REBEL MOM BEATS YANKEES BRAINS OUT! CIVIL WAR HISTORY!

They say this young rebel mom attacked him, and the words that they use are “beat the Yankee soldiers brains out”! Imagine the scene! To be honest, I’m not totally sure which genre this story falls under, humor, history, or horror. It’s also a mystery because years later a human skeleton was found in the yard. Until now, this wild story about a real-life woman, has only been passed down through the generations of a family, but now, I’m going to share it with all of you. 

While building a family tree for a client I found this wild story about his 3rd Great-Grandmother. The more that I discovered about her, the more I knew that I wanted to share her story with all of you. 

The subject of our story today is Mary Ann Ross-Sullivan-Rogers. She was born on 13 November 1841, in Marion County, Tennessee, to Benjamin John Ross, who was an Irish immigrant, and Jane Snow Williams. She married John Sullivan in 1860, and they had two sons in 1861, and 1862. Her husband joined up to fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War with Company D, 39thGeorgia Infantry, which was nicknamed, the “Dade County Invincibles”. He was sadly killed in the summer of 1863, at the Battle of Vicksburg. It is unknown when Mary Ann received word about her husband’s death but like most folk in the area at the time, she remained vigilant. 

We know that the war years were tough on everyone, especially for those in the south. Mary Ann no doubt struggled to keep the home farm going, while providing for two toddler sons. One of her most valuable possessions was the family’s milk cow. The story goes that a small group of foraging Yankee soldiers came upon the farm, and one of them was unlucky enough to come up with the idea of stealing the cow. I’m sure that when Mary Ann saw this happening, she quickly did the math in her head, if she lost this cow, how was she going to feed her young boys? What happened next is what any mother would do for her babies.

It is said that Mary Ann fell into a rage, grabbed a flail pole that was used to beat the dust out of rugs, and attacked the Yankee soldier. The family story says that she beat the Yankee’s brains out. Now, I don’t know if that means that she beat him enough that he just ran off, or if this encounter went the other way, and the family story needs to be taken literally. Why didn’t the Yankee’s partners come to his aide? Knowing how a mother can defend her babies, I imagine Mary Ann’s attack was so fierce that they fled the scene as fast as they could. 

To this day, no one knows the fate of the Yankee thief. Many years later, one of Mary Ann’s great-grandsons, whose hobby was hunting for Indian relics, was doing some digging around the old home place. In the front yard he found a human skeleton. Was the skeleton that of an Indian buried many years ago, or did he stumble upon the remains of the Yankee soldier? Perhaps we will never know. 

This story may ring a bell and remind you of a similar scene in the movie “Gone With the Wind”, when Scarlett O’Hara shoots and kills a Yankee robbing the house and buries him in the yard. 

After the war, Mary Ann married her second husband, Dauswell Hurd Rogers, who was almost exactly four years younger than her, and just a bit too young to have joined up to fight in the Civil War. They were married for about fifty-three years and raised a family of at least seven children.

Mary Ann died of atherosclerosis, on 19 January 1932, while living outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. She is buried next to her husband, in Payne Cemetery, in Trenton, Dade County, Georgia.

Wow, now we know the story of Mary Ann Ross. What are your thoughts? Were you shocked by this story? How would it affect you if you discovered a story like this about one of your ancestors? I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments below. And I wonder what stories like this could be hiding in your family tree.

When we discover stories about our ancestors, especially like this one, history becomes tremendously more real. The events and locations that we read about or drive by, begin to have a different impact on us and we are bestowed with a deeper enlightened understanding. Discovering and preserving stories like this is a passion of ours and we are proud to discover this one, share it with their descendants, and all of you.  Be sure to see our video below about this story.

-Col. Russ Carson, Jr., Founder, Family Tree Nuts