They Stood As If Every Man was a Hero

In the afternoon after a blistering morning at the Chickamauga battlefield, I went back up to the relative cool of Lookout Mountain and the three of us - Jenbach, Isabella, and myself - went over to Point Park, a strategic location overlooking Chattanooga held by the Confederates during the siege of Chattanooga.


At 4:00 AM on the morning of September 8, 1863, Company A of the Kentucky 23rd Infantry started up Lookout Mountain on a reconnaissance, arriving at Point Lookout about 11:30 AM. "we found no enemy in force on the mountain, and now from this point could be distinctly seen the dust from the enemy's column moving out from Chattanooga". I wonder if our second great grandfather, George Caseman, would have thought three of his granddaughters would be looking at the same view from the same location a hundred and sixty four years later.

Eleven days later, brothers George, Jacob, and Foster Caseman were fighting in the bloody battle at Chickamauga, a few miles south of Chattanooga. From their brigade commander's report at Chickamauga, "they stood as if every man was a hero... I ordered my men to rise up and open fire, which they did with a cheer. The Twenty-fourth Ohio halted in our rear, and now, side by side and shoulder to shoulder, did the Twenty-fourth Ohio and Twenty-third Kentucky stand up and successively repulse the enemy in all his attacks...the fire now was very hot...it appeared to me as though every third man in the regiment was struck". Of the brothers, only George and Jacob would survive to retreat with the Union Army to Chattanooga. On the first day of battle, young Foster, age 21, was killed in action.

Later in the evening we walked downtown Chattanooga, found Orchard Knob which I had to climb, closed to the public or not,


and drove a bit east to Missionary Ridge.

Here the Kentucky 23rd was part of the famous charge up Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863. Ordered to only make a "demonstration" at the bottom of Missionary Ridge, the 18,000 enlisted men on their own and without orders from General Grant, smarting from the defeat at Chickamauga, one by one or in small groups of two to three, gradually rose to their feet and charged up the steep slopes of the ridge toward the rebel's fortified position chanting "Chickamauga, Chickamauga".

"At the center of this unplanned and unordered attack was Arthur MacArthur and the 24th Wisconsin. MacArthur’s color bearer had been killed during the fighting for the rifle pits and, as men began to clamber out of the trenches and up the hill, his replacement was decapitated by a round of solid shot from a Confederate gun above. MacArthur himself was wounded but still standing. When the colors went down a second time, he climbed out of the trench, grabbed them, and turned to his men, who were still cowering in the rifle pits. Raising the now ragged, battle-scarred flag high above his head, he shouted "On Wisconsin!" and moved quickly up the ridge.

In one of those rare moments when men are moved from terror to bravery, the men of the 24th Wisconsin rose up and began to follow Little Mac up the steep slope amid a hail of enemy rifle and artillery fire. As the Union soldiers up and down the line moved closer, the Confederate defenders abandoned their positions at the crest in disorganized panic. As Arthur MacArthur reached the summit of Missionary Ridge, he firmly planted the staff of the bullet-riddled flag in the ground for all to see. MacArthur, the 24th Wisconsin, and the Army of the Cumberland, who Grant had feared would not leave their trenches, smashed Bragg’s center in six places, sending the Southern army into full retreat. The siege of Chattanooga was broken."

Young Arthur was an 18 year old lieutenant with a command in the Wisconsin 24th, a Scotsman, of course, father of General Douglas MacArthur of World War II fame, and inspiration for the "On, Wisconsin" fight song. I wonder if most University of Wisconsin freshmen know this?

Tomorrow, we start our "March Through Georgia", by car of course.

The Killing Fields of Chickamauga

After leaving the Cousins Reunion in Athens, we three generations - 8 yr old Isabella, 40-something mom Jennifer, and the ageless Ouma - headed north to the Tennessee border to Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain with a plan to trace Sherman's 1864 March through Georgia. This was a week I'd planned to do by myself since tracking Civil War history is not exactly appealing to most people, but Jennifer always figures where her mom goes there must be adventure. With the pot sweetened by the beautiful state of Georgia, some peaches and lakes and lofts thrown in, it was a pretty good deal for everyone. Even some history was learned.

