Achnah Matilda Henderson, wife of James Callaway

From CFA Member, Sandie Grassino, comes this very interesting supposition.

I have an interesting (well, I think, at least) question to pose: What do you think - is it possible/plausible that Matilda Henderson (wife of James Callaway) could be the daughter of a child of Col. Samuel Henderson/Elizabeth Callaway?

The reason I ask this is as follows: If you recall, when we first "met", I told you that all of my life, I had been told that my ancestor was captured by the Indians. THIS Elizabeth (daughter of Col. Richard) was. I was also told that a Callaway ancestor was killed by lightning. I learned yesterday (at the Boone Family Reunion, of all places) that Pleasant Henderson, son of Elizabeth and Samuel, was indeed killed by lightning in 1816 or 1817. The family says 1817, but the tombstone says 1816. His age makes this feasible. She was born (according to CFA) in 1804. CFA only lists one marriage to Agnes Watt in 1805, I think, but that doesn't mean there couldn't have been a previous marriage. She was born in Tennessee, which is where he lived.

What do you think? Has anyone ever broached this subject before? I tried to get info about this from the CFA CD that I bought, but I have had no luck as of yet. The fact that she went by so many first names kind of tells me they may have been nicknames, and we may be missing the real name altogether. So, what do you think? Am I completely off my rocker or what?
Sandie Grassino

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Copyright © 2004 Callaway Family Association

Thomas Howard Callaway, President ET&G Railroad

Thomas Howard Callaway (Joseph Woodson, Thomas, Jr., Thomas, Joseph Callaway) was a native Tennesseean whose parents had migrated from North Carolina to settle in the wilderness of East Tennessee in the early 1800s.

The following article from "Ties", the Southern Railway System magazine, about Thomas Howard Callaway, wealthy landowner, banker and President of the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad, originally appeared in the 1979 CFA Journal, Vol. IV, pg.37. It is entitled -
Like many of his fellow-Southerners, the post-bellum president of the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad, Thomas Howard Callaway, found that the collapse of military opposition to the North in April, 1865, did not necessarily mean the end of the four-year conflict between the states.

Almost as bitter as the actual fighting was the wrangling over who owed what to whom after confiscated Southern property was gradually returned to its pre-war owners.

War's end found the East Tennessee & Georgia fairly intact, although an inventory report from the state road commissioner to the Tennessee General Assembly said the road "met with its full share of the calamities of war." The commissioner estimated the ET&G's wartime losses from property destroyed or damaged at more than $375,000.

This gloomy report was partially offset by the road's discovery that the wartime shuffling of rolling stock and motive power between the South's railroads ended in the ET&G's favor. The road wound up with one more locomotive than it had when the war began and with almost as many cars. But, as later events proved, this unexpected bonanza turned out to be costly in other ways.

Added to the primary problem of rebuilding, another worry facing the road's owners was the accumulation of interest due the road's bondholders which had not been paid during the war. This amounted to about $275,000 - more than half of it owned to the State of Tennessee.

To protect their interests, and while the road was still occupied by the Union Army, a group of ET&G stockholders met in July 1865, and appointed a president to manage the company's affairs until a formal election could be held. The selection fell on Thomas Callaway, a native Tennesseean whose parents had migrated from North Carolina to settle in the wilderness of East Tennessee in the late 1700s or early 1800s. Callaway had been a leader in banking, mining, agriculture and educational projects in his native section and was one of the road's leading stockholders.

(Callaway's appointment was his second experience as head of the road. He had served as the ET&G's second president during 1852-53 and had resigned to devote his time to other interests - though he continued to serve as a director in the ensuing years. He was also to serve briefly as president of the connecting road to the north, the East Tennessee & Virginia, and as first president of the combined companies when they merged a few years later as the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia.)

Shortly after Callaway assumed office, U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton directed the military authorities in Tennessee to return all railroads to their owners. President Callaway took possession of the East Tennessee & Georgia on Auguest 28, 1865, receiving it from Gen. George H. Thomas who commanded the Department of the Cumberland in Tennessee.

