A Personal Look at the Civil War in Rhea and Meigs Counties, Tennessee

This work examines the lives of Rhea and Meigs Counties, Tennessee women and children during the Civil War. Several newspaper articles from The Athens Post are included, detailing county meetings and other significant events, as well as a collection of letters and diaries written by families of soldiers. An index to full-names, places and subjects adds to the value of this work.

Rhea and Meigs Counties in lower east Tennessee were at one time all one county, even though the Tennessee River ran between the two halves. The people in both are closely related and families share both sides of the river. This collection of V. C. Allen's newspaper clippings about various events and persons in the Confederacy were collected first-hand by his own experience during the conflict. Included here are the rosters of the various units from these two counties and biographical sketches of many of the leaders of the units.

Examples from this volume:

Rev. G. W. Callahan entered the army as a private in Captain Darwin's company. He was a Methodist minister, belonging to the Holston Conference. He was a man of ability, and was appointed Chaplain of the Sixteenth Tennessee Battalion on the Staff of Colonel John R. Neal, and made an efficient officer, commanding the respect of the battalion, and was known as 'a fighting parson.'

Rev. Callahan is still living [1908], and a minister of the Western North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.