Sightseeing, Couple of Caches and a Rain Storm to End All Rain Storms 4/18/2008

The weather forecast was for showers and thunderstorms today so we decided we would do a little sight seeing and a couple of caches. We drove to the Birthplace of Elvis Presley as our first stop. He was born in the house you see on January 8, 1935 which was built by his father. Elvis's career as a singer and entertainer redefined American popular music. He died on August 16, 1977 in Memphis, TN. Elvis revolutionized popular music by blending the blues he had first heard as a a youth in Tupelo with country, pop and gospel. Many of the first songs Elvis recorded for the Sun label in Memphis were covers of earlier blues recordings by African Americans and he continued to incorporate blues into his records and live performances for the remainder of his career. We saw his house, a chapel that was built in remembrance of him, a bronze statue of him at age 13 a car which was like his family owned and a story board on which many friends had written things about him.
Then it was on off to Brice's Cross Roads National Battlefield site in Baldwyn, MS. The Battle of Brice's Crossroads was fought on June 10, 1864, near Baldwyn in Lee County, Mississippi, during the American Civil War. It pitted a 4,787-man contingent led by Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest against an 7,900-strong Union force led by Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis. The battle ended in a rout of the Union forces and cemented Forrest's reputation as one of the great cavalrymen. In the spring of 1864 the Federal mission was to bisect the South from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to the Atlantic coast at Savannah, Georgia. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman wanted to destroy the Confederate Army led by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and occupy Atlanta along the way as he executed his “March to the Sea.” Sherman knew that his plan was vulnerable. To supply his large troop movement into north Georgia, he depended on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. This line could be most threatened by the excellent horseman of Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry corp. Sherman needed to keep Forrest in north Mississippi.
On June 1 Forrest put his 3,500 horsemen in motion at Tupelo, headed for Tennessee. By June 4 they had reached Russellville, Alabama. Meanwhile, a concerned Sherman ordered Brig. Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis and a force of 8,100 to move out of Memphis and threaten north Mississippi in hopes of drawing Forrest away from Sherman’s much needed railroad in Tennessee. It worked! Forrest was ordered by Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Lee to return to Tupelo. On the evening of June 9, Forrest learned that Sturgis’s forces were camped about 10 miles northwest of Brices Cross Roads. Both commanders knew that the next day would bring battle. At 9:45 a.m. on June 10, a brigade of Benjamin H. Grierson's Union cavalry division reached Brice's Crossroads and the battle started at 10:30 a.m. when the Confederates performed a stalling operation with a brigade of their own. Forrest then ordered the rest of his cavalry to converge around the crossroads. The remainder of the Union cavalry arrived in support, but a strong Confederate assault soon pushed them back at 11:30 a.m., when the balance of Forrest's cavalry arrived on the scene. Grierson called for infantry support and Sturgis obliged. The line held until 1:30 p.m. when the first regiments of Federal infantry arrived. The Union line, initially bolstered by the infantry, briefly seized the momentum and attacked the Confederate left flank, but Forrest launched an attack from his extreme right and left wings, before the rest of the federal infantry could take to the field. In this phase of the battle, Forrest commanded his artillery to unlimber, unprotected, only yards from the Federal position, and to shell the Union line with grapeshot. The massive damage caused Sturgis to re-order the line in a tighter semi-circle around the crossroads, facing east. At 3:30, the Confederates in the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry assaulted the bridge across the Tishomingo. Although the attack failed, it caused severe confusion among the Federal troops and Sturgis ordered a general retreat. With the Tennesseeans still pressing, the retreat bottlenecked at the bridge and a panicked rout developed instead. The ensuing wild flight and pursuit back to Memphis carried across six counties before the exhausted Confederates retired. The Confederates suffered 492 casualties to the Union's 2,164 (including 1,500 prisoners). Forrest captured huge supplies of arms, artillery, and ammunition as well as plenty of stores. Sturgis suffered demotion and exile to the far West. After the battle, the Union Army again accused Forrest of massacring black soldiers. This site was nothing like the Vicksburg Park as all this had was 10 roadside markers, commemorating certain battle sites, and the one large monument with 2 cannons on either side. There also was a small cemetery with many Confederate gravesites and a Confederate flag flying over it.