This apparent leniency from the War Department had, among others, one significant string attached. Rather than attempt to sort out and return the widely-scattered equipment to its owner roads, the Federal Government exercised the right of a victor to dispose of captured enemy property on its own terms. It offerd to sell to the ET&G whatever equipment the road felt it needed that hadn't originally belonged to it.

Thomas Callaway agreed to buy much of the foreign equipment the road found on its line. But, as later explained, he did so under protest and only because he had no choice if the road was to have enough locomotives and cars.

He felt that the government owed his railroad a sum greater than the purchase price - for the Union Army's use of the road during the war and for damages the northern troops inflicted on the road's property. In support of this claim, he argued that when the road had been turned over to the Northern General Burnside in the fall of 1863, the military commander had agreed to reimburse the road for its use by his army.

Nevertheless, to obtain the equipment Callaway had to sign a bond for $371,000. This amount, which he considered far more than the equipment was worth, was to be paid by the railway in 24 monthly installments along with interest set by the government at 7 3/10 per cent yearly.

By June, 1866, the ET&G had reduced this debt some $40,000 through transportation and mail service furnished to the government. Rebuilding of the damaged track had begun and arrangements were being made to pay off the accumulated interest to the state.

The following year, however, the company's finances were being spread so thinly that the road began to fall behind on its payments to the government. This brought a curt reminder from the Department of the Cumberland.

". . .You are expected to pay every cent your Company can appropriate to the liquidation of this debt at once," said a letter to Callaway dated August 15, 1867, "and provide definitely for the payment becoming due in the future. If you are not heard from by the 28th inst., I shall proceed to enforce the terms of your Bond. Immediate action in this matter is requested."

The letter was signed "By command of Maj. Gen. Thomas."

Despite the letter's emphatic tones, Callaway asked for an extension on the payments and pleaded his company's poor finances. He was turned down.

Callaway then began his own offensive. He presented a counterclaim to the U.S. Government for a precise $632,066.38. This, he said, was the amount due the ET&G for war damages and for the Union Army's use of the road during the war.

Furthermore, the rail president added, the State of Tennessee had a prior claim on the company's earnings as a result of the state's ownership of a majority of the road's stock. He explained to the War Department that the "scanty" revenues of the company were being applied to a payment of interest on the state mortgage to prevent foreclosure.

This approach apparently won an extension for payments until the first of the following year (1868). By that April, however, the ET&G was still resisting the efforts of the War Department to collect not only the monthly payments but also an accumulation of interest amounting to some $9,000.

From Washington, the quartermaster general of the U.S., J. J. Dana took a hand in the game. In a letter to Callaway on April 10, 1868, the general said no further extension could be granted. And, in reply to the rail president's counterclaim against the government, he added a grim reminder that the road was considered captured enemy property and the government, therefore, owed nothing for its use during the war. The letter also pointed out that the government didn't recognize any prior claims on the company's earnings, including that of the State of Tennessee.

Meanwhile, a pre-war plan to merge the East Tennessee & Georgia with its northern rail neighbor, the East Tennessee & Virginia, was being revived. A firm step in this direction was taken by the stockholders of the ET&V on the death of their president, John R. Branner, in February, 1869, when they elected Callaway as his successor. Callaway at the same time was president of the ET&G.

As the two railroads together had contracted a total of $625,000 in debts to the government for equipment purchased after the war, the War Department was able to direct its demand for payment to a single source - Thomas H. Callaway. But it was no more successful at collecting the joint debt than it was when dealing with the two roads individually.

Consequently, in August, 1869, the quartermaster general, then M. C. Meigs, informed Callaway that he had appointed a receiver to take over the two companies and cited non-payment of debts as the reason. He ordered that the property of the railroads be turned over to the receiver "without delay."

Callaway received this letter along with one written by the appointed receiver on the 23rd of August and promptly replied to both. Stating that he had no authority to comply with the request, he "respectfully declined" to release control of the two roads and, in turn, challenged the legal right of the U. S. to seize the roads.

