Eureka Valley: Grandfathers' Grandfathers

By Lisa Doerr

“Steeped in a reverence for the rivers, woods, land and people of this nation...”
Dr. Carolyn Wedin
Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin

Who won America’s Civil War?

Lycurgus Bell and more than 100,000 Southern soldiers who fought for Abraham Lincoln thought they knew. They were wrong. Eureka Valley – Grandfathers' Grandfathers tells their story.

Readers who love Jane Smiley, E.L. Doctrow or Geraldine Brooks will feel right at home with this magical telling of American history.

Grounded in northwestern Wisconsin’s glacial landscape, this powerful tale unravels the roots that bind two modern farm families to their ancestors, Lycurgus Bell and Wood John Johnson.

Born to an Alabama family loyal to the Union, Lycurgus serves in Lincoln’s Civil War army. Returning home a victor, he expects his just rewards. Instead, the Union he suffered greatly to save hangs him out to dry. Driven from home, Lycurgus and his wife seek refuge with their prized gaited horses in Eureka Valley.

Swedish immigrant, Wood John Johnson, spends years felling Wisconsin’s forests and cruising new timber stands for East Coast financiers. Upon entering Eureka Valley’s unique transitional ecosystem, he glimpses a different way of life that lives on today.

These uncommon characters and others such as Sylvester Partridge, Bratch Porter, Chickamauga, Peder Borgen, Waabani and Mountain Slasher, are drawn from the real people who fought the Civil War and made colonization of America’s vast heartland possible.

Dozens of hyperlinks in this eBook enrich the story with everything from music to tractors and sweet flowering trees.

"Meticulously researched with a haunting sense of place, Eureka Valley will give the reader a new appreciation for the history of the land."

Sue Leaf
Author of A Love Affair with Birds: The Life of Thomas Sadler Roberts

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lisa Doerr
• Release date: May 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996262613

Lisa Doerr

Born on a farm in central Minnesota where the hardwoods meet the prairie, Lisa now lives in the beautiful St. Croix River valley of northwestern Wisconsin. This is where the last glaciers gave up their southward journey and the hardwoods now meet the pines.Writing, riding and farming with her husband are staples of life. Lisa focuses on writing about rural lives and landscapes. Northern Lakes Farm produced 25 tons of hay, 1,300 bushels of corn and a half-dozen, excellent gaited horses last year.Lisa earned a journalism degree and then spent nearly 20 years as a communications and policy professional in the environmental movement. This work won her awards from Democrat Vice President Al Gore and Republican Governor Arne Carlson. A deep respect and passion for the earth and all its diverse life reverberates throughout her work.

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Prologue

Lycurgus Bell lay wet and cold in his Buck’s Pocket hideout listening for Bratch Porter’s tireless slave dogs.

Hidden beneath craggy limestone bluffs along a creek leading to the Tennessee River in northern Alabama, Lycurgus recalled the many times he had tried to cross the river into Union-held territory.

Even before President Lincoln’s election nearly a year and a half ago, Lycurgus and his Bell kin had been the target of Bratch’s well-trained forces. Now he could just about smell Bratch and his pack of negro-hounds as they clamored down a bluff straight for his Buck’s Pocket hideaway.

Eureka Valley

Bonus Third Crop

Driving up Rock Creek ridge always pins you to your seat but you really get slammed at eighty-five miles an hour. As you make the top of the long, steep crest an incredible panorama lies before you. This is Eureka Valley, its rolling farmland, rocky glacial ridges and scattered forests bejeweled by shimmering lakes and rivers.

Twenty-three-year-old Jason Olsen flies his Ford pickup over the ridge heading north, aces a curve to the west and just barely makes a serpentine back to the north. Jason’s sure that this is the most beautiful valley on earth. Running almost due north/south with a long pile of glacier debris forming the eastern edge, Eureka Valley jumps the St. Croix River and takes the waterway’s western bluffs as its occidental boundary. Residents of this northwest corner of Wisconsin share the river with Minnesota and are only a few hours drive from Canada.

People from the other side of the river have different zip codes, congressmen and governors but they’re still part of our valley, Jason’s dad, Scott, often tells him. Rivers don’t divide people; they bring us together.

