ACTION AT SWIFT CREEK ON APRIL 12, 1865

The following two paragraphs are found in former 1st Lt. Wiley Chandler Howard’s Sketch of Cobb Legion Cavalry and Some Scenes and Incidents Remembered (http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/howard/howard.html), which he wrote in August of 1901. I have edited the original text from Mr. Howard’s sketch for clarification purposes. I have also added a note concerning the identity of Lt. Jeffries of the Jeff Davis Legion Cavalry. Lt. Howard was the second in command of company C of Cobb’s Legion Cavalry when the action at Swift Creek took place. Lt. Dunnahoo, even though he was a second lieutenant, had been the acting commanding officer of company H of Cobb’s Legion Cavalry since mid-1864 until his death. The captain (Jeremiah E. Ritch) and 1st lieutenant (Isham H. Pittard) of company H had been prisoners of war since being captured in June of 1863 and February of 1864 respectively. Both of these companies were mustered into service at Athens, GA.

Ed Rowe
Great-Great Grandson of Lt. Thomas Jordan Dunnahoo

Our command participated in the last great battle at Bentonville, NC (March 19-21, 1865) and done its share helping to beat back the resistless rush of Sherman's host. Until the last day we fought and fell sullenly back towards Raleigh, being constantly under fire and the baptism of blood. On April 12, 1865, the command being away from the brigade and defending a crossing of a stream (Swift Creek – located approximately ten miles south of Raleigh) until well up in the day, it fell to my lot as the ranking officer to command a few who had been detached the previous day to protect a position deemed important. Under orders of our Adjutant, J. T. Norris, we attached ourselves to the Jeff Davis Legion Cavalry (MS) temporarily. While awaiting an expected onslaught, gallant Lt. Tom Dunnahoo broke away, in spite of my protestations, and joined in a charge of the Phillips’ Legion Cavalry (GA), a little to our right and front, but returned in time to participate in one of the hottest encounters in the range of my experience. The enemy was in great numbers and rushing like a resistless torrent over Col. Waring and his brave Jeff Davis Legion, whose flank Adjutant Norris endeavored to protect with my little band mounted in the edge of the woods near the road. According to author Mark L. Bradley, in his excellent book This Astounding Close: The Road to Bennett Place, the Yankees the Confederates were fighting on this fateful day at Swift Creek were men of the 92nd Illinois Mounted Infantry, who were part of Col. Smith D. Atkins’ Brigade. Bullets from the Illinoisans seven-shot Spencer repeating rifles rained like hail, but not a man wavered, until Norris, seeing the futility of attempting to stay longer, ordered a retreat. Lt. Jeffries* of the Jeff Davis Legion, who was with us, Lt. Dunnahoo, Adjutant Norris and myself were the last to leave. As we descended into the road, it was like plunging into the jaws of death under the concentrated fire of the enemy, who was now rushing along close to us. Jeffries and Dunnahoo kept straight in the road, while Norris and I dashed across it and clung to the bushes on the other side for several hundred yards. Both Jeffries and Dunnahoo were shot, but were carried quite a distance before falling off their horses. After coming back into the road, I came across Dunnahoo as he was lying on the ground with his horse standing beside him. I halted, leapt down and raised his head upon my lap as he gasped his last breath. The blood flowing from his chest had bespattered the picture of his little motherless daughter which he carried there.

Our men had rallied up the road some distance and having that morning pledged to my friend to stick to him, I called to a belated soldier just coming out from the range of the enemy's fire to assist me. It was Sergeant Elisha Umphries (Humphries), of Phillips’ Legion Cavalry, whom I knew. With his assistance I got Dunnahoo’s body across his saddle and mounted my horse. While Humphries held his body on, I led my dead friend’s horse behind my own. As we started out, we were subjected to the fire of the advancing foe, but we succeeded and got Dunnahoo’s body in an ambulance with that of Jeffries, who had also been killed. Both were taken to Raleigh and late that evening were buried in the same grave, wrapped in blankets furnished by a lady as no coffin could be had. I gladly pay just tribute to the memory of my warm friend, the brave and fearless Lieut. Tom Dunnahoo, of Company H. We had been through much together and I saw much of him in camp and in numerous encounters with the enemy. I loved him as a brother. On one occasion, while retreating over ugly ground on foot, when I was exhausted, he took me on his stout shoulders and literally bore me to a place of safety. I shall ever cherish his memory and am pleased to have been of service to his child since the war in securing a teacher's place for her.