This stubborn refusal apparently achieved a stalemate between Callaway and the government. No other reference to the litigation appears in the two companies' records until the second annual report of the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia Railroad Company (the consolidation of the two roads took effect November 26, 1869) dated 1871. It mentioned that "Congress . . . at its last session passed a law empowering the Secretary of War to compromise and adjust the litigation between the United States and the sundry railroads . . ."

Final settlement between the railroad and the U. S. on the drawn-out controvery came in May, 1872. Of the total debt claimed by the government, $625,000 minus small sums collected from the two roads, the ETV&G paid $5,000 in cash and signed notes of 10 and 15 years for another total of $190,000.

Callaway's cold war with the Union had ended. But the militant Tennesseean did not live to see even this partial victory. He died on August 29, 1870, at the age of 58, less than a year after he became first president of the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia.

How the ETV&G fared in later years - its expansion into one of the great railway systems of the South and its eventual bankruptcy and sale to the Southern Railway Company in 1894 - will be told in later articles.

In a large measure, however, the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia owed its existence to Thomas Howard Callaway, who fought the War Department to a standstill and preserved the private ownership of the roads placed in his charge.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Copyright © 2004 Callaway Family Association

Boone Carvings

There's a tree along a creek that feeds the Forked Deer River in West Tennessee covered with carvings by Daniel Boone, according to the professor who found it.

"There's no doubt in my mind that it's authentic," said George Edwards, a chemistry professor at Lambuth College in Jackson, Tenn.

The carvings on the 300-year-old beech tree include three sets of initials, two crescent moons, a bare foot, and D. Boone, 1776.

Edwards found the tree in 1968 on a field trip with the late Marvin Eagle, long-time history professor and dean at Lambuth. At first, Edwards and Eagle thought the carvings were the work of pranksters. But the more they studied them, the more they believed them to be real.

"If you know how to put a carving on a beech tree, at the right age, the carving will stay there as long as the tree is alive," Edwards said.

A 100-year-old beech tree is about right for initialing, he explained. A core sample from the tree showed it to be 300 to 350 years old now.

"Boone left Boonesboro, KY., on Sept. 7, 1776, for a hunting expedition along the Mississippi," Edwards said. That put him near the Forked Deer River late in the year.

Edwards said he believes other initials on the tree - E.B., M.C., and M.S. - belong to Boone's brother, Edward, and traveling companions Mike Calloway and Mike Stoner.

The professor has spotted three other trees bearing what he believes are 18th Century carvings. He said carvings possibly done by Edward Boone on one tree are as interesting as Daniel's.

They depict an arm and hammer, a peace pipe, a bottle, and a three-fingered Indian handshake.

This article noted as "From Grit", was published in the 1978 CFA Journal, Vol. III, pg. 23.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Copyright © 2004 Callaway Family Association

Bunk Gadsoe, Lawyer

The Iowa Recorder, Greene, Iowa, January 14, 1902


FlagstoneBUNK GADSOE, LAWYERby John H. Rafferty
Bunk Gadsoe came to Flagstone when the town was merging from a modern inferno to a respectable town. About half the population spoke of it as "the city," the other half - the bad half - called it "the camp." Bunk's advent created something of a furor on the shady side of Flagstone, for he brought with him the reputation of fifteen years of horse stealing, an old Colt's revolver with eleven notches in the handle, and the fame of having passed four years in the Texas penitentiary, whither he had been sent by an awakening deed of killing a sheep herder with a shot fired in the dark through a thin board partition.

When Bunk landed in Flagstone he wore a new Prince Albert and a Winchester, to say nothing of small clothes and lesser artillery concealed about his ample person. He was big, his look was fierce and his talk large. His first move was to hire a room over the Plaza saloon and hang out a sign - "Bunker Hill Gadsoe, Attorney at Law." The next day half the town knew that Lawyer Gadsoe had come to town to defend Bass Intake, the rustler then in jail under a charge of murdering Colonel Forest in the desert of Shifting Sands, above Jolla. Gadsoe explained that he had spent his prison term studying law, and that he meant to follow his new profession on a "high plane."

