U.S. Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ -- USGenNet Inc. -- Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on the following page: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Talbott, William E. (1843-1916) ------------------------------------------------------------------- History of Tucker County, West Virginia From the Earliest Explorations and Settlements to the Present Time. by Hu Maxwell Kingwood, W. Va.; Preston Publishing Company, 1884. Pages 500-504 William E. Talbott, son of F. D. Talbott, was born February 24, 1843, at the old Talbott farm, four miles below St. George. The Talbott family originally came from Maryland, and seem to be of English descent, slightly mixed with German. In 1865 he married Analiza Kalar, of Clover Run. His children are: Howard, Charles, Francis, and George B. The history of W. E. Talbott is one that is of interest to all who would know of the war, and how Tucker County's boys fared in it. He remained on his father's farm, hard at work, all his life until he was seventeen years old. The old farm is now about as it was then. The war and the lapse of twenty- five or thirty years, have made little change in it, and four miles below St. George it may be still seen about as it was when young Talbott worked there, hoeing the corn, hilling the potatoes and repairing broken fences that storms had dilapidated or rampageous cattle had overthrown in their rage for green corn or young clover. To this work the farmer boy, whose youthful days are fated to be spent in Tucker, must get accustomed; for, such it must be. When the snows of winter depart from the fields, and under the influence of spring's first warm days the grass begins to get green, the hungry cattle that have chewed dry fodder for their lives during the snowy months, begin to roam up and down the plantations to find out the weak places in the enclosures, and to burst through thorn or to leap over, to fatten on the tender vegetation which is peeping through the husky straws of last year, still lying like corpses upon the ground, among the brier bunches, and against the banks and small hills that front toward the southern warmness. It may have been from his observations that those fields that faced the south were the most sunny in springtime, when sunshine was genial and beautiful, that, from his earliest years he developed an admiration and sympathy for the land of the South, and regarded it as bourn of all that was noble and patriotic. Be this as it may, he admired the South, and in the arguments that came up when the county was dissevering into two parts, he never let an opportunity to speak and uphold his choice pass unused. The wise heads whose mental force shape, it may be, the course, if not the destiny, of nations, saw not sooner than the country boys where the storm of war would break. The elements of tumult were mingled in affinity all through the human composition of the United States, although more in some parts than in others, and statesmen could see no further with all their models of past empires and past destinies than the farmer lads knew by intuition, or by natural knowledge. The clash would be a war, and as such it would end as chance ends its works. The boys saw this, and took part as their fancy, principles or passions directed. Such a boy was William E. Talbott; and such boys were his neighbors, Cornelius and Nelson Parsons, Dock Long and Robert See, who now sleeps in his rock-walled grave near the dreary shore of Owen's Lake, in the desert domains of the Sierra Nevadas, in California. When the war — which came slowly as a fire on a fuse, and flashed into myriads of simultaneous explosions, as magazines of warlike munitions ignited — had really come, Tucker County's young men caught up such arms as they had and started South — nearly all went South. Cornelius and Nelson Parsons and Robert See went in May, 1861, but Talbott did not go till June. He joined Garnett's army at Huttonsville, in Randolph County, just in time to take part in the battles and share in the defeats, routs and starvations. The boys found it a rough beginning to the life of glory which they had pictured themselves about to enter. The history of the battles at Laurel Hill, Rich Mountain and Corrick's Ford, and the consequent retreat that resulted so disastrously to Garnett's army, has been detailed to some length in another chapter, and it is needless to repeat it. Talbott was in it all and endured it all. He found it harsh usage to a boy of his years to be taken from the easy work of a farm and placed in a crowded road of retreating soldiers, and made to march to the music of their trundling cannon, while the July rains pelted him and the July suns scorched him, and Yankee scouts tormented him from the rear, and rumors of Yankee cannon came in from the front with grim dimensions. But the farmer boy of 18 