Thanks, I'll just go home

One thing I've discovered while writing these musings deals with the gaps in my historical knowledge. Like most subjects in my life, I'm interested in history, but my range could hardly be classified as "deep and wide," to borrow a phrase.

One reason for that is that I, like most of us, have been taught a kind of abridged history that mainly hits the highlights. Honestly, there's not much time for anything else, especially in education. Study U.S. history in the space of a school year? How much of 400 years or so can you cram into that amount of time? Complicate that with balancing the knowledge professional historians think you need to know with the specific aims of educators and, dare I say it, politicians. 

Some of that dearth will be filled in public school when students take a course on the history of their particular state. But the rest of us don't have the opportunity to take those classes and supplement our education, and even then, we'd just be learning the highlights -- the events someone else thinks we need to know about.

Such is the case today. I'll create my own abbreviated highlights of a particular part of history one of Sharon's ancestors participated in -- the Civil War. As I've mentioned before, Sharon has ancestry that stretches back to the colonial era, but by choice or by happenstance most of her family settled in the southern colonies and tend to migrate south and west, with a plethora of them putting down roots in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. 

Great-great grandfather Thomas Franklin Womble was born in Alabama, but by the time he was 17 he'd taken up residence in Ouachita, Ark. When war broke out between the U.S. and the Confederacy, he wound up in Company B of the 33rd Arkansas Army Regiment, also known as Grinstead's regiment. 

Now, I know that fighting happened all through the Confederacy, but because we tend to concentrate on certain big, watershed events, a goodly number of which happened in the eastern and deep southern parts of the country, I tend not to even think of a place like Arkansas, or even my home state of Texas when thinking about military action taking place. But it did.

The regiment was organized in 1862, not too long after the birth of Thomas' fifth child and just days after his 30th birthday. We don't know if he enlisted or was conscripted. His name appears on the muster roll as Thomas F. Wamble -- given that I only have internet listings, I don't know if someone misread the roll, or if someone thought that was the correct spelling.

Speaking of muster rolls, the 33th Arkansas was unusual in that listed the names of slaves, most of whom are listed as cooks. I don't know if they were paid for their service, but it seems implied by the listing of "Nick, cook, Enl 26 Oct 1862. Present, never paid, 29 Feb 1864." I didn't find an answer in the few minutes I spent researching the topic.

In another of those frustrating name discrepancies, the head of the unit, Col. Hiram Grinstead, is sometimes listed as Hiram S. Grinstead and sometimes as Hiram Lane Grinstead, and sometimes his last name is spelled "Grinsted."

The 33rd participated in a number of engagements, including the Battle of Little Rock, which the Union forces won, and a battle at Jenkins Ferry in 1864, in which they defeated the Union army. Jenkins Ferry was the last battle the regiment fought in. 

One chronicler had this to say about the battle: 

"There was nothing of the romance of war or battle here. No waving banners nor martial music, no thronging of women and children and gray-haired men to the battlements of a beautiful city to witness the efforts put forth in their defense." I suspect this was true of a great deal of the war.

The field of battle was rain soaked and muddy, and the horses could not be used. When the fighting ceased, the regiment had suffered 92 casualties, including Grinstead, who died from a bullet wound and fell at the front of the fighting. Grinstead's service to that point had earned him a promotion to brigadier general, but the commission did not arrive before the battle. 

After the battle, the regiment was dispatched to Marshall, Texas, where it remained until the end of the war. When the surrender came, the regiment's members were told to report to Shreveport to receive their paroles. Most chose not to do that and simply returned home. A few stopped off in Fort Smith or Little Rock to report in to Federal authorities.

Thomas Womble returned to Ouachita, fathered, and lost, several more children and moved to Bosque County, where his wife was from, sometime in 1870-71. He mustered out as a sergeant. 

A decade later, he and one of his sons descended into an abandoned well to clean it out n advance of some big community get-together, were overcome by natural gas, and died. His wife was seven months pregnant at the time, so he never knew the last of his offspring.

Image: Col. Hiram L. Grinstead, public domain