Jason pulls his pickup off the highway and winds around one of his Grandfather Chester’s eighty-acre hay fields. This field is an amazing piece of work. Chester’s grandfather, Axel, came from Denmark in the 1860s and began clearing stumps out of the field after logging teams sawed down the hardwood forests and occasional grove of cathedral-sized white pines. Cutting all winter, the loggers would drag the pines over a ridge to the west and slide them down to the St Croix River. Come spring, these pines floated off with millions of others to sawmills downstream, returning more millions to east coast investors whose capital paid the loggers’ wages. Settlers milled hardwoods such as maple and oak locally and used them to build their homes, barns and dreams.

People thought different then…very vertical, Grandfather Chester tells Jason, in an attempt to explain the past. No one lived very long and after this life it was either up to heaven or down to you-know-where. Now days, we think horizontal. When those loggers saw a stand of trees, cutting them was their way to fill their time on earth. Now we see something complicated reaching back thousands of years and ahead for eternity. Just like the rocks.

With the forests cut, the real work started. Axel, his sons and then grandsons spent decades burning, digging out and blowing up the huge stumps and root systems left behind by the loggers. Little by little, they were able to plow and seed dozens of fields until the Olsen place stretched at least a mile in four directions.

Jason hops out of his truck and onto a green John Deere 3020 tractor with wide front wheels waiting along the eastern edge of the eighty with a hay rake attached. This is Jason’s favorite field. With warm September weather, it is producing a bonus third crop of beautiful grass hay cut two days ago and ready to rake this morning. Nearby wooded ridges, and those across the river to the west, frame miles of green grass and neat row crops.

As he drives the rig straight north something out of the ordinary catches Jason’s eye in the west toward the river; a gilded flash of light atop a deep steel gray soars above the field. It takes Jason a moment to realize – from a quarter mile away – that it is a woman galloping on a gray horse as her hair flows behind. Golden morning sun spotlights the image for several moments as they fly along.

The pair is quickly coming even with Jason’s rig when suddenly the horse drops its hind end and slides to a stop. Jason continues to drive but watches as the rider gets off, leaving the horse to graze as she walks back down the lane of freshly cut hay. Coming to the end of the field, he halts the 3020 to get off and disengage the rake’s spinning tines. Back on the tractor, he drops into road gear and drives around the edge of the field, only slowing down as he pulls up to the horse, which simply looks up for a moment from grazing and carries on. With the tractor stopped but still running, he jumps down and walks past the horse toward its rider. The woman appears to be a few years younger than Jason. Nearly on her hands and knees crawling along in the hay, her strawberry blond hair nearly touches the ground. She stops her search for a moment, brushing her mane aside as she looks up at Jason with an embarrassed smile.

Hi, she starts apologetically. I’m so sorry to interrupt your work but I’ve lost my phone. I saw it fly out of my pocket, she continues, standing up and pointing to her well-fitted cowboy shirt. We stopped as fast as possible but who knows where it landed.

Hey, it’s no problem for me. Jason takes a deep breath, a bit overwhelmed by the sweetly blended scent of fresh-cut hay and sweating horse. I’m just driving in circles all morning out here anyway.

The young woman smiles but turns to start her search again. After watching those low cut, long-legged jeans walking away from him for a moment, Jason pulls himself together.

Wait a second, I’ve got an idea. He puts his hand on the phone hanging from the belt on his jeans. Why don’t I call your phone and then we can hear it ringing. Let me turn off this rig.

Jason strides past the gelding and back to the rig, reaching over to switch off the diesel. Then he pulls out his phone and starts dialing as she calls out the number. Almost immediately, they hear a jazzy ring coming from about twenty-five yards back. The woman’s face lights up. Jason watches her jog down the lane, both shoulders square and somehow suspended above her stable yet softly moving hips. Trotting toward the ringtone the woman picks up the phone with only a soft bend in her knees and puts it to her ear.

Thanks a million, Jason hears her say through their connection, just slightly out of breath. We barely worked this ride in before I have class and now I’m late.

Like I said, no problem, he assures her, now face-to-face as they both switch off their phones. It’s awesome to see you riding. Both my mom and aunt ride. What’s your name? You might know my mom – Sue Olsen.

