The family of John Barkley (1753-1831) who lived in Sumner County (created from Davidson Co. in 1786), Tennessee. By 1799 Smith County was created from Sumner County. John and his first wife Margaret Hatch? came to Tennessee either from Virginia or North Carolina. His second wife is Catherine?, who died 1849. Descendants live in Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Arizona, Oklahoma, California, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Mexico and elsewhere.
The train was packed with men. Men lying as still as if they were already dead. Men shaking with pain. One man raving, jabbering, yelling, in delirium. Everywhere bandages . . . bandages . . . bandages . . . and blood. Those words describe the moment when Private John Lewis Barkley first grasped the grim reality of the war he had entered. The rest of Barkley's memoir, first published in 1930 as No Hard Feelings and long out of print, provides a vivid ground-level look at World War I through the eyes of a soldier whose exploits rivaled those of Sergeant York. A reconnaissance man and sniper, Barkley served in Company K of the 4th Infantry Regiment, a unit that participated in almost every major American battle. The York-like episode that earned Barkley his Congressional Medal of Honor occurred on October 7, 1918, when he climbed into an abandoned French tank and singlehandedly held off an advancing German force, killing hundreds of enemy soldiers. But Barkley's memoir abounds with other memorable moments and vignettes, all in the words of a soldier who witnessed war's dangers and degradations but was not at all fazed by them. Unlike other writers identified with the "Lost Generation," he relished combat and made no apology for having dispatched scores of enemy soldiers; yet he was as much an innocent abroad as a killing machine, as witnessed by second thoughts over his sniper's role, or by his determination to protect a youthful German prisoner from American soldiers eager for retribution. This Missouri backwoodsman and sharpshooter was also a bit of a troublemaker who smuggled liquor into camp, avoided promotions like the plague, and had a soft heart for mademoiselles and fruleins alike. In his valuable introduction to this stirring memoir, Steven Trout helps readers to better grasp the historical context and significance of this singular hero's tale from one of our most courageous doughboys. Both haunting and heartfelt, inspiring and entertaining, Scarlet Fields is a long overlooked gem that opens a new window on our nation's experience in World War I and brings back to life a bygone era.
In Wandering to Glory DeWitt Boyd Stone, Jr., pieces together the words of officers and soldiers in an imaginative, nontraditional brigade history of one of the Confederacy's most active combat troops. Stone blends firsthand accounts from a variety of sources to tell the colorful story of Brigadier General Nathan George Shanks Evans and his Tramp Brigade. An independent South Carolina unit never permanently attached to a particular army, Evans's Brigade traveled widely, making its way from one frontline to another and earning its nickname. Stone profiles the unit's accomplished but egotistical commander, who gained fame as a hero at the First Battle of Manassas, and traces its impressive war record, which began at Second Manassas and included its moment of glory at ground zero during the Battle of the Crater, at Petersburg, Virginia. Nearly ten percent of all South Carolinians who fought in the Confederate army were members of Evan's Brigade, which included South Carolina's 17th, 18th, 22nd, and 23rd Regiments, the Macbeth Light Artillery, and the infantry companies of the Holcombe Legion. Later the 26th Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers joined the unit. The troops numbered
