Daniel Richard Phelps


          1839 - 1910

William Esco Phelps


       1891 - 1983

- 1972 Conversation with WILLIAM ESCO PHELPS -

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Any of them fight in the civil war?
father did, yeah.

One of his brothers, well he was older than daddy

his name was Will and then he had one younger.

Which side did he fight on?

On the Union, the Federal army. They couldn't join over here in this state.

They hoofed it across the Cumberland mountains into Kentucky to join the

union army over there somewhere.

The Confederates, that's what they called them,but the Union men called them rebels.

I never did hear too much about what part they played in the war, what they did.

What part who played in it?

Your daddy.

Well, he tried to keep out of it!

The Confederates, they had men a scouting this

country, picking up able bodied men that was

able to make a soldier. Take them and put them in a

stockade and make them join the rebel army.

They came up down here at Miser Station.

He was building a hog pen for some old fellow to

put some wild hogs in that he wants to catch down

there in the cane breaks on the river

and he said that he floored the pen with pine poles.

He built it out of pine poles and floored it out of pine

poles and he was in there leveling off the

tops of them pine poles to make it kinda flat.

They rode up on him there, ask him to come out.

He came up and off the top of his head he said there

was 16 of them around that pen on horses.

He knowed they had him, he couldn t resist.

They all had a rifle apiece.

They took him and 8-10 others that same night to

Knoxville, put him in a stockade over there that they had built.

They dug a ditch on about a half acre of ground.

Cut logs, set um in there one right against the

other all the way around that.

They set them so high there wasn t a chance of climbing it.

They had a little house on two sides of it or a little cabin with a

stairway built on the outside of it to get to

the shelter there and the guard would sit there watching them, one

watching in the day time and the other at night.

They got away from um! They got dad and two or three other

fellows or five or six other fellows, got permission to go north of

Knoxville there in what they call White (Black?) Oak

to pick leaves up to make a bed.

They were sleeping on the bare ground.

There wasn t no shelter there for them.

If it come a rain they were just there. So when they

got to the woods, they had been going

out the Clinton highway, Clinton road at that time.

It was beginning to get dusky dark and they pulled off

to the left and come down here and landed down here at

the river at Louisville, just before day light.

They hid there in a big straw stack until the next night

and an old fellow that lives on this side of the river, had a boat and he sent them across.

They everyone went home, they all lived here in

Blount County and they set a date to meet at a certain

place and go across the Cumberland Mountains into

Kentucky and join the union army. I forget the old fellows name that

piloted them across the Cumberland Mountains. He was

acquainted with the trail across there and how to

get across. He led them across there.

They just traveled at night, hid in the day time.

So Dad joins the infantry,

Uncle John joins the Cavalry,

Uncle Will took the heavy artillery.

Now that was the difference in them three brothers.

Dad said, I ll take my mine walking, carry my own gun.

Uncle John said, I want a horse, I want to ride where ever I go.

Uncle Will said, I ll take the heavy artillery, I d rather hear a big gun shoot any time.

Well, Uncle John and Uncle Will got captured by the rebels

and they kept em in prison down in Alabama somewhere until the war was over.

They loaded them onto a big steam boat down there on

the Mississippi River that they called,

What was the name of that boat?

Great Mama said: I don t know

Esco said: Sultana!, it wasnt Lusitania but Sultana, a big steamboat on the Mississippi River.

They had it loaded with prisoners that was on the way

to get them around to Nashville.

To deliver them and about 2 o clock that

morning, two hours after midnight somebody

blowed that boiler up and that thing sank and every

person on there had to swim out or drowned, one or the other.

Uncle John swam out and Uncle Will drowned.

----------------------The End-----------------------

-Part of a 1972 Interview by Tom & Mike Phelps

-More Damaged Audio is Being Enhanced and Will be Presented Later-

-See Sultana Video in "Video" section of Website

-See Several other Family Civil War Items in the "Album" Section of Website