No sweetening is enticing enough to endure the blistering hot one hundred degree battle field of Chickamauga just outside Chattanooga, but walking these places is what I set out to do. I was alone on this one. With the two youngsters ensconced at the Thomas Kincaidish Chanticleer Inn on Lookout Mountain, I set off for what I knew would be a sobering day.

Chickamauga was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, more than 30,000 casualties. In a nutshell, the Union Army of the Cumberland with 60,000 men went against 65,000 men in the Confederate Army. The prize - for the North geographic access into Georgia and control of the rail lines, for the South protecting the Homeland that hadn’t seen action in its interior. On September 19-20, 1863, 125,000 men and countless cannons, rifles, infantry and cavalry went at each other, often hand to hand, stretching over a battle line of more than 4 miles. At times the fields were so littered, they could be crossed only by walking on fallen soldiers.


The battle site covering a huge area of fields and forests has been a national park since 1895. Even with the scorching heat and no water bottle, I set out to walk the areas I could, and drive the sections in between. The battle field holds 1400 monuments and markers, 600 put up for the various brigades and regiments for where they saw action. I was determined to check out as many as I could, and to walk those areas of action I knew about, like Longtreet's break through the Union line.

Some stand in the beauty of an open field,


others line the woods where soldiers did their best to put up some type of defense,




and the tallest of all for the state of Georgia.


A cannonball pyramid is erected wherever a commander fell, the higher up the officer the bigger his pyramid.


I climbed Wilder's monument honoring his legendary Lightening Brigade with their repeating Spencer rifles.


The view over the battlefield from Wilder's tower would have been bucolically beautiful if not for my mind's eye seeing the tens of thousands of young men killed and wounded across the landscape.


Overwhelmed by the heat and reality of the battle field, I finally found Snodgrass Hill where General George H. Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga", held off the Confederates while the Union Army retreated back to Chattanooga for a good siege. Yes, kids, the North lost this one.


In October of 1861, three brothers from Pendleton County enlisted in Kentucky 23rd Infantry, all in Company D. They were farmers, second generation German stock, two come from Pennsylvania with their mother and the third born in Kentucky. George Caseman at 33 years was old for a soldier, by now married with two young children but with Kentucky threatened by incursions from the Confederate Army, he enlisted in the Union Army. His 4 years younger brother, Jacob, was newly married with a young son, working on a farm. The youngest, Foster, was just 18 when the war broke out and he was the first to sign up with the 23rd. Who knows what Lydia felt when her three boys went off to war, all with the 23rd, Company D, the boys from Pendleton County, but I doubt it was much different from other mothers over the history of mankind's making war on each other.

The three young men fought with the 23rd into Chattanooga and from there to Chickamauga. Foster, age 20, was killed in action the first day of Chickamauga, on September 19, and is buried at the Chattanooga National Cemetery.

Jacob was wounded two weeks after the Battle at Chickamauga. The Union Army had retreated to Chattanooga and Jacob was accidentally shot by a drunken guard in the barracks, requiring amputation of his arm at the elbow.

He returned home to his family and farm and died ten years later at the age of 43.

Only George remained with the Kentucky 23rd whose boys endured the starving siege of Chattanooga and under General Grant made the ferocious charge up Missionary Hill, and followed Sherman on the march through Georgia to take Atlanta. He mustered out of the 23rd and returned home in early 1865. He had another six children and lived to an old age of 85.

George's first child, Mary Jane, born before he went off to war, is our great grandmother. George is our second great grandfather, and Jacob and Foster our uncles.

Every soldier on the field has a story, and a life, as rich as those of George and Jacob and Foster. That is the magnitude of it all.

The Tree That Owns Itself

Notwithstanding the heat of an Athens afternoon, our hostess, Jane, was willing to take some cousins to check out the historic houses built during the 1800's. We walked down Dearing Street trying to figure out the Federal, Victorian, Greek Revival, and Italiante style houses, many of them dragged up the hill to Dearing in lieu of tearing them down when the more commercial areas were developed. Good for them! Athens was off the path of Sherman's scorched earth trek to the sea, no reason to have them then succumb to capitalism. I won't bore the reader with photos of the houses - Lord knows I have enough of those from Savannah - as a more famous sight lies at the end of the street where the cobblestones of Finley meet Deering, the tree that owns itself.