It’s pretty obvious that the woman isn’t interested in Jason’s attempt to make conversation. Instead, she continues walking over to the horse, swings her leg up and sits back in the saddle.

I’m Jessica Bell. Thanks again. With a big smile, she slips the phone back into her shirt pocket and carefully snaps the flap. I gotta get going.

Jason smiles and waves as he watches the two move off again. This time, instead of galloping, the gelding appears to be moving at a trot, except there is no bounce. Jason can see the hooves moving and hears a four-beat rhythm as the horse and rider glide away. The only movement is the bobbing of his thick black tail. The rider’s hair lies still. Her shoulders and hips have the same gentle floating softness they had when she moved under her own power. Trying to focus back on the day’s chores, Jason can’t help but wonder.

He re-engages the rake and starts the rig moving forward fast enough to start thinking again. Maybe one of mom’s horse friends knows her. Once things are rolling smoothly, Jason takes out his phone and quickly saves Jessica Bell’s number before looking back to make sure the rake is turning the freshly-dried hay behind him.

Alabama

Bells of Dekalb

Oh! thou great Lycurgus, that coms't to my beautiful dwelling,

Dear to Jove, and to all who sit in the halls of Olympus,

Whether to hail thee a god I know not, or only a mortal,

But my hope is strong that thou a god wilt prove, Lycurgus.

Delphic Oracle 650 BC

Centuries of conflict had honed Lycurgus Bell’s Spartan values – equality among citizens, extreme fitness and austerity. These were the ideals that carried his Scotch clan through generations of border wars with England and inspired them to leave their homeland to quench a thirst for freedom in the new world. Having tasted freedom, his Bell ancestors fought the English twice more to gain independence as Americans.

Now large plantation owners, their would-be Confederacy wrapped in blasphemy against the sacred Union, trampled the blessed peace and freedom won by his grandfathers and uncles in the Wars of Independence and 1812.

The Bells of DeKalb County in northern Alabama settled on Sand Mountain and were not uncommon in their staunch southern Unionist beliefs. Thousands of families – especially, but not exclusively along the rebel states’ northern borders – well remembered the blood their forefathers left behind fighting barefoot for liberty on the American Revolution’s frozen battlefields.

Those cursed southern secessionists commit treason against a Union melded with the blood of our fathers, Lycurgus’ father, William, told his boys and same-thinking neighbors.

More than 100,000 southern Unionists served in Lincoln’s Army, delivering a double blow to the south by increasing northern ranks while depriving the Confederacy of sorely needed butternuts. Few, however, fought to free the slaves. They fervently believed that all citizens were equal but slaves were property, not citizens. Like their Confederate brothers, Unionists fought for personal honor, family duty and reputation. They fought to preserve the families and communities nurtured by their kin. They fought for a final burial space in their own homeland. Their fathers demanded it.

I am a Union man and have not a drop of secession blood in me, preached William, an active deacon at the Northern Methodist church. The devil is the father of the Confederacy and I’m no sinner.

These hard held beliefs brought a wide gamut of responses evolving from private innuendo to public humiliation and now outright persecution. No one ran the gambit better than long-time slaver Bratch Porter. Early on, Bratch would spit on the dirt behind him as Lycurgus walked into the local trading post to secure supplies. Once the nation elected Lincoln, secessionist editors, judges and sheriffs heated up their rhetoric. Lycurgus could hear Bratch whisper Whig or Tory as he walked Grandma Bell into the church where Reverend Clifton preached to Union families on Sunday mornings.

William’s Northern Methodist church connections also firmly established the Bells as Unionists. William had worked with Reverend Clifton from the days when as young men they held services in cabins to the building of an impressively humble church. When the Methodists split over the slavery issue in 1844, as the nation did a generation later, Reverend Clifton and William made sure their congregation landed with the Church North, not Church South.

The Bells got their first real taste of home guard justice one evening in January 1861, shortly after Alabama seceded from the Union. Grandma Bell and Ly’s mother had just called everyone in for supper and were getting bread pans out of the oven when what sounded like a hellish kitchen orchestra and choir began to echo through the yard outside. Lycurgus, his father and two young brothers peered out the door across the porch to see dozens of young men; many dressed in wild costumes or with their faces painted. Some held bright, flaming torches. Others pulled back with all their might as barking bloodhounds flailed madly against their leashes. Two of the boys played with a coil of rope, raveling and unraveling it or throwing it over the other’s head and neck. The rest were pounding pots and pans together, ringing cowbells and singsonging profanities. Occasionally, the hideous din waned for a moment when someone shot a rifle into the air, winning grand cheers from the others.