However, Lawyer Gadsoe made a bad start, for his client, Bass Intake, was hanged, and the whole Comanche county breathed a sigh of relief in spite of Gadsoe's publicly given harangue against judge, jury and prosecution. After that the man from Brazos didn't flourish as a lawyer. He began to show his old Colt, with its fateful notches, and tell stories of his desperate deeds. In June he got into a scuffle with Jere Brownlow and killed him in a jiffy. Brownlow had been foreman of the jury that convicted Intake, and there was a feeble show of prosecuting Gadsoe. The jury in the first case "stuck" as they say in the West, and the next one let Gadsoe go finding that the killing of Brownlow was a case of self-defense. That decision established Gadsoe in Flagstone. He half-bullied, half cajoled Pete Carroll into selling him a half interest in the "Bucket of Blood" - the only live dance hall and gambling joint in town - and then he got into politics.

There wasn't a man around that cared for "his game." Some hated, some despised him, but the bad men looked "leery" at his notched pistol - always in view - and the good people feared him as a bold, bad man. A lantern-jawed, stoop-shouldered giant with the facial expression of a hyena, he yet clung to the legend that he was "a lawyer" come to Flagstone "to practice his profession on a high plane," while his daily life was a slinking, bullying, sinister continuance of the only life he knew or understood. Inside of six months he was recognized by all classes as a "boss." The toughest of the lingering frontier rowdies feared him, and the decent people agreed that it was better to avoid him than to incur his venom. For these reasons when a new town marshal became necessary Bunk Gadsoe got the job.

Being now a duly authorized and approved authority, Bunk extended his sway to that degree that every game in town payed tribute to him and the municipal authorities began to praise his dominance over the "lawless element." There was no doubt about his dominance. There wasn't a half-and-half bad man in town that didn't fawn before his prowess and the silent voice of his notched pistol. Fighters from the hills and cowmen of tried mettle who blew in from the mines and the ranges, and who had heard of Bunk Gadsoe, felt honored to have a drink with him, but, drunk or sober, nobody dared to waken his anger or summon the famous weapon that hung always at his right hip. He gave offensive men "hours to leave town" without so much as arresting them.

"You git 'forenoon 'r I'll run you out like a wolf," he said to Scarface Boyd, the Laredo bully. And Scarface did "git." Old Hansbrough, the town drunkard, invoked his doom by refusing to leave a table in the Echo saloon one night when Gadsoe wanted to entertain two friends at the same table. The marshal didn't wait for explanations; on the contrary, he hardly gave Hansbrough time to measure the distance to the door, but shot him where he sat, and after the drunkard was on the floor emptied his Colt into the defiant one. That made a stir in Flagstone and some were bold enough to hint that Gadsoe was a bully and even a coward. There was another trial, but the marshal proved that Hansbrough had "made a motion for his gun" and there was another acquittal.

After that there was no stopping Bunk. He lorded it to a degree that terrified all classes of men. He boasted openly of his prowess and levied larger tribute to the saloons, gambling resorts and dance halls. On the slightest provocation his gun was out and his method of enforcing what he understood as the "law on a high plane" was a terror to the daring and disgrace to the gentle. When Captain Callaway and ten rangers came down from Jolla to round up the smugglers above Flagstone, Gadsoe looked the band over with a haughty eye and declared: "They ain't a fust-class man among 'em."

But it was Willis Pierson, the dude of Callaway's troop, that "riled" Gadsoe the most. The rangers circulated all right - quiet fellows, most of them - but nobody expected trouble between them and the marshal till the latter and Willis Pierson sat in at the same wheel one night, and while Gadsoe lost continually on large bets, the dude ranger won incessantly on small ones.

