I found a copy of an old newspaper article in some old papers my grandmother had given to me probably 35 years ago. It is dated July 14, 1957 and is from the Press Register which I believe is the Mobile newspaper. It gives a second-hand account of the the skirmish and some information about how the tombstones were obtained. I read through these posts and other places and haven't seen any mention of this article or the names it provides. So, I didn't know if any researchers knew about the existence of this article. I thought it may be of interest to those of you who are researching this. I only have a partial copy of the article. Some of you researchers may know how to get the full article from an archive.

What may be of interest to those of you researching this is that the person interviewed for the article, Norm McLeod, gave the names of two soldiers who were wounded during this battle.

He said the wounded soldier was "known only as Bennett, was nursed in the home of Roderick McLeod. When well, he was returned to his regiment stationed in Mobile". This matches the name in the posted account of the union soldier "David Bennett" left behind that the Doc said "would not live until the next morning". Apparently, he did survive. Maybe this is pertinent information not known to researchers.

The other name that was mentioned was of a Confederate soldier "Joe Burns who was nursed to health in the home of Joseph Green." Joseph Green's daughter would later marry Roderick McLeod's son. My understanding is that Joseph "Joel" Green lived directly behind where the Green Cemetery is now located. The coordinates for the cemetery are 31.0640729 and -88.5778008.

The newspaper article is very much in line with what I remember hearing from my grandmother, Ella McLeod Stevens, recently deceased at age 94, who was raised across the road and fairly close to the locations of these graves. What is in line in this article with what we were told was the part about the two dead soldiers "draped over a pine stump slumped on a damp creek bed". This version is only slightly different from what I remember which is one of the dead soldiers was found dead still standing or sitting against a tree or a stump. I have heard my great-grandmother, Addie Dickerson McLeod, talk about this as well. I think she was old enough that she could have heard first-hand accounts of this episode. in her later years, she lived with her daughter, Jency McLeod, pretty much right across the road from the graves. I saw the graves a couple of times when I was young. It was in a corn field owned by my Great-Uncle Floyd McLeod which I believe he inherited from his father. I was always under the impression that it was just a small skirmish involving just a few men. However, from the information that is out there now, it is apparent that it was a larger skirmish that I thought.

I was not raised in that area and have only visited sporadically. So, I do not have a real good grasp on the layout of the area. However, I got the impression from those stories that the skirmish occurred somewhere on the south side of Vernal River Road across from where Jency McLeod lived and her home is still there. My mother said there was a small creek directly across the road and there is a pond there now. She says she was always told that the location is the site where the dead soldiers were found at the stump and she believes that was the location of the skirmish. There was a particular stump there that was always pointed out to her as the stump where they were found. She believes that the location of that stump has been covered over with the pond. The coordinates for this pond location are 31.074030 and -88.562048. From her description, I am not sure this creek could have supported a mill as described by the soldiers that were there. However, I would not discount the story of the bodies being found at this location. I would speculate that if the skirmish did not happen here, that it happened on another creek very close by, McLeod Creek maybe, just to the west. I suppose there may have been some scattered fighting around the skirmish sight and there was fighting at this location or that some of the wounded were carried to this location and died there.

Joseph Green took care of one soldier (confederate). He lived west of McLeod Creek. Roderick McLeod took care of another soldier (Union) and he lived to the east of the creek and I think the Dickersons lived somewhere between them.

My mother said there used to be the remnants of an old log house about 20 or 30 ft behind Floyd McLeod's house. She doesn't think anyone knows for sure whose log house this was. She thinks it could have been Roderick McLeod's home or the home of one of his son's. The coordinates for that log home are approximately 31.075401 and -88.561673.

I hope this information helps. If anybody ever figures out exactly where this skirmish took place, I would like to know.

Rodney Smith
(Descendant of Roderick McLeod, Joseph Green and Matthew Dickerson)