Standing quietly among the rabble, decades of service curbing social deviance etched on his face, Bratch oversaw the raucous charivari. It was more than clear he deemed the Bells’ Union sympathies inappropriate. Lycurgus and his father knew that the traditional penance of sweets and wine would not quiet these Medieval-style enforcers of social expectations. They were looking for hearts and minds, not food and drink.

Your Tory beliefs and practices are detrimental to the nation, Bratch hollered across the yard. The throng backed him up with catcalls, barks and boos. For the good and safety of all I recommend that you desist from expressing your Republican sentiments and turn over to the Confederacy.

Outnumbered as the Union men were, none expected another to protest openly. At the same time, none of the Bells were going to turn rebel. It was probably best to suffer threats in recalcitrant silence. William Bell was feeling recalcitrant but was not ready to be silent.

Now you boys know I’m not going to cause the Confederacy any trouble, William called out to the crowd as he opened the front door and walked out onto the porch. Why Bratch Porter, I’ve known you since Lincoln’s Old Fuss and Feathers brought civilization to these parts and got rid of the Cherokee for us. Even you were a Union soldier then.

Such historical context caught Bratch’s young men by surprise. They knew about his days taming Cherokee but the image of Bratch in Union blue had not crossed their minds. Such an image provided a sliver of understanding for the youth as to why the Bells’ were so fiercely loyal to a government that won their freedom from the British and delivered their land from the Indians. An uneasy peace fell over the yard. Bratch knew that any more peace could likely provide his young guard with even more understanding.

Look here Bell, Bratch’s insolent voice stopped any contemplation. We both know what happened to those Cherokee. I wouldn’t want to see that happening to folks like you or any others. But the way things are going, you know it could. I don’t want to hear any more about you being Loyal or trying to stop your boys – or any others – from volunteering to serve this Confederacy. Silence is your best bet, Bell. Silence.

You have no authority to speak that way to us, Lycurgus blurted out as he stepped from behind his father. We aren’t Cherokees, slaves or horse thieves for that matter – we’re land-owning white men. There’s no law says we can’t speak our minds and there’s no law says we have to join your rebellion.

William knew better but instead of shutting his son down he found himself standing up straighter and taller. And for just a moment the costumed home guards looked around at each other more like clowns than rebel heroes. Bratch knew exactly how to bring the heroes back to reality. Grabbing three of the bloodhounds from their human restraints, he rode smoothly behind them as they pulled toward the Bell’s porch with an otherworldly combination of barks and howls.

I’ve got plenty of authority, boy, and there is plenty more where this came from. Bratch stopped the dogs only after they had climbed the porch steps. They stood just barely on the porch growling and whining to finish the job. That’s good now, easy boys. Sit.

Each of the dogs sat its hind end down on the top step with front legs still on the porch. Lycurgus felt his knees weaken. He was glad to hear his father’s voice because he wasn’t sure he could find his own.

You look here, Bratch. Bell’s voice rang clearly. You don’t need no Rebel and Dog Cavalry protecting the Confederacy from folks like us. You better start training those men as well as your dogs because Mr. Lincoln’s Army is going to roll over Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and all the rest of it.

There was another moment of relative quiet. The elder Bell looked from the dark jaws of the dogs toward a kind of fractured light reflecting off the boys’ pots and pans from the blazing torches and onto their youthful faces.

We’re not gonna cause you any trouble, William finished, no tone of pride or humility left in his voice, just sorrow. Now leave us in peace to the supper our women been cookin’ all day. Let those boys of yours get home to their suppers too.

Bratch took William’s statement as the pledge of silence he’d demanded. Giving the dogs a surprisingly gentle tug, he started back across the yard and rounded up his home guard. There was no encore from the band or the choir as they followed Bratch back into the night, only the sound of their footsteps and the dogs whining for freedom from their human bonds.

