Caught in the Battle of the Wilderness

The area where the Battle of the Wilderness was fought in early May 1864 was aptly named. For decades, the forests had been cut indiscriminately because iron smelting and the construction of plank roads had demanded large quantities of wood.
A Union officer, described the Wilderness as, "a vast area of dense forest - a second growth more than a century old. It is chiefly of scrubby, stubborn oaks, and low-limbed, haggard pines, with a few clumps of alien cedars. The trees were noticeably stunted and so close together and their lower limbs so intermingled, that it was very difficult to make one's way through them. Running through the Wilderness was the Orange Turnpike [now Route 20]. It had lapsed into a common earth road, and many of the stables and houses were mere ruins. The Orange Plank Road [now Route 621] was built later, but it was in the same forlorn state as the Turnpike. The clearings throughout the Wilderness were few and small. Many were deserted."
By May 1864, the Confederacy's future was in serious doubt. Lee's foray into Pennsylvania had been stopped at Gettysburg. The Southern army was having difficulties filling its depleting ranks and was suffering from severe materiel shortages. All able-bodied men were fighting for the Confederacy, and the Wilderness families watched their fields become unproductive for lack of manpower. Until now, they had been largely spared the destruction of their homes and crops, but they were struggling to make a living. Their lives would never be the same.
The Higgerson Farm, located off modern-day Hill-Ewell Drive, not only suffered material losses during the Civil War, but Benjamin Higgerson himself died because of an act of kindness toward a soldier. The Higgerson fields comprised one of the clearings the Union officer mentioned. On May 5, 1864, Union troops swept across the farm bound for combat with the Confederates in the nearby thickets.
The 1860 census lists Higgerson as a 50-year old farmer with property valued at $1,870. The household included Edgar, age eight; Jacqueline, age five; William, age four; and Walter, age two. Inexplicably, Benjamin's wife, Permelia, 30, is not shown. She was the daughter of William and Permelia Chewning, the Higgersons' nearby neighbors. Another son, Andrew Jackson, was born on Dec. 2, 1861. The census also shows that Higgerson owned two slaves. A son from his first marriage, James, enlisted in the 9th Virginia Cavalry in March 1862. He died nine months later in a Confederate hospital in Richmond from smallpox.
Benjamin Higgerson died on December 25, 1862, also of smallpox, contracted from a convalescing Confederate soldier he had taken in. The story goes that Benjamin's oldest son, with the help of a slave, felled a large tree and hewed out a coffin in which they buried Benjamin on the Higgerson Farm.
On the afternoon of May 5, 1864, Union General James Wadsworth's division passed through the Higgerson Farm. When the 149th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment advanced through the swampy Wilderness Run valley and crossed the farm, it demolished a picket fence and trampled the Higgersons' garden. Mrs. Higgerson expressed her views on matters in strong language to the Pennsylvanians. She called them a "pack of cowardly Yankees" and predicted that they would soon be retreating. Sure enough, the Yankees soon came pouring back. She met them with "taunts and derision." A Union soldier acknowledged that "we were whipped, and she knew it."
The Higgerson house was one and a-half stories tall and had three rooms. An attached shed was used as a kitchen. The Higgerson burial ground, located near the house, can still be seen today, with simple fieldstones marking the graves. The house burned in 1938, but the remnants of the chimney have survived. The site is now part of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
Permelia Higgerson's life after the war could be the basis of a modern-day soap opera. She married William Porter, an itinerant teacher, in 1867, and they had two children: Cyrus, born in 1868, and Ann, born in 1871. Cyrus died in 1894 and Ann in 1887. The family eventually moved to Parkersburg, WV. There they built flat-bottom boats on which they floated all their possessions, including their livestock, down the Ohio River into the Mississippi. When they reached New Madrid, Missouri, they started a new life at a place they christened Higgerson Landing. Over the years, their home was moved to higher ground several times when the Mississippi overflowed its banks. Porter had also operated a mercantile boat business, trading with folks along the rivers, a business he continued in Missouri. The nearby one-room Higgerson School, which operated until the early 1970s with Mary Alice Higgerson as the last teacher, was recently restored and is now a historic site.
Permelia's second husband ended up taking her daughter, Jacqueline, i.e., his step-daughter, as his common-law wife when she was about 16 and ran off with her, leaving the rest of the family with Permelia. They first moved to Louisiana and later to Montana. They had four children before parting ways. After he left her, taking their youngest child with him, Jacqueline remarried. She died in 1952. The Higgerson brothers' hatred for Porter was such that when they heard he might be coming back to Missouri, they assembled a family posse to hunt him down and kill him. He never came back!
Permelia Higgerson died in 1897 in New Madrid, which is also the final resting place of her children, except Jacqueline. Edgar died in 1934, William in 1897, Walter in 1892, and Andrew Jackson in 1949.
Today, the Higgerson descendants, spread all over the country, are a close-knit group that keeps alive the memory of their ancestors, who have become part of the history of the Civil War.
The National Park Service (www.nps.gov/frsp) and the Friends of Wilderness Battlefield (www.fowb.org) are planning battlefield tours, artillery firing demonstrations, a dinner, and other events on May 2-3 to commemorate the 145th anniversary of the Battle of the Wilderness.

About the author:
Josef W. Rokus is a volunteer researcher for the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park and a freelance writer. He lives in Locust Grove.