Jesse Bowden Hancock

Age 24, he enlisted in Corinth, MS as Private, Company A, 6th Alabama Infantry on 4 June 1861.

He was commissioned First Lieutenant of his Company on 14 September and was wounded in both legs in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

In a hospital afterward

My sister Sallie came to see me the day before they were to cut my legs off. I told her where the swords were, and she went and got two and slipped them out. When they came the next morning to amputate my legs, we both drew our swords on them, and today I limp only in one leg slightly.

He was in Henry County until 1872, when he had trouble - gunshots involved - with Federal troops there and fled to Texas then Arkansas to avoid arrest. By 1880 he was a farmer in Franklin, in Drew County, Arkansas. In 1900 he was working in a saw mill at Mill Creek, Ashley County, AR. He was back in Drew in 1910, farming there at Saline. He was also a magistrate in both Alabama and Arkansas.

His service from the Alabama Civil War Service Database.1 Personal details from his own autobiography [pdf],quoted above, from family genealogists, and from the US Census of 1880-1910. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married the widow Elizabeth Bowden Koonce (1836-1903) in 1863 in Alabama. He left her behind when he went to Arkansas and there married again, Mildred Josephine Elizabeth Richardson (1861-1936) in October 1877, and they had 11 children by 1908.

His brother-in-law Hilliard Askew, his sister Sallie's husband, was also at Sharpsburg, in the 11th Alabama Infantry.

08/24/1838; near Atlanta, GA

09/03/1912; Drew County, AR; burial in Zion Cemetery, Hamburg, AR