Negro Hounds

I’ve now embarked for yonder shore,

Where man’s a man by law,

The vessel soon will bear me o’er

To shake the Lion’s paw.

I no more dread the auctioneer,

Nor fear the master’s frowns,

I no more tremble when I hear

The beying negro-hounds.

Away to Canada

Joshua McCarter Simpson, former slave

Tracking down Lycurgus Bell for the Confederacy was perfect work for Bratch Porter and his dogs. Long known in southern Appalachia as an able agent of both legal and extra-legal authorities, Bratch Porter had a storied career.

Under orders from President Van Buren twenty-five years before, he helped U.S. General Winfield Scott – Old Fuss and Feathers – cleanse every last Cherokee from their farms, churches and schools so that Lycurgus’ family and thousands like them could use the land as God’s given right. Rounded up from their dinner tables, spinning wheels and spring planting, 17,000 Cherokee were taken as prisoners to a system of stockades built throughout their ancestral hill country. Bratch and his fellow Army troops did their part by herding nearly 2,000 of them into Fort Payne, Alabama’s newly-built prison. As winter approached, those who survived nearly six months in the camp were then marched more than 600 miles to Oklahoma.

Bratch carefully researched which Cherokee families had the best livestock, springs and fields and each day he made sure that his boys knew which home place troops were headed for. Many a Cherokee family looked back one last time from a ridge to see Bratch’s boys already herding off their cattle and pigs or digging up their ancestors’ graves in search of silver or other valuables.

With Indian country firmly in settlers’ hands, development of Alabama’s northern hills and rich coastal plains to the south got into full swing. Bratch played a key role in the new economy by helping deliver and oversee slaves needed to clear, plant and harvest King Cotton. Politicians sitting in Washington D.C. dreamed of a nation spanning from sea to sea. Men such as Bratch made it happen.

There were already over 200,000 Africans enslaved in Alabama when Bratch ran out the Cherokee. That number doubled to more than 435,000 by the Civil War’s beginning. Instead of raising capital for costly ships, landlubber slave traders such as Bratch moved their coffled chattel by foot. Most came from plantations in Virginia and other depressed eastern states that were no longer competitive for growing labor-intensive crops such as tobacco. Millions of Africans had lain packed in cargo ships to make the Middle Passage to the new world. Under the watch of men such as Bratch, 35,000 a year trudged in chains on the Second Middle Passage from the Old South over the Appalachians to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

This thriving internal slave trade became the second largest employer in the south, surpassed only by the plantations they serviced. Enterprising locals opened a network of slave pens, yards, and warehouses to meet demand for temporary housing along popular routes. Regional hubs developed with spokes delivering product to every corner of the territory. Bratch knew just about every person and every inch of his service area. Like modern day truckers communicating over the airways in colorful vernacular, Bratch and his boys spoke of the men, woman and children they moved as bucks, breeding wenches and fancy girls.

When Bratch tired of the constant travel required of traders, he took work overseeing the sunrise-to-sunset labor required of slaves in their new homes. Clearing forests and then plowing, seeding and harvesting the crops was endless backbreaking work and the Africans needed constant domination.

But the daily management needed for an operation to stay productive did not fit Bratch’s true spirit. He loved the northern Alabama hills and woods. Bratch got antsy once the trees were gone and cotton ruled both the wide valleys of the southern coastal plains and small patches carved between the northern limestone cliffs. What he enjoyed was the chase. Bratch had a real zest for sport. By far the most interesting part of his job came when slaves attempted to flee. Starting with a pack of bloodhounds taken as partial payment for an overseeing job, Bratch got a glimpse of his true passion in raising, training and running dogs to track fugitives. Under a careful training regimen the dogs were not allowed to see a slave unless they were chasing it. As part of their training, scent from a practice runaway’s clothing or shoes was given to the hounds. The slaves were then sent dashing off so the dogs could practice tracking and treeing them. After a successful run, Bratch would give the dogs fresh meat as a reward and often spent the evening with them at his feet around the fire.