We did a quick cache in a small local cemetery before driving back to Tupelo and the Battle of Tupelo site. When we got to the area and turned down the street the monument was on we didn't see any signs so we drove around the area looking for the battlefield site. Well there is none..........all they have is that monument and 2 cannons on either side, a big disappointment to say the least. So we had another cache to do on the Natchez Trace so we headed there. It was at milepost 263.9 Old Town Overlook. In the early 1800's ordinary Americans could not be bothered with learning the names of Chickasaw villages on the Natchez Trace. One they called Old Town, and passed the name on to the stream running through this valley. It is one of the sources of the Tombigbee River, first called "River of the Chickasaw", and later "Tombeckbe" by the French. Near here, in 1795, the Chickasaw defeated the Creeks in a battle, described by Andrew Jackson as, "when the whole Creek nation came to destroy your towns.......a few hundred Chickasaw aided by a few whites chased them back to their nation, killing the best of their warrior sand covering the rest with shame". We figured the coords of the cache from a Natchez Trace marker rock with an inscription on it and walked the trail to the cache.
We then drove to mile marker 269.4 and a section again called The Old Trace. Much of the Old Trace had been abandoned by the start of the Civil War. However the war did leave its mark on the Trace as it did upon the rest of the South, as soldiers marched, camped and fought along portions of this historic old road. A 5 minute walk up the trail and we were at the site of the gravesites of 13 unknown Confederate soldiers, a mute reminder of bygone days and the great struggle out of which developed a stronger nation. Who were these soldiers? Were they some of Shiloh's wounded who traveled here in 1862 to die by the Trace? Did they serve under the daring General Nathan Forrest who passed this way in 1862? Or were they guarding the Tupelo headquarters of J.B.Hood's Army of Tennessee near the end of the Civil War? We may never know. Tradition holds that these graves belonged to Confederate soldiers who marched and camped along this stretch of the Old Trace.Perhaps they died of wounds, or the lingering hunger, poverty, or sickness in the army camps. Their simple grave markers face backward......toward the Trace.......so travelers might read and remember.
We drove back to the RV and had lunch and I did the 2 logs we had from today and am doing the blog now. Mom, to tell you the truth, is taking a nap in her chair so we won't disturb her. We are just having French toast and bacon tonight, a simple rainy night dinner and when I say rainy I really mean RAINY. It started raining about 4:00 and it wasn't to bar just a light sprinkle. Mom went to take her shower and said she would be ok, she wouldn't melt if she got a little wet. Well about 10 minutes later the skies opened up and you would think that we would have to build an ark. Well I went to pick her up from the shower in the car or she would have still been there. It just poured for about an hour and a half, so hard we couldn't see out the front window or hear the TV. All we had was a few strikes of thunder and lightening but a few of them sounded kind of close. I'll bet we had 2" of rain in that short time and believe me we have never seen it rain that hard for that long a period of time ever. It's letting up now and supposed to be sunny and windy tomorrow so that's good news. Wow that one was close, very close (lightening strike). Well that's all the news that fit to print, hope we don't float away, so we will say until tomorrow and we love you all and miss you guys.


Picture list:1-Elvis's Birthplace, 2-House he was born in, 3-Elvis at 13, 4-Elvis & the Blues, 5-Car Elvis's father had, 6,7-Chapel built in remembrance of Elvis, 8,9,10-Some of the plaques on the Story board, 11,12-Grounds at the birthplace, 13-Plaque donated by Elvis's fan club commemorating his first public appearance at the state fair as a contestant in the talent show singing Old Shep,14-Fountain of Life, 15,16,17,18-Brice's Croos Roads National Battlefield Site, 19-An old cabin along the site, 20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29-Roadside Markers of Battle sites, 30,31,32-Confederate graves sites and Confederate flag, 33-Bethany A.R.P. Church Circa 1852 by the Alabama Presbytery, Bethany Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, which had a charter membership of 25, including 4 slaves. The church was used as a hospital in 1864 following the Battle of Brice's Cross Roads, 34,35,36-Old Trace site of the 13 unknown Confederate soldiers, 37-Natchez Trace stone marker at Old Town.