The Crab Orchard (Tennessee) and the Civil War

   
There were several places that bore the name of Crab Orchard during the Civil War. Crab Orchard, Kentucky, was probably the most famous, but for this post, we are going to look at Crab Orchard, Carter County, Tennessee. The Crab Orchard in Carter County, geographically speaking, is a rugged area. Near the North Carolina border, the area is split by the Doe River Gorge. It is rough place, but for those looking for hide out and escape, an ideal location. One veteran described it as a “most rugged country…”[1]

   Crab Orchard became a haven for Unionists and dissidents during the war. The area is rough, running through the Doe River Gorge. Nathaniel G. Taylor, a Carter County native who had served in the US House in 1854-1855, and had been outspoken in his defense of the Union during the 1860 election, reportedly fled to the Crab Orchard area following the secession of Tennessee. He was being guarded by 100 Union men. [2]

Crab Orchard section of East Tennessee. 

    After the bridge-burning episode in East Tennessee in November 1861, many of the bridge burners fled to the Crab Orchard area after Federal soldiers failed to support the activities of the local firebugs. Confederate soldiers chased the Unionists for a time, but did not enter the Crab Orchard area. (Judd, The Bridge Burners) An article in a Nashville newspaper reported at the end of November that many of the bridge burners were still in the area: “Some spasms of the rebellion yet exist on the upper borders of the Buffalo, in the Limestone Cove, and the Crab Orchard…”[3]

   William Penland, a sergeant in the 6^th North Carolina Cavalry, was stationed at Mount Taylor, in the Carter County area. He wrote home on January 6, 1863, that he had been on a raid and the rumor was that the “tories in the crabb orchard that was a going to cutt us off if the Yankees whipped us and we had to retreat[.]” Wilson wrote that his command journeyed into the area, but found “none[.]”[4]

   Possibly the biggest movement of troops through the area came in June 1864, when Capt. George W. Kirk moved from Broylesville (then in Carter County), through the area into North Carolina. Kirk was heading to Camp Vance, in Burke County, in an attempt to capture a train to take his raiders east to destroy the bridge over the Yadkin River on the border of Rowan and Davidson Counties. While Kirk was able to capture the camp, along with 200 prisoners, he failed in taking a waiting train at the depot nearby and retreated back into Tennessee, probably passing through Crab Orchard once again.[5]

   North Carolina home guard forces, under Major Harvey Bingham, maneuvered toward the southern end of the Crab Orchard area in October 1864. A group of nine robbed several families in the Bethel community of Watauga County before heading back to Tennessee. Bingham followed with portions of the 11^th Battalion North Carolina Home Guard just over the Tennessee line, capturing one man and driving “off some beef cattle” before heading back to his base.[6] 

Doe River Gorge. 

  The Crab Orchard was also a stop on a local version of the underground railroad, funneling escaped prisoners and dissidents out of the Carolinas and into Tennessee. Keith Blalock, Harrison Church, and Jim Hartley were all pilots on this route, moving from Banner’s Elk through Crab Orchard and then toward Greenville (or wherever Federal lines happen to be holding at that moment).  When Blalock was wounded late in the war while raiding a farm in Caldwell County, a group of fifteen to twenty men came to Banner’s Elk and rescued him, taking Blalock to convalesce at the home of David Stout at Crab Orchard.[7] When George W. Kirk followed Maj. Gen. Stoneman’s Cavalry raiders into North Carolina in March-April 1865, they supposedly moved via Crab Orchard and Banner’s Elk before arriving in Boone.[8]

   This small glimpse of the war inside the Crab Orchard community is just that – a small glimpse. There were many events that took place inside this community that have escaped the pen of the historian and are now lost to history. In Scott and Angel’s history of the 13^th Tennessee Cavalry (US), they write of members of Thomas’s Legion roaming in the area, spreading “terror and dismay wherever they went.” Scott and Angel mention that a man named Andrew Buck “was taken out and hanged until he was black in the face by Walters to make him tell where his sons were concealed.” Outside of saying that Walters was “Captain Walters” from Georgia, who was in Carter County in May 1863, we don’t actually know who this is. Maybe in time we can dig out a few more of these stories and preserve this piece of history.[9] 

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[1] Scott and Angel, History of the 13^th Regiment Tennessee Vol. Cavalry, 380.

[2] Daily Nashville Patriot, August 25, 1861.

[3] Nashville Union and American, December 4, 1861.

[4] http://www.blindpigandtheacorn.com/blind_pig_the_acorn/2010/01/civil-war-letters.html

[5] Hardy, Kirk’s Civil Wars Along the Blue Ridge, 98-108.

[6] Hardy, Watauga County, North Carolina, in the Civil War, 47.

[7] Oshnock, “The Isolation Factor,” 86.

[8] Arthur, Western North Carolina, 626.

[9] Scott and Angel, History of the 13^th Regiment Tennessee Vol. Cavalry, 380-382.