BIG TOBE KIRKWOOD

The biggest bushwhacker in this region was the red-headed butcher, John Gatewood.  As a very young man, he was bent on revenge after his sister’s rape and murder. Gatewood deserted the Confederate forces and returned to his Tennessee home. There he joined a group of Confederate bushwhackers and, as the “Red Headed Beast of Georgia,” carried out a bloody rampage of strikes against Union sympathizers, both military and civilian alike.

Gatewood killed a number of people and he himself was slain after the War by a peace officer out West.  Cleveland, Tennessee had a large garrison of Union troops, but they didn’t have the nerve to come into the mountains after the bushwhackers.  Cleveland was glad to hear of Gatewood’s death.

John Jackson Kirkland was a lesser bushwhacker, but he led the infamous Kirkland Gang (Kirkland Bushwhackers). Kirkland, a former 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd TN Mounted Infantry during the Civil War, was a deserter whose gang was made up of mostly deserters as well. They were known as the most blood-thirsty gang of that time. Kirkland would lead the gang on raids and prey upon the helpless folks left behind by loved ones who were serving in the war. John didn’t care who he had to kill to get what he wanted—his own family members included.

I took the liberty of combining the two names in my novel Rebel Bushwhacker, Tobe Kirkwood.

The Maddens Branch Massacre was described to me in great detail by local historians Robert Barker and John Kimbrough in the 70’s and 80’s. This was the very site where Gatewood executed several youths headed to Cleveland to join the Union army; a scene I have incorporated into Rebel Bushwhacker. Kimbrough lived in the section where it occurred, and in his own youth had known of the lone survivor, a one-eyed fiddler who also drove an ore wagon down the same road (now U.S. Hwy 64) for the nearby copper mines.  A historical marker was finally erected three years ago at McCaysville, Georgia, upstream from the site.

The book begins with a raid on Athens, Tennessee that has been modified to fit the story.  An actual band of bushwhackers, leader not identified, stole a Union payroll in Athens and the enraged Ohio artillery unit, being robbed of their payday, immediately gave chase.  A civilian guide was picked up along the way and they ran down the robbers on a marathon horserace that supposedly ended near my home at Murphy, North Carolina.  The guide was the only death, Barker told me, and because of his actions his widow received a government pension after the War. This brazen theft of Yankee gold appears in different detail in my novel published by BelleBooks, Last Bigfoot in Dixie.

Kimbrough told me the bushwhacker Gatewood had an uncle (a country doctor maybe) who lived in the Ocoee section near the massacre site, which inspired the fictional account of Gatewood visiting him.

Rebel Bushwacker takes place in the rugged Southern Appalachians where a classic civil war raged between Rebel partisans and Union loyalists. Hattie June Rose, the female protagonist, finds herself in desperate times during the last year of the Civil War in the remote Smoky Mountain backwoods. She hooks-up with the notorious Big Tobe Kirkwood and his gang of Rebel Bushwackers and wreaks havoc on Yankees and their supporters, until the day she decides to stop Tobe for good. Published by Argus Enterprises International  Amazon  B&N 

Wally Avett, Martins Creek, Murphy, North Carolina www.wallyavett.com