding
achievements, or noble qualities.
Alexis Hacker Booker
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Send your stories to m.strickland@skcgs.org
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