Lt. Dunnahoo is buried in the Confederate soldier section of Oakwood Cemetery in downtown Raleigh. To my knowledge, no one in my present-day family knew the location of his grave until I found it in February of 1994. I provided the correct spelling of Lt. Dunnahoo’s last name and his birth date to the late Charles Purser of the Garner, NC Sons of Confederate Veterans, Camp 1486, after finding out that he was in the process of ordering and placing headstones on the graves of the Confederate soldiers buried in Oakwood Cemetery. Lt. Dunnahoo’s name can be found among the other Confederate dead from Clarke County inscribed on the Confederate monument in downtown Athens, GA. After learning of the death of her youngest brother, Tom’s sister (Amanda Jane Dunnahoo Sims of Maysville, GA) raised his orphaned daughter as a child of her own.

*Note: There was never a Lt. Jeffries in the Jeff Davis Legion Cavalry. I had originally thought there was a strong possibility that the man identified as Lt. Jeffries in Howard’s sketch may have been Lt. Thomas A. Jeffers of the 2nd SC Cavalry Regiment and that he had possibly been assigned as a scout for the Jeff Davis Legion during the Carolinas Campaign, because many men of Jeffers’ regiment had actually served as scouts during the war. Other reasons for my thinking that Lt. Jeffers may have been the man killed at Swift Creek, along with Lt. Dunnahoo, were because there is nothing found in the compiled military service record of Lt. Jeffers indicating he had surrendered or if he had survived the war, plus he also didn't appear in any post-war censuses. In September of 2011 I discovered that Mr. Jeffers had survived the war and was living in the Maryland Line Confederate Soldiers’ Home near Baltimore, according to the 1900 United States Federal Census. Jeffers also wrote a sketch of himself that was included in a book titled The Maryland Line Confederate Soldiers' Home and Confederate Veterans' Organizations in Maryland. This sketch identified Lt. Jeffers as the man I had been searching for. The only officer from the Jeff Davis Legion reported as being killed during the action at Swift Creek on April 12, 1865 was Lt. Charles Metcalfe, according to the diary of Col. Joseph Frederick Waring, who was the commanding officer of the Jeff Davis Legion Cavalry. Since Mr. Howard wrote his sketch of the Cobb Legion Cavalry in 1901 and was probably relying only on his memory of the action that had taken place thirty-six years earlier, I believe he had simply misidentified Lt. Metcalf as Lt Jeffries.

Additional Info about Thomas Jordan Dunnahoo

Thomas Jordan Dunnahoo was the youngest son of James and Jane Jordan Dunnahoo, both formerly of Virginia. He was born on October 30, 1838 in Clarke County Georgia. He married Florillah Catharine Finch on December 18, 1860 and on October 21, 1861; they had their one and only child, Amanda Jane. After a brief illness, Florillah died on January 9, 1862, not long after giving birth to their daughter.

On March 3, 1862 Tom, as he was called, enlisted as a private into company B of the Georgia Troopers, a local cavalry unit, in Athens, GA. On April 29, 1862, his company was mustered into the Confederate States Army as company H of Cobb’s Legion Cavalry Battalion and sent north where they would eventually be assigned to the Army of Northern Virginia Cavalry under the command of Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart. Before leaving home, Tom left his little daughter under the guardianship of his oldest sister. The Legion cavalry was led by Col. Pierce Manning Butler Young for most of the war and was initially in Brig. Gen. Wade Hampton’s Brigade, along with Phillips’ Legion (GA), the Jeff Davis Legion (MS), the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Cavalry Regiments and the 1st North Carolina Cavalry Regiment. Wade Hampton was eventually promoted to Maj. Gen. and commander of his own division and P. M. B. Young was promoted to Brig. Gen. and commander of Hampton’s old brigade, which then became known as Young’s Brigade.

On September 1, 1863, Pvt. Dunnahoo was elected to the rank of 2nd lieutenant by several other men in his company. At the end of 1864 or early 1865, Robert E. Lee ordered Cobb’s Legion Cavalry south to Georgia and the Carolinas, along with the rest of Young’s Brigade (now made up of the Jeff Davis Legion, Phillips’ Legion and the 10th GA Cavalry Regiment) and Maj. Gen. Matthew Calbraith Butler’s Brigade (both under the command of Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton), to help try and stop, or at least slow down, Gen. William T. Sherman and his troops on their northward march from Georgia to join forces with Gen. U. S. Grant in Virginia.