SMOTHERS, JAMES F(RANKLIN), Companies E, B & C, duty
sergeant/sergeant, enlisted by Captain Parsons at
Huntingdon, TN on 6/28/62 and mustered at Humboldt, TN on
8/11/62 at age 24. He was 5'8" tall, light complexion,
blue eyes, light hair, a farmer born in Carroll Co, TN in
September 1837 and a resident thereof in 1860. Captured
and paroled with the regiment at the battle of Trenton, TN
on 12/20/1862, he most likely spent time in parole camp at
Camp Chase in Columbus, OH along with Colonel Hawkins and
others of the regiment awaiting exchange. These men were
exchanged from June through September, 1863. Smothers was
not captured with the regiment at Union City, TN on
3/24/64. The men who escaped generally spent the Spring
and summer of 1864 in Columbus, KY. Smothers transferred
to Co C in August of 1864 and spent time in the hospital
with a hernia at Jeffersonville, IN in 1865. He received
an early discharge on 6/2/65 due to disability. Smothers
and wife, Sarah Elizabeth Barnes, (m. 1857) eventually
moved to Benton Co, TN. He became a Methodist Episcopal
minister and a Mason according to his obituary in Camden
Chronicle. He applied for an invalid pension in 1879.
Smothers died in Camden, TN on 2/10/1916 and is buried in
the Palestine Cemetery in Benton Co, TN with a military
marker. His 2nd wife, Cora Baggett Smothers, applied for
and received a widow's pension. Smothers was the son of
John Pinkston and Nancy Smothers. MR #16584
Sources:
- BENTON COUNTY, TENNESSEE In The Civil War
- Civil War Service Record - Fold3.com
- Ancestry.com Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002
- THE 7TH TENNESSEE CAVALRY USA (Originally 2nd West Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry) Peggy Scott Holley
