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Re: burial sites
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This was written by a member of Co. k 21st Ark. my gr gr grandfater was in Co. F 21st Ark. So I figure he was in the same vacinity as this man. Maybe it will give ya'll some clues about the area. Interesting about the rock they ran into while digging the well. The whole story is very good, so I just cut and pasted the info about their time in or near Tupelo.

The following is an part of a published story : A GOOD STORY"

Where I was And What I saw During the Late War

By Elihu C. Bechkam, Sergeant Co. “K”, 21st Ark.

"We stopped at Tupelo on the 3rd day of June and camped about a quarter of a mile east of the town, stayed there about a month, then moved over about a quarter of a mile northwest of town. While on the march from Corinth to Tupelo we had orders not to fire a gun; but one man ignored that order and shot a chicken. The ball glanced and killed a negro. He was court martialed and shot at Tupelo. I do not know his name or what company he belonged to. I never did think he ought to have been shot, though he knew he was disobeying orders when he was shooting; but I think his sentence was a little too hard.

Gen Cabell was commanding our brigage. We belonged to Bowen’s Division, Price’s Corps. We stayed at Tupelo during the summer of 1862. There was considerable sickness and several of the soldiers died. Those that died of our company were Tom C. Johnson and John A. Johnson, two brothers, who always seemed closely attached to each other and were well liked by all their comrades. They died within a few days of the same time. Romulus S. Jennings, another fine young man, a brother of Leander Jennings of LaCrosse, Ark., died near the same time. William Overton died at Okolona, Miss., in October of the same year. James Wofford (Wolford?) died on the train as the sick were being sent south at the evacuation of Corinth. Dudley Gunn, Ambrose Walker and Monroe Pimberton were on the same train and, we suppose, died, as neither of them ever returned to their command.

The water was very bad and but few soldiers that were well enough for duty, so the pickled beef that we drew did not agree with our appetities and we had to do some foraging on our own hook. One time, I remember, our company was detailed to guard headquarters and it took half of the company at a time. There were six men in our mess, consisting of Abb Hamilton, John and Felix Pitman, Whit. Whitfield and myself. While Hamilton and the two Whitfields were on guard duty, the two Pitmans and I would forage and while we were on duty they would forage. One evening I was out looking around when I heard a pistol near by, then, bang it went again; so I went down in the Hollow to see what was going on and when I got there I saw Mose King snapping at a hog and John Campbell loading his pistol.The hog was crippled and standing up on the hillside about twenty yards distant. I fired at it and it fell and John Campbell ran to it and was trying to get up, and John trying to kill it with a club; and I don’t think I ever heard one hog and one man make half so much noise in all my life. John was fighting and cursing manfully and the hog, how it squealed! It seemed to me that all the patrols in the country would hear it. But John finally finished him up and we skinned him and divided it up and away we went to camps.

A few days after we killed the hog, Abe Hamilton and James Whitfield found a gang of about twenty sheep that slept in an old house on high ground in an old field. They watched till the sheep went in, then they sent up, one to each door and Abe downed one. They wrapped it in a blanket and Jim took it on his shoulders and away they went for the woods (for where the old house was standing was too public a place to butcher a sheep). A few days afterwards our two Pitmans killed a good fat shoat, scalded it and took it boldly into camp and claimed that they had bought it. You see, it would not do for Capt. Hunt to know that we were foraging.

Curious to say, but in digging a well at Tupelo, we struck a solid rock, where there is not another rock to be found for miles, probably none in fifty or seventy-five miles. But there is a rock there, sure, about one-quarter of a mile from Tupelo, some eight or ten feet under ground. I am not sure but I think it is a limestone.
Several of the soldiers went across the Mississippi while we were there and old Walter H. Clark left us at Tupelo, loaded with letters for Arkansas.

On the 13th day of September we struck our tents, shouldered our Enfields and knapsacks and fell into line and started northward for Iuka. "

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