Eliza Jane Alderman married David Williams of Duplin County, N.C., and they moved to
Mississippi about 1824 or 1825. They lived at first in Lawrence County, Miss., on the Pearl River
near Monticello. This did not prove to be a favorable location, so sometime after 1827 they
moved into the cotton growing section of Louisiana.
The oldest living descendant of David Williams and his wife, Eliza Jane, is Mrs. Iverson
Greene Gayden (formerly Martha Jane Thompson), their granddaughter and mother of the writer
of this sketch. She is 85 years and 5 months of age, and her home is on Oakland Plantation, East
Feliciana Parish, the old family home of the Gaydens, where she has spent her entire married life.
She remembers having heard that her grandparents went first to St. Tammany Parish, after leaving
Mississippi, and later to St. Helena Parish, where they established a permanent home and where
the older daughters were married. They settled in that part of Louisiana known as the "Florida
Parishes"-- originally a part of West Florida. It was later an independent commonwealth and was
known as the "Republic of West Florida." It is that part of the state lying east of the Mississippi
River and mouth of Lake Pontchartrain, and was not included in the "Louisiana Purchase." It was
settled by pioneers from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Kentucky, and not by the French and
Spanish, as were the central and southern sections of the state. There were a few French and
Spanish, especially in and around Baton Rouge, but settlers of Anglo-Saxon blood far
outnumbered them. The people to this day, in the Florida Parishes, are overwhelmingly
Protestant, in contrast with Catholic Southwestern Louisiana.
We have in perfect preservation an old letter written by David Williams to his own and
his wife's relatives in N.C., in the year 1827. It was later sent back to their daughter, Mrs. Mary
Jane W. Thompson, and it is now in the museum of the Louisiana State University. Judging by
this letter, we must conclude that he met with disappointment and disillusion in this new county.
He did not long survive its hardships, to which he was, no doubt, unsuited. He was a well-
educated man, a Greek and Latin scholar, and took much pains in teaching his young children. He
died in 1833, when the grandmother of the writer was a little girl of 9 or 10 years. She was their
eldest child, Mary Jane, born in Duplin County, N.C., September 20, 1823. It is through her,
afterward Mrs. Obediah Morton Thompson, that by far the greater number of Eliza Jane
Alderman's descendants can be traced.
I have often thought with what high hopes they must have started forth-- this young
couple, David and Eliza Jane. A great adventure lay before them in this journey from North
Carolina to Mississippi. They had two small daughters, several slaves, and their dear household
possessions-- among them, much linen and fine handmade stuffs. Some of these articles have
been handed down to us in perfect condition. Was Eliza Jane so fond of them, and did she handle
them so tenderly, that something of her love and sentiment entered the very warp and woof of her
linens, keeping them sacred and intact, so that more than a hundred years later they would be
precious in the eyes of her great-granddaughters? Did she sometimes, in her gentle care of them,
think tearfully of the long, long trail by covered wagon, that lay between this wilderness of the
Choctaws and the sunny land that she had left-- the land of her loved ones, the Aldermans, the
Carltons, the Wards, the Wilsons, the Williamses, whom she would never see again?
Widowed after seven or eight years' residence in a strange and sparsely settled country,
with five little children, Eliza Jane (Alderman) Williams soon married again. She and her husband
had acquired a home and some land in St. Helena Parish, and she continued to live there after her
marriage to John W. Stegall, widower, with one son, which son afterward married Eliza Jane's
daughter, Sarah Ann. {A John W. Stigall is shown as living in Saint Helena Parish according to the 1840 census}
The issue of this second marriage was one daughter, Elvira Stegall, born 1835. {Elvira Stegall married later Private E.A. Wilson of Company K 9th Regiment Louisiana Infantry who would also die at Camp Chase} She died
about five years ago (1925) at the age of 90, after having been married five times. She was a
bright and vivacious woman, and it may be that her enlivening charms had as much to do with her
matrimonial opportunities as had her property, which latter was considerable. It was left her by
her second husband, Mr. John Arant, an Alabama man who settled in Louisiana, and lived in the
northern part of the state. Her fifth and last marriage was at the age of 83, to a Mr. Jones of
Montgomery, Ala. She visted at our home in Louisiana just before this marriage and her
eagerness over the mail and her desire to spend most of her time with the young daughters (myself
included) of my mother, showed her spirit of perennial youth. An incident that we can never
forget is her riding around the large yard on horseback on the occasion of that visit. At that time,
riding astride had become the vogue for ladies, and we had discarded our old side-saddles. But
she must have a side saddle so every loft and attic had to be ransacked until one was found, as she
insisted on taking a ride. She then paced around the yard several times on a gentle old horse, after
which she promptly wrote her fiance that she "had just come in from horseback-riding." That
completely satisfied her desire to ride. She soon returned to Montgomery and was married. She
left no children, two sons of her first marriage having died when quite young.