As the dogs and he got better known, Bratch found himself called upon to round up slaves from neighboring operations. It gradually dawned on him that the dogs were the key to his future. Here he was, a man who had crossed just about every ridge, valley and stream from Virginia to Ohio through Kentucky and Tennessee to Alabama’s hill country and south to the Gulf of Mexico. Further enriching this knowledge was a long list of business contacts he had worked with for years. By adding in the dogs, Bratch could offer unmatched service returning runaways. Best of all, it seemed he could set up business in his beloved hill country and still be competitive. While the area’s smaller fields and rocky topography did not support the massive plantations found on the southern plains, most runaways looked for freedom by following the North Star, bringing them right through the counties he knew best. After thinking it through very carefully, Bratch decided to drop his trading and overseeing careers and concentrate on keeping his dogs fully employed.

First thing he needed was a strategically-located home place where the dogs and he could settle in with room to grow. Sand Mountain was the perfect spot. Situated right at the southern end of the Appalachians where large plantations started to take over from small farms, Sand Mountain is a swatch of sandstone bluff country nearly eighty miles long and twenty miles wide. A corduroy cloth of Appalachian ridges and valleys rise in another swatch to the east and south; from there begins a long descent across rolling hills and coastal plains to the Atlantic Ocean. On its southwestern edge, Sand Mountain’s towering bluffs drop to the Tennessee River right where it makes a big bend and heads north to the Ohio River.

One fall, after the cotton was cut, Bratch took more than two months to visit his old haunts throughout Alabama making sure folks knew about his new endeavor. Not a big reader himself, he nonetheless decided to take out ads in several key newspapers that more educated plantation owners might see. This marketing plan worked well and Bratch was soon the best known negro-hound runner in the region, with up to forty or fifty dogs available if needed.

Guntersville Register

NEGRO HOUNDS

The undersigned would respectfully inform citizens of Marshall, Blount, DeKalb and adjacent counties, that he has located about 6½ miles east of Guntersville, on the road leading to Asbury, and that he has a fine pack of dogs for catching negroes.

Persons wishing negroes caught will do well to give him a call. He can always be found at his stand when not engaged in hunting, and even then information of his whereabouts can always be had of someone on the premises.

Terms - Five dollars per day and found, when there is no track pointed out. When the track is shown, twenty-five dollars will be charged for catching the negro.

Bratch Porter

After more than fifteen years of regional success, Bratch’s business got a real boost from deals struck at the national level between southern politicians and doughface northerners. Designed to keep the United States intact as part of a complex compromise in 1850, a newly improved Fugitive Slave Act made harboring runaways a Federal crime in both free and slave states. Federal marshals got authority to enlist any able-bodied men into a posse comitatus to aid enforcement. This made it possible for Bratch to follow runaways as far as needed – Ohio, Pennsylvania, even Massachusetts – to get the job done. Better yet, Bratch was entitled to a fee for apprehending anyone suspected of being a slave and suspects could not testify on their own behalf. He fared well under the new rules, often bringing people back to enslavement whose owners had actually freed them.

Free state citizens were irritated by the powers given to posses made up of men such as Bratch. Northerners felt their liberties violated by provisions levying $1,000 fines against anyone found harboring a suspected slave or marshals who did not fully enforce the law. Federal marshals coming through town with their slave hunting posses galvanized public opinion against slavery for many who in the past had seen it as a distant and abstract debate. The irony of southern states’ rights advocates calling for federal authority over anti-slave states was not lost on the northerners. For example, when a Missouri slave was freed from a Milwaukee jail by abolitionists after being captured by slave hunters, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court went so far as to rule the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional.

Bratch’s fortunes dimmed with the Civil War’s outbreak. Northern marshals and generals saw no reason to return slaves to the south. No more slave hunting posses were formed. Captured Confederate soldiers were traded for Union soldiers, but the Army and Navy kept slaves along with all other confiscated contraband property. Such policy change impacted Bratch directly as his lucrative trips north became risky forays through enemy lines.

But years of service to his antebellum homeland and the crisis brought on by Alabama’s secession from the Union in 1861 provided new opportunities for Bratch. Vigilance committees had protected public safety from slave insurrection for decades. Now they could use their tried and true methods of intimidation, humiliation and terror on a new mission, silencing opposition to the Confederacy. These self-constituted committees did not rely on laws or courts for their authority. Instead, they sent home guards to ferret out those deemed friendly to the Union