A pathetic story of Civil War times is related to the older people of Chester County in the western part of Tennessee by the recent death of ex-Governor James S. Hogg of Texas. Some days after the battle of Shiloh, one of the decisive and bloody engagements of the war, fought on April 6-7, 1862, a lone and wounded Confederate soldier made his way to a log cabin located in the woods four miles west of Corinth, Miss., and begged for shelter and food. The man was weak from hunger and loss of blood, and had evidently been wandering through the woods of the sparsely settled section for several days after the battle. The occupants of the cottage had little to give, but divided this little with the soldier. They took the man in and administered to his wants as best they could with their limited resources. They were unable to secure medical attention, and the soldier, already emaciated from the lack of food and proper attention, gradually grew weaker and weaker until he died. Realizing his approaching end, the soldier requested that his body be buried in the wood near the house, and marked with a simple slab bearing his name, “General J. L. Hogg, Rusk, Texas.”
The request was complied with, and in the years that passed the family which had so nobly cared for this stranger moved away, the grave became overgrown with wild weeds, and all that was left to mark the soldier’s resting-place was the rough slab. This rotted by degrees, but was reverently replaced by some passer-by, and in this way the grave was kept marked; but it is doubtful if the few people who chanced to pass that way and see the slab ever gave a thought to the identity of the occupant of the grave, until after the election of Hon. James S. Hogg to the governorship of the State of Texas. Then someone of Chester County who had seen the grave wrote Governor Hogg concerning the dead soldier. In a short time a letter was received, stating that the soldier was Governor Hogg’s father, and that he entered the Confederate army when the war first broke out, and had never been heard of by relatives or friends.
After more correspondence Governor Hogg caused the grave to be enclosed by a neat iron fence, and erected a handsome plain marble shaft over the grave. This monument bears the same simple inscription which marked the rough slab which had stood over the grave of one of the South’s heroic dead.