Notes |
- He chose not to fight in the Civil War and hid out at Spice Wood Flats (now Gatlinburg) to avoid being conscripted into the Confederate Army. During one raid, marauding Rebel soldiers took all of Polly's possessions and bushwacked Smith at Sweetwater (now Denton), backed him up against a stone fence, and shot him. (Cocke Co., TN Families)
1850 Cocke Co., TN Census.
SMITH FERGUSON TEAGUE AND THE CIVIL WAR
By Phyllis Teague McCurry
From information given by Smith Teague, Mary Elizabeth Bible Smith, Loiree Smith Grigsby, John Abe Teague, and Mabel Japinja
In the 1840s, the Edward (Ned) Teague family settled in Ravens Branch. By the end of the Civil War, the father and two sons were dead. With his health broken, James Michael, the only surviving son, lived just five more years.
Ned Teague was in the Home Guard. During a skirmish, he and a soldier shot at each other at the exact same moment and both died instantly. Eleck Teague (Moses Alexander) was shot and killed at Edwina by soldiers. But it was the unfairness of Smith Teague’s murder by Rebel soldiers that angered the Teague clan so much. It was his story, along with the family’s outrage, that was handed down through the generations.
According to family members, Smith Teague chose not to fight on either side during the Civil War. To keep from being conscripted into the army, Smith, along with other men, hid out in caves in the mountains of Cocke County and as far away as White Oak Flats (now Gatlinburg). One day in November, 1864, as Smith was walking back home to Ravens Branch from Newport, his luck ran out. At Sweetwater (now Denton), he was bushwhacked by a band of marauding Rebel soldiers. He was backed up to a stone fence and shot. The soldiers guarded the site for two or three days to make an example of him before the family was permitted to claim the body.
That very same day, a band of soldiers came out of North Carolina into Ravens Branch killing every man they could find who was not fighting in the war and stealing every thing they could get their hands on. They struck the home of Polly Teague (Mary Caroline Black), wife of Smith Teague, taking everything of value that she had. On that day, Polly was left a destitute widow with five children to support. Nancy, the youngest, was just seven months old.
The story left some puzzling questions. Why did the soldiers shoot him instead of conscripting him into service? Why direct such hostility toward him? Why select him to make an example of?
Research revealed that perhaps the family story left out a pertinent detail or two. On September 6, 1862, Smith Teague enlisted as a private at Cocke County in the Confederate Army with the 60th Regiment, North Carolina Infantry, Company H headed by Captain James T. Huff. By October 26, 1862, he was reported absent without leave. Instead of being a gang of lawless thugs who murdered an innocent civilian, maybe the Rebel soldiers were on patrol looking for deserters and traitors. His death and the treatment of his body likely served as a message to other deserters in the area. The Teagues, however, knew exactly who was at fault, and it was not Smith Teague.
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