"Cash 'em, Carroll," sneered Gadsoe at last with a leer at Pierson. "I kaint win settin' next to no French doll."
Pierson looked up, blushed and laid his chips on the spot vacated by Gadsoe.
"Take them cheap bones out o' my graveyard!" snarled the marshal, hitching round so that his pistol was easy, and with his left hand sweeping away the stack of white chips.
"Beg pardon, Colonel Gadson," smiled the ranger in a voice like a woman's; "I thought you were through."
"Who the h__l cares what you thought?" sneered Gadsoe, rising.
"I'm very sorry," resumed the polite man of Callaway's troop, also rising, while the players all snickered at what they regarded as the little fellow's lady-like cowardice. But the latter kept step with Gadsoe as he stalked away, and when they got near the doorway said: "Colonel, will you kindly let me have a match?"

Gadsoe, flattered with his triumph and with the dude's humiliation, handed out a match. Pierson took it with "many thanks," and sweeping it across the leg of his corduroys as to light it, whipped out his revolver and held it glistening at the nose of Bunk Gadsoe.

"You bone-picking buzzard," he said, smiling, too, like a girl, "you come with me."

The crowd, gathering one by one, saw the sudden change of the situation and followed as Gadsoe, the gun leveled at his ear, slunk out of the Bucket of Blood. A few paces behind Trooper Willis Pierson they followed the pair to the office of the Flagstone Herald, and lingering on the sidewalk they watched old Gadsoe walk up to the counter and take a pencil. He wrote for five minutes, paid the editor something, and at intervals turned to look into the muzzle of Pierson's gun.

And the next day they all understood, for on the front page of the Herald was this card:
"I hereby humbly apologize to Willis Pierson, Texas Ranger.
He is a gentleman and I am a low-down cur.
Bunker Hill Gadsoe"
And thereafter Bunk Gadsoe, marshal, was seen no more in Flagstone nor in Comanche county forever.

Photo of Flagstone above, from the film "Once Upon a Time in the West"

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Copyright © 2004 Callaway Family Association

Col. James Edmund Callaway Speech

The Butte Daily Miner, Butte, Montana, January 16, 1885

Following is the speech of Col. James Edmund Callaway (Samuel Taylor, Edmund, James, Joseph Callaway) upon taking the chair as Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Montana Territory.

Gentlemen of the House of Representatives: One of the greatest statesmen and patriots of our country, whose name and whose fame for patriotic deeds will enlighten the pathway of future statesmen, said that this is "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." The people of Montana Territory are assembled here today in their majesty through their representatives. We are simply their servants, are here to do their will and obey their commands. My efforts, as a member of this House, and your presiding officer, shall do what I believe to be for the interests of the Territory of Montana, tomorrow and for the future.

At the late election the foundation stone for a good commonwealth was laid in this Territory. By a significant majority a constitution was adopted and we are in the attitude of knocking at the door of congress for admission among the states of our fathers. In whatsoever we may do it will be my pleasure and effort to observe the principles laid down for the government of our people in that constitution.

Gentlemen, I am more than grateful to you for the honor you have conferred. I have had but little experience as a legislator - some as a presiding officer - and I assume these duties with a great deal of doubt as to my ability to properly perform them, but trusting to your assistance and in your charity, that you will help me as your presiding officer, I assume the duties. Again thanking you, I am ready to preceed to business.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Copyright © 2004 Callaway Family Association

Doubts if Boone Lies in Kentucky

Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, November 13, 1911

Great-Grandson of Famous Pioneer Thinks Mistake Was Made
TAKE WRONG BODY?
Mexico, Mo., Nov. 13. - Grave doubt that Kentucky now holds the bodies of Daniel Boone and his wife is expressed by the venerable John Jones, of this city, a great-grandson of Daniel Boone. Mr. Jones, who is now eighty-three, is not sure that the band of enthusiastic Kentuckians that came to Warren county many years ago to get the body of the pioneer to take it back to the scenes where Boone performed such deeds of valor, obtained the right body.

"There is a doubt whether it was Colonel Boone's body; it might have been some one's else;" said Mr. Jones, "I will tell you the story and you may let people judge for themselves.

"Colonel Boone died in St. Charles county, about sixteen miles from Marthasville, where I was born and where his body was buried. Marthasville is in the southeast corner of Warren county. Colonel Boone had long before selected the spot where he wanted to be buried and in accordance with his wishes it was buried on a lot on a farm owned by his brother-in-law, David Bryan. The body of his wife (Rebecca Bryan) also was buried there by his side.