years was into it now, and he had to go through with the last ordeal that lay in the way of that retreating army which fled from Corrick's Ford July 14, 1861. With shoeless feet he hobbled over the stony road, and waded the sticky mud, and got no breakfast and fared the same at noon, and marched all night without his supper. About this time he was thinking of the old farm four miles below St. George, where in the early summer the strawberries look red in the fields, and the dewberries grow wild along the river. But it was a dream not to be realized for him to think of it then. He was mixed in one of the most shameful routs of the war, and he must go through with it. At the Red House, at 2 o'clock in the morning of July 15th, he got a little rest, and got a few mouthfuls of beef, the first food he had tasted for two days. This halt was while Captain Harper and company were going to the top of Backbone Mountain to see if the enemy were there. The rest came good to the wretched Rebels, who were tired and starved nearly to death. The next day they reached Petersburg, in Grant County. The citizens brought in plenty of provisions, and the army rested two days, and then proceeded to Monterey, in Highland County, Va. From there it went into Greenbrier County. The general fighting soon began. On October 3rd, Talbott was one of 120 who held in check for an hour and twenty minutes, Milroy's 5000 men. When the Confederate pickets could hold the Federals in check no longer, they fell back upon the Rebel camp and the Yankees followed within a short distance but did not attempt to cross the river. There was some cannonading. The Rebels were commanded by Col. Edward Johnson. In the September previous the Rebels had made an attack on the Yankees at Cheat Mountain, and got thrashed. In November they, the Rebels, went into winter quarters on the top of the Alleghany Mountains. The Yankees now thought it their time to attack the Rebels, which they did on December 13. The attack was made before daylight in the morning and lasted until 2 p. m. The result was that the Yankees got worse whipped than the Rebels had been at Cheat Mountain in September. This was a hard winter and the Rebels suffered very much. The snow fell deep, and they had only the merest shelter and some had none. Talbott often slept out in the snow, with only a blanket around him. No doubt the return of the spring was to them a welcome visitor. Whether the old strawberry fields came into Talbott's mind, it is hard now to say, but probably they did. But he had few spare moments to think of or remember such things, for the war was come with more fury than ever, and the Rebels soon found it to their advantage to fall back within six miles of Staunton. About the last of May or first of June they attacked the Federals at McDowell. Now came on a series of battles. It was at this time that Captain Harper rode to the Rebel headquarters and notified them that the Federals were moving upon Jackson's rear. Battles took place in rapid succession. Stonewall Jackson swept everything before him. Talbott was taken sick and was sent to the hospital. While there a band of Yankees broke in and captured him, and carried him off. He received good treatment, and soon after was paroled, with others who were taken at the same time. The company to which Talbott belonged was Company I, made up in Lewis County, under Alfred Jackson, a cousin to Stonewall. After he was paroled, Talbott never got back to the army. When the war was over, he married and settled down to the life of a useful and industrious citizen. He is a tanner by trade, and in connection with his tannery, he runs a saddlery and harness shop. He also opened a hotel in St. George soon after he was married; but closed it again. In 1880 he reopened it and has since kept it open to the public. He has held several offices, and was nominated in 1880 by the Democratic convention for sheriff of Tucker County. The old farm where he spent his boyhood days is as famous a strawberry plantation as ever, and the early sunshine of spring calls forth the grass as early as ever, and the rampageous cattle break the fences as bad as ever. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Register of Deaths, Tucker County, WV (Page 199) FULL-NAME: Wm. E. Talbott DEATH-DATE: January 28, 1916 DEATH-PLACE: St. George CAUSE-OF-DEATH: Blood Poison AGE-AT-DEATH: 72y-11m-4d OCCUPATION: Harness Maker MARITAL-STATUS: Married Tombstone in Saint George Cemetery, Saint George, Tucker County, West Virginia William E. Talbott Feb. 24, 1843 Jan. 28, 1916 ------------------------------------------------------------------- If you've reached this file through a SEARCH, you can access other biographies for Tucker County, WV by going to the following URL: http://www.us-data.org/wv/tucker/bios.html -------------------------------------------------------------------