Mr. Stegall moved with his family to North Louisiana after the marriage of his
stepdaughter, Mary Jane Williams (my grandmother). She alone was left in Southern Louisiana,
where she spent the rest of her life and brought up a large family of children. Eliza Jane Alderman
Stegall came back to South Louisiana only once to visit her daughter. It was probably an
expensive trip and Mr. Stegall was not very prosperous, from what I can gather. She died about
1857.
Not many of the personal characteristics of great-grandmother Eliza Jane are
remembered. My mother recalls her distinctly, but did not see her after she herself was 10 or 12
years of age, and the facts remembered are not of much importance. It is well known that she was
an excellent housekeeper and that she had a marked talent for art and designing. This talent has
been inherited by numbers of her descendants. She has left an elaborately designed and
embroidered counterpane, bearing her initials, "E.J.A.," and the date, "September 1821." This
was a part of her wedding outfit. Her daughters were noted for their beautiful sewing, and were
known as model housekeepers. The excellence of my grandmother's table was unexcelled in the
community, and many of her recipes are prized by us of this generation. Cleanliness was almost a
religious rite in her home. Every one around her was trained in the most meticulous habits of
personal care-- children, grandchildren, and servants. She was a lady of great refinement,
sweetness, and generosity.
To continue the account of my grandmother, Mary Jane Williams: at the age of 16 she
married Obediah Morton Thompson, a young man from Prince Edward County, Va., who had
come with his brother, Hezekiah, through Kentucky and had settled in St. Helena Parish, La., near
the family of David Williams. His father was Carter Thompson, and his mother was Nancy
Morton, daughter of a Captain John Morton, Virginia, who served in both the French and Indian
wars and the Revolutionary war. As soon as he and Mary Jane Williams were married, they
moved into East Feliciana Parish, a little west of St. Helena; there they acquired a country home
and cotton plantation, and lived, I presume in the usual manner of southerners of that day. The
home that they bought was the first in that part of the country that had glass windows. A new
home had to be built some years before her death, and this is now a part of the large estate of her
one surviving son, Robert Emerson Thompson, a man now in his seventies.
Three of her sons fought in the Civil War, and all came back. The crippled condition of
the South deprived her growing family of the best educational advantages; but they were people of
high natural ability and character, and the products of careful rearing, so they easily took their
places among the leaders in whatever community they lived. The sons became planters or
businessmen. Three went into mercantile and lumber businesses, and most of them have been
prosperous and influential. Their only daughter, Martha Jane (my mother), married Iverson
Greene Gayden, a planter, living on a large plantation adjoining her father's. She still lives, 1930,
after 65 years of married life, almost within sight of her birthplace.
My grandmother, Mary Jane, died in January, 1911, at the age of 87 and a half years.
She left 33 grandchildren. Several of her great-grandchildren are married and their babies are
therefore the 6th generation removed from Eliza Jane Alderman, who is their great-great-great-
grandmother.
Only one other child of Eliza Jane and David Williams left any children: this was their
youngest son, David, Jr., who left two daughters. One, Alice, married her first cousin, Hezzie
Burton Thompson, son of Mary Jane; the other, Elizabeth, married John Henson, and their two or
three children live in Montgomery, Ala.
As to religion, David Williams and his family were Methodists-- whether traditionally or
from environment, I do not know. All the well-known Protestant denominations are represented
among their living descendants. There have been only four or five marriages into Catholic
families. I should say that Methodists still predominate among them. One of their daughters,
Phoebe Caroline Williams, was devoutly religious, and professed sanctification. She and her
husband, Mr. Harrison Hill, lived for many years at my grandmother's home, and I think it was
sometimes trying on the rest of the household, who could commit occasional peccadilloes, to live
in close contact with a couple who couldn't. I would not, however, detract anything from "Aunt
Carrie" on that account. She was the very salt of the earth and those of us who remember her
realize that she had many virtues that it would behoove us to cultivate. The cedar chests of several
of her great-nieces are well stocked with her handiwork, and I like to think, as I look at her perfect
work, of the holy thoughts that filled her mind as her swift little fingers and smooth needles
wrought the beautiful stitches.
In politics we have all been Democrats, until the last presidential election, when several of
our relatives bolted the party and voted for Hoover; and this fact was due, I think, and hope, rather
to business considerations than to religious prejudice. We are a family deeply interested in politics
academically, but no one of us has ever run for an office, other than those of school boards, police
juries, and state legislature.
Among the living descendants of Eliza Jane Alderman, there is a fair percentage of those
who are unusually gifted as to looks, personality, and intellectuality, and who are, in other words,
persons of outstanding qualities. There is nothing to the discredit of any one. There is some
especially fine material among her descendants of the fourth generation removed from her: that is,
her great-great-grandchildren, ranging in age from the teens to the early thirties. Many of them are
the children of very prosperous parents and are attending the best colleges and universities in the
country. I can call to mind a score or more of them who would be the cream of society (used in
the broad sense) in any age. There is no decadence here. If their great-great-grandmother Eliza
Jane could have lifted the veil and peered into the distant century, I do not doubt that she would
have loved and approved of these young people, whose existence was to be made possible through
her life and labors, in the then new state of Louisiana."
