The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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A SOLEMN SCENE
By S. C. Turnbo
On the 24 of March, 1907, Mr. W. F. (Bill) Hackett of near Protem, Missouri, related the following to me. "I am a son of William and Sarah (Smith) Hackett. I was born in Lawrence County, Indiana, April 24, 1844. When I was four years of age, my parents brought me to Grayson County, Kentucky. My father and mother died many years ago and lie buried in the graveyard at the Pleasant Grove church house in Hardin County. When the war broke out, I enlisted in Company A, 27th Kentucky Regiment on the union side and tried to do my duty as a federal soldier, but I respected the brave men of the south as well as our own of the north. When the great conflict was over and the warriors of both sides settled down in peace, I married Miss Mary E. Cole on the 3rd day of March, 1868. In 1890 I moved from Hardin County, Kentucky, to Taney County, Missouri. We crossed the Mississippi River at Cape Girardieu and followed the main wagon road from there to Doniphan in Biply County, Missouri. A man of the name of Thomas Lucas traveled with us from Kentucky to Doniphan. One evening while we were passing along in a steep hollow, we came to 24 graves that were separated into two groups. It was evident that this was not a regular graveyard where the citizens of that neighborhood deposited their dead, but was done at some period during the war. There were nine graves bunched together in one spot and sixteen in another. We did not learn the history of these graves until the following morning when we met a men who on inquiry informed us that two war parties met there in the bloody days and fought a desperate battle, and when the fight ended nine federals and sixteen confederates lay dead on the hard contested field. On the following evening after we passed these graves, we arrived at Doniphan and I suppose the graves are something near twenty miles east of Doniphan."
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