"No stone was erected for many years after the bodies were buried, and finally when John Wyatt, the village blacksmith at Marthaville, hewed a large stone from the bed of the Femme Osage river and cut the initials 'D. B.' on it, he brought the stone to Colonel Bryan's and asked to be shown to the graveyard, where the colonel's body laid.

"Mr. Bryan was ill, in bed and could not go out, so he called his daughter Susan and said, 'Susie will show you where to place the stone.' Here is where the doubt lies.

"The grass and weeds had grown up in the cemetery, and there were many graves there. The girl when young had been to Colonel Boone's grave, but she had not seen it for a long time. Walking out to the spot with Wyatt, she hunted around a while and finally, pointing out two mounds, said: 'I believe these are grandpa's and grandma's graves, but I am not certain.' Wyatt put up the stone at the head of the graves designated by Susan Bryan.

"In 1848 John J. Crittenden and Colonel Beckham, heading a delegation of Kentuckians, came to Missouri to get the bodies of Colonel Boone and his wife and take them back to Kentucky. Our family did not want the bodies taken away, but when Colonel Crittenden made them a masterful address, saying that Kentucky wanted to honor her illustrious dead, they acquisced. A mulatto negro slave was sent out to show the Kentuckians where Colonel Boone and his wife were buried, and with a great deal of ceremony the bodies were exhumed and taken back. Whether Susan Bryan caused the stone to be erected at the head of Colonel Boone's grave or that of some other person, however, is a matter of conjecture."

Mr. Jones is the son of Dr. John Jones and Minerva Callaway. Dr. Jones was Colonel Boone's family physician, and attended the colonel in his fatal illness. Mr. Jones' grandmother was Jemima Boone, who with Susan Callaway and her younger sister, were captured by Indians near Boonesborough. Mr. Jones likes to tell of this incident and comment upon the sagacity and skill of Colonel Boone, who, with a party of followers, tracked the Indians through the forests by the threads of cloth upon the bushes.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Copyright © 2004 Callaway Family Association

William Calloway of Box Elder Valley

Thank you to CFA Genealogist, Sherrill Williams for contributing this Genealogy article.

From: The Real Pioneers of Colorado, Vol. 1, by Maria Davies McGrath, The Denver Museum, 1934.

WILLIAM CALLOWAY (1859)

William Calloway (John Harrison, Winder, William, Ebenezer, John, Peter Callaway) was born August 9, 1837 in Clinton Co., Indiana where he lived on his father's farm and attended school until he was twenty-one years of age. In the spring of 1859 he went to Missouri and associated with Jacob Cornelison engaged in freighting with ox teams from the Missouri River to Colorado. During the winter of 1861 and 1862 he and N. C. Alford camped on Meadow Creek, twelve miles north of Livermore and hunted game, which was hauled to Denver.

On one of his trips he was offered a town block situated in what is now the main business center of the city (Denver) for a sack of flour but refused to trade. Flour was worth then $100 a sack. In 1863 he went to Idaho and worked for N. C. Alford on a ranch for $100 per month the first year, and later conducted a ranch of his own. In 1867 he went to Cheyenne, Wyoming and in the fall of that year took up a ranch in Boulder canon [canyon?] which he sold and in 1870 located in Livermore on what is now known as the Cradock ranch and engaged in stock raising. In 1874 Mr. Calloway married Fannie Keach. To this union was born Mrs. Ella Burns of Seattle; Ray Calloway of Bellevue, Washington and Mina May, deceased.

Mrs. Calloway died in 1876. In 1881 he married Mary Calloway, widow of his deceased brother, Martin Calloway; a daughter was born of this union who is now Mrs. Libbie Hoffman of Fort Collins. Mr. Wm. Calloway died June 9, 1891 at Livermore, Colorado.

For more information on this Calloway family, see our web site here.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Copyright © 2004 Callaway Family Association