Benjamin F. Stegall appears to be the youngest as the 1850 and 1860 census puts his year of birth about 1844. Private Benjamin F. Stegall's physcial description reads as follows at Camp Chase: Rank Private; age 17; height 6' and 1/4"; fair complexion; hazel eyes; fair hair. When the War started in 1861, many single and eager Louisianans joined the Confederate cause. As a reward for signing up for three years members of Company K 9th Louisiana Infantry were allowed to gain furlough and travel back to Jackson Parish, Louisiana where we find the Stegall family living near the town of Vernon, Louisiana. Some members of Company K 9th Louisiana Infantry were also signing up new recruits for their company. With the Confederate draft about to take place many men of Jackson Parish, Louisiana aided by the $50.00 sign on bonus decided to enlist in Company K. Elvira Stegall had married E.A. Wilson and they had a child living in the Stegall household according to the 1860 census by the name of R.W. Wilson age 3. All three E.A. Wilson, Samuel Stegall, and Benjamin Stegall would join Company K 9th Louisiana in March of 1862. In just a few weeks the Stegall household would be turned upside down. Company K known as the "Jackson Greys" left Jackson Parish, Louisiana in early Spring of 1862 by railroad and was going well within Confederate lines to join the 9th Louisiana Regiment in Northern Virginia. On April 11, 1862 while either arriving in Huntsville, Alabama or taking a short break the town was suddenly captured by Union soldiers from Nashville, Tennessee in command for the Union was General Orsmby Mitchell. Mitchell's plan was to capture the Memphis and Charleston Railroad at Huntsville, Alabama in preparation for Andrews Raiders who were to steal a train at Big Shanty, Georgia and disrupt the Confederate railroads thus giving Mitchell the opportunity to capture Chattanooga, Tennessee. The spy James Andrews delayed his theft of the train by one day, thinking the Mitchell could never march to Huntsville, Alabama due to the heavy rain on April 11, 1862. He was wrong. Members of the Great Locomotive Chase known in history as Andrews Raiders would receive the very first Congressional Medals of Honor even though their plan failed. Mitchell's bonus of his capture of Huntsville, Alabama was the majority of the members of Company K. The Confederate prisoners were held on the upper floor of the railroad depot at the Memphis and Charleston Railroad in Huntsville, Alabama for about two weeks. Today some of their names can be seen inscribed on the walls according to local Huntsville, Alabama history. Those captured included E.A. Wilson, Samuel Stegall, and his younger brother Benjamin Stegall. The same General Mitchell was in charge of the Department of Ohio and his approval was needed to build Prison #2 at the Camp Chase Prison which he gave. Prison #2 was the worst of the prisons at Camp Chase because it had been built on the lowest ground within the prison. At times heavy rains would flood the sewage outside of the prison into the barracks themselves. It was also decided to put the Confederate hospital in prison #2. It was in this atmosphere that members of Company K entered Camp Chase on April 29, 1862. If letters were written home to Jackson Parish, Louisiana they would have learned that the largest city in the South, New Orleans, Louisiana had just been captured and that Ethan A. Wilson's young son had just died. Private E.A. Wilson, Benjamin F. Stegall's brother-in-law would die at Camp Chase just a few weeks later. As for Benjamin Stegall he was due to be exchanged according to the Dix-Hill Cartel in August of 1862 and had been at Camp Chase since April. Just before his exchange he fell to sickness and was held back at the Camp Chase hospital. His brother Samuel Stegall probably wished Benjamin a fast recovery and was looking forward to seeing him again. However, Benjamin F. Stegall would die on August 30, 1862 at the Camp Chase hospital just a few days after Samuel Stegall had left Camp Chase to be exchanged. Benjamin F. Stegall may have died in the early morning hours of August 30, 1862 because he was buried the same day at the Southeast City Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio at grave #27 by Brotherlin & Halms (contracted government undertakers) Private Benjamin F. Stegall's body would be re-interred to the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery by Captain Irving of the United States Quartermasters Department in May of 1869 and double buried with Isaac Prophet in grave #2090 at the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery. Once the surviving members of Company K 9th Louisiana Infantry had been exchanged at Vicksburg, Mississippi the decision was made not to send them back to the 9th Louisiana Infantry still in Northern Virginia. Rather they were assigned to the 12th Louisiana Infantry which was in the State of Mississippi at the time and the former Company K 9th Louisiana would be forever known as Company M2 12th Louisiana Infantry. Because of the time delay between the two governments about a year, a lot of red tape, the men who died at the Camp Chase Prison in Company K 9th Louisiana were left on the rosters of Company M2 12th Louisiana Infantry because they did not know officially of the soldiers deaths. And since Company K 9th Louisiana Infantry no longer existed the soldiers deaths were not listed on their Compiled Military Service Records. Private Samuel N. Stegall would be captured again at one of the battles for Vicksburg, Mississippi. He would die of small-pox on January 1, 1864 at the Camp Lookout Prison in Maryland.
BENJAMIN F. STEGALL OWNED NO SLAVES according to the census of 1860 slave schedule. His father John W. Stegall did own slaves but he was not his father.