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A
Company Of Young Ladies
An incident of April, 1864, was the appearance in Chattanooga of a group of young girls who had been arrested in Rhea County by Captain Thomas Walker and Lieutenant W. B. Gothard of the Sixth Mounted Federal Infantry. The officers and men who made the arrest were Hamilton County Federal soldiers.
The young women were marched from their homes to Smith's Cross Roads, now Dayton, and thence to Bell's Landing where they were put on a cattle boat, "The Chicken Thief," for transportation to Chattanooga. When they arrived they were marched up Market Street to the office of the Provost Marshall which was located on Market and Sixth Streets. They were accused of having organized a company of Home Guards.
Colonel S. B. Moe, who was adjutant to General J. B. Steedman, then Commander of the Post of Chattanooga, placed the matter before that officer. General Steedman heard the charges against the young women and acquitted them at once. He directed the officers who had made the arrest to see that they reached their homes safely.
The young women were all members of prominent Rhea and Hamilton County families. The group included:
Miss Mary Elizabeth McDonald, Captain
Miss Jennie Hoyal, First Lieutenant
Miss Jane Locke, Second Lieutenant
Miss Rhoda Tennessee Thomison, Third Lieutenant
Misses Virgina Hoyal
Kate Hoyal
Anna Gillespie
Martha Early
Sidney McDonald
Louisa McDonald
Ann Payne
Caroline McDonald
Barbara Frances Allen
Margaret Keith
Sarah Mitchell
Rachel Howell
Mary A. Crawford
Mary Keith
They were from fourteen to twenty years of age and had organized themselves into a uniformed and mounted troop. Each member supplied her own horse. Their object, however, was not military service, but the relief and assistance of widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers and the families of men who were in the Confederate service. The organization was the forerunner of the Confederate Memorial Association and the Daughters of the Confederacy.
General Steedman in discharging them from court complimented them on the work they had done and said that such associations of women were a necessity for both armies and that he would encourage similar groups for the aid of wives and children of the soldiers in the Federal as well as the Confederate army.
After General Steedman had discharged them the young women were entertained at supper at the Crutchfield House by the Federal officers. Thus their journey to Chattanooga, which had begun so ingloriously in the villages along the Tennessee river ended very pleasantly for the girls themselves and for the officers who for many months had been deprived of feminine society. The girls spent the night in the homes of the few Chattanooga ladies who were left in the little town and returned next day to their own homes with a story to tell in after years to their children and their children's children.
The list was compiled through the interest and research of the late Colonel W. M. Nixon and Mrs. Mary Allen Benson, niece of Major Valentine C. Allen.
The members of the company will be more familiar to later generations, however, by their married names. Colonel Nixon and Mrs. Benson also compiled this list.
Mary Elizabeth McDonald married Dr. Thomas H. Roddy
Louisa McDonald married Robert Kyle
Mollie McDonald married James Jewell
Caroline McDonald did not marry
Jane
Locke did not marry
Ann Payne married Charles M. Todd
Rhoda Tennessee Thomison married James H. Ford
Virginia Hoyal did not marry
Kate Hoyal married John E. Pyott
Anna Gillespie married H. E. Crawford
Martha Early married James Kelly
Barbara Frances Allen married Isaac Cross Arrants
Margaret Keith did not marry
Sarah Mitchell married Jacob Myers
Rachell Howell married Thomas Whaley
Mary A. Craw-ford did not marry
Mary Keith married James Whaley
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