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Note: Posted by Larry Priest - PRIEST & MCADA ANCESTORS http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=blackhorse&id=I0213
By Wilkie Wilkinson:
James Lindsey Durham, my great grandfather, was known and loved by my mother. She referred to him as Gran'pa Durham. As a small girl she enjoyed visiting in the home of her Grandma and Grandpa Durham, who lived near her and near the City of Warren, Arkansas. Jim Durham would sit and tell my mother stories about his war experiences. He must have made the stories exciting, because my mother wrote that her grandfather felt the Civil War was a great adventure.
My mother told me how Jim Durham, during the Seige of Vicksburg, would put his hat on his bayonette and stick it above the trench to see if the Damn Yankees could hit it. There were stories about eating rats before Vicksburg fell. My mother probably never knew that Jim Durham was in a prisoner of war camp for many months. My mother wrote that this Durham family owned a small clean house with happy people living in it. In the evening the family sat in front of the fireplace and ate peanuts. They threw the peanut shells in the fire. They would put sweetpotatoes in the ashes of the fireplace and cooked them. My mother had pleasant memories of those times when she visited in the home of Jim and Harriett Durham.
James Lindsey Durham volunteered his services to Company A, Captain Angus Taylor's Company, Mississippi Infantry Volunteers, Army of The Confederate States of America, on 15 Oct 1861 at Waynesboro, Mississippi, for one year of service. He was mustered into Captain Taylor's Company of The Gaines Invincibles, Mississippi Volunteers as a private. Military records say that James Lindsey Durham was born in Irwin County, Georgia and at the time of his enlistment, his parents lived in Randolph County, Georgia. His age to his nearest birthday was 22. In April of 1862, this military unit was designated as the 6th (Balfour's) Battalion, Mississippi Infantry and later, on 2 December 1862, as the 46th Regiment Mississippi Infantry by Special Order No. 32, Headquarters 2nd Dist., Dept. Mississippi and East Louisiana.
Captain Taylor's Company of Mississippi Volunteers arrived at Vicksburg, Mississippi on 2 Nov 1861. Payroll records show that Private James Lindsey Durham was at Vicksburg through out 1862, but, was paid infrequently. He was taken prisoner when Gen. U. S. Grant took the city on 4 July of 1863. Durham was paroled on 9 July 1863.
James L. Durham was taken prisoner at Little Kensaw Mountain in the Battle for Atlanta on 3 July 1864 by forces under Gen. Wm T. Sherman. On 13 July 1864 he arrived at a military prison in Louisville, Kentucky. On 14 July 1864 he was received at Camp Morton, Indianapolis, Indiana and remained in this camp until 15 March 1865. The last entry in his records shows his name on a "Roll of Prisoners of War paroled at Camp Morton, Indiana, and forwarded to Point Lookout, Maryland, via the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, for exchange, in pursuance of instructions received by telegraph from the Comissary General of Prisoners, dated Washington, D.C., 10 March 1865." This roll was dated 15 March 1865, Headquarters Camp Morton, Indiana.
An addition to the above entry revealed: "Roll 122, Rock Island, Illinois, bears the following endorsement which also applies to the men whose names are borne on this roll: Received March 23, 1865, at Boulware's and Cox's Wharf, James River, Virginia, from John E Mulford, Brev't Brig. Gen. and U. S. Agent of Exchange, one thousand and eleven (1011) paroled prisoners of war, on the within rolls. W. H. Hatch, Asst. Agent of Exchange."
In later years, James Lindsey Durham told his family that upon arriving at Rock Island, Illinois, he was sent down the Mississippi River on a steamboat. It is likely that he arrived in the State of Mississippi at about the time of The Surrender.
While stationed in Shubuta, Clarke County, Mississippi, in 1861, Jim L. Durham had met a young curly headed girl named Harriett Kyser. Jim promised Harriett that he would come back when the war was over and marry her. He did and they did. They set up housekeeping on the farm of Harriett's father, James T. Kyser, known in my family as "The Dutchman". Two children were born to this couple while living on the Kyser farm. The second child was my grandfather, Luther H. Durham, b. 13 Jun 1870.
Harriett Kyser was one of five daughters and three sons born to James T. and Mary (Deen) Kyser. Mary Deen was the d.o. Thomas and Martha Deen of Clarke County. The older siblings of Mary Deen were born in Alabama.
A sister of Harriett Kyser, Mary Kyser, married Absalom Americus Gavin, a son of Abraham Andrew Gavin and Katie Boulton. Abraham Andrew Gavin, b. 13 Oct 1810 Spartanburg, SC, was a son of Charles Gavin and Margaret Horger. Margaret Horger was a daughter of Rachel Shuler of the Swiss family from which Winona Moorhead Wilkinson descends.
While my grandfather, Luther H. Durham, was still an infant, the James L. Durham family and some of his wife's family moved to Arkansas, where they homesteaded a river bottom farm on the north bank of the Saline River in Cleveland County near Rye. They were not able to cope with the unhealthy conditions of this river bottom farm, so they sold it and relocated on a farm just north of the Rye community.
The first child of this family was James Lafayette Durham. When the lumber industry moved into Arkansas about 1890s, there was a big demand for able bodied men to work in the forest cutting trees and moving logs to the mill. James L. Durham and Luther H. Durham took jobs working on the Saline River moving log rafts down river. They liked this work and they prospered. My grandfather was in his early twenties, an age when men think about girls. Luther saved his money and soon was the owner of a fine horse, a good saddle, and a new suit of clothes. One problem was that the Durham boys lived in a logging camp deep in Saline River bottoms. There were no girls near them.
On the south side of Saline River, in Bradley County, a prosperous farmer had donated a bit of his land for the building of a Baptist Church. That prosperous farmer was Joseph Ritchey, a veteran of the Army of the CSA and the son-in-law of a Baptist preacher. The preacher was Dr. John Toole Craig, a successful physician, successful planter, and much respected preacher. Joseph Ritchey was the stepson of Washington B. Smith, a large landowner in the Smith Chapel Community near New Edinburg.
Luther Durham was a church going man and he welcomed the chance to swim his horse across the river on Sundays to visit the Ritchey farm. Luther Durham ended up marrying the daughter of Joseph and Mary (Craig) Ritchey. That daughter was Amelia Olive Ritchey, my grandmother. Luther Durham bought a farm east of Warren on the south side of the railroad track.
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