The West Virginia Adventure:
Setting the Stone of
Captain Archelous Hammons
13th Cavlary Regiment, CSA
Saturday – April 2, 2005 – At 4:00am the alarm clock sounded in the dark bedroom lit only by the dull glow of the television set playing an old black and white movie. I thought I was getting at least three hours of sleep - not three minutes. I had fallen asleep in the middle of channel searching shortly before 1:00 am. Now it was 4:00 am, so I guess I really did get three hours of sleep, it only felt like three minutes. Earlier I had made plans of getting to sleep by 11:00 but for whatever reason those plans were ignored. Now it was time to rise and shine. With the first movement I realized I could neither rise or shine.
Without making a sound I grabbed my last minute items, billfold, keys, phone numbers, national atlas, and maps to the cemetery in Greenbrier County West Virginia. Everything else I had carefully loaded the day before, including the all important G.P.S. coordinate unit and camera, because I strongly felt this would be a one-time-only mission. We wouldn’t be coming back. Soon I was in the Dodge truck where I would spend a lot of long hours this day. In the darkness I pulled down the driveway at 4:45 am. The plan was to pick up Tim Harp at his house at 5:00 am, but I was a little ahead of schedule and reached the Lothair section of Hazard by 4:55. I didn’t want to rush Tim because we were certainly leaving earlier enough so I pulled into a nearby mini-mart parking lot, turned on the radio, and waited until it was exactly five o’clock before pulling up in front of his house. Within a few minutes I could barely make out Tim was coming down the steps in the darkness toward the truck. And so the mission began.
We made a brief stop at the Hazard Shell Mart where I got coffee and a doughnut. Within minutes we were on Route 80 and also within minutes we were driving not only in the darkness but also the rain. Expecting rain, I had the bag of cement tucked neatly in the back seat of the cab. For part of the trip Tim and I conversed about his job and my recent stone research projects. But it didn’t take long for the steady rhythm of the wiper blades to lull him to sleep. As we crossed from Perry County into Knott County around 5:45 the sound of the wipers was overtaken by the sound of snoring. After all Tim had only three hours sleep and needed the rest. But wait a minute, I had only three hours sleep too, and now I was driving through the darkness and the rain without the help of conversation. So, I would have a lot of time to think on this trip, and I was now crossing Floyd County.
Normally I could have used the “windshield time” to think about follow-ups to our ongoing Confederate research. For the time I seemed preoccupied with thinking about how I shouldn’t have eaten that Krispy Kreme doughnut earlier. That mixture of pure sugar and acidic black coffee was not making the trip any easier. I didn’t even feel like listening to the radio – not before daylight. On Route 23 I drove across Johnson County to Lawrence County, making a second pit stop. Tim woke up and was hungry. So at Louisa we stopped at “The Castle” mini-mart for coffee and we went through the drive-through next door at McDonald’s. I couldn’t stand the thought of food, but I was afraid of falling asleep so I got more coffee.
Back on the road we drove into Boyd County and on I-64 crossed the Big Sandy River from Kentucky into West Virginia, still under the cover of darkness. Somewhere around Huntington the sun must have come up. I never saw it. The steady rain continued, and there was only a pale gray, gloomy sky. Traffic became heavy even more so as we approached Charleston. As I got closer to the city of Beckley, West Virginia the trip got a little easier. For one thing the rain tapered off and although I still couldn’t find the sun in the sky, it was brighter. Best of all the terrain became interesting. We were soon driving up and over some very large mountains. They were higher than the mountains back home and the highway through them was a steeper grade than interstates in Kentucky. I passed a constant stream of emergency truck ramps to remind of the incline. It was easy to stay awake on this stretch on road, well maybe not for Tim. After passing through Beckley I began to see road signs with the mileage to Lewisburg, West Virginia. That was encouraging because it was the first positive evidence that we might actually reach our destination which was near Lewisburg.
Even though we had set over 700 Confederate stones under every condition imaginable, I knew this mission would be unlike any before. Captain Archelous Hammons died 97 years ago along with his family due to what was described as “worm infestation.” The local historical society in Greenbrier County West Virginia had information passed down to them years ago that Captain Hammons, his wife and several children were buried after the worm encounter behind their house north of Falling Spring. To complicate matters more the historical society explained to me that there were currently no markers of any kind where the cemetery was located. Their information included a map with a cross to mark the cemetery. Although not to scale, with the help of engineer Richard Brown, I was able to take their map along with mileage information and transfer the information to a topo map that of course was to scale. The topo showed the cemetery to be along a second drain ¾ of a mile from the intersection of Rt. 219 and Rt. 5. Here was our plan: Driving to a place we had never seen before, using a small map in an attempt to find an “invisible” cemetery that had no markers at all and one that probably no one living in the area would even know about we would set a 250-pound upright tombstone according to the map.
Tim woke up with the braking of the truck and we stopped at McDonald’s to ask directions to Falling Spring. We soon learned that it was about twenty miles north. The rain stopped and the sun had actually appeared in Lewsiburg. We traveled down a winding two-lane road through the rolling hills of the country noting interesting old homes, barns, and churches along the way. The mountains were not nearly as big as what I had seen earlier between Beckley and Lewisburg. We passed one cemetery beside the road where we spotted no less than three white marble Confederate markers in the front row. The sun was out and there were Confederates buried here, maybe this wouldn’t be too bad.