It seems this Athenian guy, Colonel William Jackson, deeded the white oak tree to itself in 1832 when he sold off the rest of the property.

For and in consideration of the great love I bear this tree and the great desire I have for its protection for all time, I convey entire possession of itself and all land within eight feet of the tree on all sides.

Don't you wonder what happened here that the Colonel loved the tree this much, maybe something romantic, or was he just peculiar?

The original tree was already at least a century old when it was deeded, growing before any of these houses were built, and in 1942 the tree died from old age, maybe helped along by a storm. The town planted an offspring grown from one of its acorns, cares and advocates for it, and doesn't collect any property taxes. The big guy is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has his own Facebook page, YouTube video, and book by the same title.

We like quirky towns.

Cousins (Re)united!

I'm not much of a Facebooker but I have to admit it played a role in bringing the Nute cousins and childhood playmates to Athens, Georgia last weekend for the first gathering in about fifty years. Those were different times, when TV was black and white if you had one, families gathered on Sundays, and the kids played outdoors until after dark. Back then, we lived in rural and small town Ohio and Kentucky. Family counted on family, but these days we have scattered across the country, raised our families, had our careers.

Those of us gathering in Georgia were grandchildren of Raymond and Alice, both bluebloods from New England tracing their ancestry back to the Mayflower in 1620 and the Dover Colony in 1631, all spending their lives in New England until Raymond graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the couple left for the Kentucky in about 1918 with my father in tow.


They had five children, one died in infancy, and the remaining four were our parents - Raymond Jr., Jeannette, Donald, and Barbara.

The siblings grew up in Valley Station, Kentucky, a very rural area of Kentucky. The life of a farmer and agricultural agent seemed to suit our grandfather well, but looking at my grandmother's scrapbooks and finery in photos I've wondered whether she didn't miss the society of Fall River, Massachusetts.

Raymond and Alice moved to Lewis County, Kentucky, in the late 1930's, and after the war Raymond, Jr., and Donald returned here, Barbara lived in northern Kentucky, and Jeannette married and settled in northern Ohio. The family of cousins was young, but growing.


Here in this photo, left to right, my brother Ray III, me, and our cousins George and Donald (sons of Jeannette), are already budding around. It was one of these times I put a bush berry up my nose, still a memorable event and probably my brother's idea.

Our father moved the family to northern Ohio close to Jeannette's family in 1950 when Kentucky didn't offer enough post-war job opportunities, but we had frequent family visits to Kentucky. Once the cousins left for colleges we all seemed to lose touch. I was the first to go away in 1960, age 16 - which seemed so old at the time.

Fast forward fifty years, we have reconnected and gathered at the home of Jane and Don Nute, named after his father, and not to be confused with Donald Vasbinder, whose mother Jeannette named him after her brother. It is also home to The Lake Town and Shire Garden Railroad, an amazing Lord of the Rings landscaped and railed back yard that was a hit with all of us, grown ups and kids alike.










Of the four original siblings - Raymond, Jeannette, Donald, and Barbara, only one is still living - Jeannette at age 89 and still sharp and quick at the wit as the family are wont to be. Our mother, Ramona, age 96, who had been married to Raymond was there. Both matriarchs came for the cousins' reunion.

Each of the four siblings had representative offspring - all four of Raymond's kids, including Patty and me, two of Jeannette's three children, one of Donald's two children, and Barbara's only child. And these offspring brought offspring who had more offspring. Cousins were coming out of the woodwork!

Grandchildren of Raymond and Alice, minus two - Alice Jane, daughter of Donald, and George, son of Jeannette:



Children of Raymond, including PatandKathie, in a rare total sibling photo as we are scattered from East to West Coast and in between.


We had an entire day of becoming reacquainted, letting the next two generations get to know each other, soaking in the southern hospitality of Don and Jane, and making plans for next year's gathering -- Alice Jane and George mark your books! We're going to Maryland, heart of the East Coast Civil War battles!