Read more Chattanooga History Columns
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- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
On April 5, 1917, prominent farmer Sam Julian of the Shepherd community (near today's Lovell Field) brought his only son, 18-year-old Earl S. Julian, to the recruiter for the Tennessee National Guard. His proud father noted that Earl "doesn't know anything about military service, but he's sure a good boy on the farm and at home."
Two years and two months later, across Hamilton County, the Ladies' Aid Society of the Daisy Methodist Church presented a play titled "The Minister's Wife's New Bonnet." Part of the proceeds from the production went to erecting a monument to "the heroes of the recent war from the Daisy vicinity."
That monument, originally erected in front of the old Daisy Elementary, was moved some years ago to the Veterans Park in Soddy-Daisy. The names of 48 men appear on the monument, who with young Earl Julian, were only a small portion of the nearly 5,000 residents of Hamilton County who served in the World War I era.
Appearing on the top of the Daisy monument is the name of Claude Walker. Walker's is the only name with a star beside it, indicating he was the sole serviceman from Daisy who made the supreme sacrifice in the war. Walker was drafted Sept. 5, 1918, and shipped overseas Sept. 29. But on Oct. 15, 1918, he died from pneumonia, probably secondary to the Spanish flu, and was buried in France.
There were 117 Hamilton County service deaths during the Great War, Walker being one of at least 64 who died from disease, usually pneumonia, but also malaria, diphtheria, "dilatation of the heart" and, ignominiously, syphilis.
Carl Houston died of anesthesia following an appendix operation April 2, 1918. Pvt. Nathan Smith died of "military tuberculosis" on April 29, 1918. Capt. Harry A. Seymour of Chattanooga died of meningitis in the Philippines Nov. 3, 1918. There were drownings, train wrecks and deaths from other accidental causes.
But many men were killed and wounded in action. Pvt. Mallie L. Davis was a porter at the Grand Hotel in Chattanooga before being drafted. He served in the segregated 368th Infantry Regiment, fought alongside the French at Vosges, Argonne and South Binarville, and was killed in action on Sept. 27, 1918. Pfc Jesse Hudson of Chattanooga was mortally wounded in action, dying of his wounds Aug. 10, 1918, and reportedly received the French Croix de Guerre.
Particularly sad were instances of death just before the armistice on Nov. 11, 1918. Pfc Claude Levi of Soddy was killed in action Oct. 29; Pvt. Earl T. Dempsey of Chattanooga was killed Nov. 6; Pvt. Stephen G. Allison of Birchwood was killed Nov. 7; and Pvt. Luther Evans of Ooltewah died on Nov. 8. Evans' wife received a letter from a chaplain saying that he was "instantly killed on the battlefield going forward in the last attack." Pvt. Wallace Hagan of Chattanooga died of wounds almost a month after the end of the war.
Another 211 men from the county were wounded in the course of the war. Some wounds were only slight, some crippling for life. Pvt. G.W. Clingan of East Lake survived a near fatal wound in the back to return home with three broken limbs and an injured lung. Herman Guthrie suffered a "crushed foot," and Floyd Norris survived a hit from a German machine gun. Frederick R. Harris of Chattanooga was struck by shrapnel while going "over the top," necessitating a leg amputation. Corp. Harvey Martin of Soddy, however, was fortunate to have suffered only a slight wound.
But most came through without a significant incident. Escaping the pneumonia that killed Claude Walker and the bullets and shrapnel that claimed other young men, Earl S. Julian served in Company B of the 117th Engineers. He was overseas between Oct. 18, 1917, and April 28, 1919, and was honorably discharged May 13, 1919.
He married and had three sons and two daughters. After a career working for the postal service in the Chattanooga area, he moved to Tampa, Fla., where he died at age 83 in 1982.
Sam D. Elliott is a member of the law firm of Gearhiser, Peters, Elliott and Cannon PLLC. He is a past president of the Tennessee Bar Association and the Chattanooga Bar Association, and the author or editor of several books and articles on Tennessee in the Civil War era. For more visit Chattahistoricalassoc.org.