For the last ten miles we were barely moving down the highway for fear we might easily miss the left turn on to the tiny sideroad, Rt. 5. We soon noticed the county road signs had tiny little numbers. In fact it appeared they had fractions because most had one number over the top of another. Of course they donoted the intersection of two road numbers – not fractions – but still for me it was an unusual site. Eventually we found the Rt. 5 road sign. I zeroed the odometer and turned the truck slowly left. Tim was following the ridge line on the topo map looking for a second drain. I was waiting for the indication of ¾ of a mile from the odometer. The two met right at the same time. The second drain we were looking for was ¾ of a mile from the intersection. The narrow blacktop road was situated below the area we were looking at. The steep dirt driveway and the house above were on my right but it was too sharp of a turn to make in one swing. We drove about a half a mile before finding a place big enough to turn and then we returned. At the top of the driveway was a house and soon I found myself explaining to a young man how we had driven three hundred miles from Kentucky to place a historical monument for a Civil War soldier near this place.
This seemed acceptable to the young man and he gave Tim and I an approving wave before disappearing through the front door of the house. I decided we would set the stone on a rolling knob we could see in the distance to the rear and slightly to the left of the house and the cow pasture. We referred several times back to the topo map with the cemetery marked just behind the house. Tim and I both concluded that it was most likely that the actual graves were within the flat area directly behind the house now occupied by cattle. It was completely out of the question to consider placing a tombstone in the middle of a cattle pen, so we decided to continue on to the next available tract beyond the fence. If we could just find a way to get through the fence on the upper side to get to that knob. Tim had already been surveying our options and told me we had a new problem. We had to first find some access through the cattle fence nearest to the truck. He went to the left and I went quickly to right in the direction of the barn. It took longer than we had hoped but we did find a gate on the side of the barn and then met back at the rear of the truck.
I grabbed everything I could get in my hands, posthole diggers, bucket of concrete mix, level, GPS device, camera, paper and pen. Then Tim and I lifted the Hammons stone strapped to the dolly from the truck bed to the ground. I knew we had to carry everything in one trip, there would be no returning to the truck until the stone was set. And so we took off through the first gate, dragging everything we could possibly drag under the gaze of the cows of all color varieties. At first we made every attempt at dodging the cow patties, but with time of the essence, after avoiding the first 4,000 or so, we chose from then on to plow right through and make a bee line toward the knob. Even though the terrain didn’t appear steep, the expanse of land from the house to the knob was deceiving. Because of the rain soaked field and the effects of the cattle, each step carrying all that weight in that muddy pasture was unusually difficult. It took us the better part of an hour to get the stone to its final destination. This included time to take apart and restore two more gates, and the essential time to catch our breath.
I settled on a spot for the stone in the center of the knob, framed on either side by several trees. Tim began digging the hole. Immediately another problem. After digging down only a few inches Tim began striking one large unforgiving root after another. Being framed by a row of trees may have been the more scenic choice, but the root system of the trees was making the digging almost impossible. We had most of the necessary tools for the job, but this time it didn’t include an axe. The posthole diggers were little match for the roots. With each strike the sounds of hitting the roots said it all. After giving it our best effort we were forced into starting a new hole to the right. This time we instantly hit solid rock. That should have been no surprise because there were thousands of rocks visible on top of the ground throughout this area. Eventually we started a third spot and finally were successful in getting the hole started. We didn’t get it as deep as we would have liked, because again we ran into more roots and more rock. But it was enough.
Tim Harp loosened the straps and wrestled the granite stone from the dolly down into the hole as I snapped a few pictures trying to capture the moment. We leveled the stone, got the GPS reading, filled in the dirt around the stone, and got a few extra pictures just to be safe. We then began descending the hill toward the house. We went through the two upper gates and fixed them back behind us, and were soon briskly making our way through the cow patties and sloppy wet mud. I could hardly believe that we had accomplished this crazy mission. The only thing left to do was to get the tools to the vehicle and get back on the road.
We loaded everything in the bed of the truck and I started up the engine. Before Tim walked around to the passenger side to get in I heard him say looking down at the ground next to the house, “What’s that?” He stopped, then stooped down to pick something up. Looking through the windshield I saw he had something in his hand. Something dangling actually between his two fingers. It was a large worm! As bizarre as it was it was a fitting end to the saga of Captain Hammons who met his demise due to worms on this farm. I had to get one more picture, a picture of Tim holding the worm.
Tim joined me in the truck. As I drove back down the dirt driveway to the blacktop of Route 5 and made my turn south on to 219 it was an incredible feeling to know that after all the research and all the miles, Captain Archelous Hammons was finally marked and honored. It’s one that I’ll never forget. It was exactly six hundred miles round trip, and pouring rain for most of it. Of course most of the way back in silence as Tim slept, I questioned my sanity in tackling this one. But crazy or not, one of our most difficult missions had been ultimately successful.