WILKES-CAMPGROUND CEMETERY-MAURY COUNTY TENNESSEE-CULLEOKA

Capt. Merrit Booker Tomlinson

From a recent SCV newsletter: From Dispatch, Volume IX, Number 2, February 2007

pages 2, 3

OUR HISTORY
This month, we resume our continuing (I hope- if you give me some of your ancestor information) series on the history of the ancestors of Camp 1828 members. This month, Jim Kannon of Brentwood, Tennessee shares his personal family history.

Merritt Booker Tomlinson was born in Culleoka, Maury County, Tennessee in 1840 and died there in 1939, a few weeks short of his 100th birthday. Merritt was the product of a family with a proud military tradition. His grandfather Jesse Tomlinson and his great-grandfather Charles Allen had served in the War of 1812, in companies from Maury County. His parents were Charles A. and Sallie Foster Tomlinson. Before the Yankee invasion of the South, Merritt was a farmer and surveyor. He had attended school at the Old Brick Academy at Pleasant Grove and later graduated from Wesleyan
University in Florence, Alabama. At the beginning of the war, he and his three brothers all enlisted in the Confederate service, but in different units. Merritt joined Brown�s (later, Clark�s) Third TN Infantry, Company F. This regiment was captured at the surrender of Fort Donaldson, and its members were later paroled or exchanged. After the Third was reorganized, Merritt
transferred to the 48th TN Infantry, Company F (Voohries� 48th), where he served until the surrender of the Army of Tennessee at Bentonville, North Carolina. He reached the rank of Captain. During the Battle of Pine Mountain, Georgia, in 1864, Captain Tomlinson was only 100 yards away from where General Leonidas Polk, also from Maury County, was killed by a cannon ball. The major battle involving the 48th was the Battle of Nashville. The 48th served as rear guard for the retreating Army, under General Forrest. Captain Tomlinson was the Provost Marshall of Walthall�s Division, under General Stewart at the close of the war. Following the war, Merritt returned to Culleoka and married 16 year old Sally (Mildred) Dillard, daughter of Richard M. Dillard. Mister Dillard had been a member of Coleman�s Scouts
of the 9th TN Cavalry and was wounded, captured and �allowed� to die for refusing to take the Union Oath of Allegiance. Captain Tomlinson and his wife had nine children, one of whom, Willie Tomlinson Cochran Corey was the great grandmother of Jim Kannon, our compatriot. It is said that Captain Tomlinson walked home at the end of the war, arriving on a Friday. By
Monday, he was out plowing with a team of oxen, as there were no horses left in the area. He was later asked by some of the neighbors if he would teach school if they did his plowing. There had been no school during the war and parents wished to give their children an education. Captain Tomlinson did teach school for several years but eventually returned to farming. When he reached his nineties, Captain Tomlinson was interviewed every year by a reporter from the local paper. He was always asked the secret to his long life, and he gave different answers each year. When he was 98, he told the reporter he had lived so long because he disobeyed all rules and orders of doctors. He may have been joking. At his death in March of 1939, Captain Tomlinson was the oldest Veteran in Maury County, one of the oldest in the state and he may have been the oldest Mason in the US at that time. There
is a display of some of Captain Tomlinson�s artifacts at Elm Springs, the SCV headquarters.

From The Daily Herald

(article copied from family file at Maury County Library several years ago. It had no date on it, but had the numbers 1939 printed on it. The article is written by Jill Garrett - so I know that 1939 is wrong. She wrote for the paper for 15 years but not as early as 1939.)

THE LAST CONFEDERATE, By Jill Garrett

On March 6, 1939, the plaintive sound of taps echoes through the valley along Fountain Creek, and in Columbia the courthouse bell tolled in mourning. Captain Merritt Booker Tomlinson was being buried that afternoon at old Wilkes Cemetery and an era in Maury County history had come to an end.

Tomlinson was the last surviving Confederate soldier in Maury County and was also one of the last commissioned officers in the entire country. Dying only a few months before his 99th birthday, he was the oldest Mason in the United States.

His family had a proud military heritage dating from the county�s earliest settlement as his grandfather Jesse Tomlinson and great-grandfather Charles Allen had both served during the War of 1812 in Maury County companies.

Tomlinson�s boyhood home still stands on the Valley Creek Road about two miles from Culleoka and today is the Lewis Tyler home. Here he lived with his parents Charles Allen and Sallie Foster Tomlinson.

One of his brothers, Jesse Tomlinson, was the father of the late Pride Tomlinson, Sr., justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Another brother, Joseph, ran away while still a boy to join the Confederate Army.

Merritt Tomlinson was educated at Old Brick Academy at Pleasant Grove and later graduated from Wesleyan University at Florence, Alabama. He was a student at the college when the war began. (This school later became Florence State University and today is the University of North Alabama.)

In May 1861 he enlisted in the 48th Tennessee Infantry in a company composed of Culleoka men. His regiment was surrendered at Fort Donelson in Feb. 1862 and shipped on prison boats to prisoner of war camps - Tomlinson remembered the conditions aboard these boats as being appalling. For eight months he was a prisoner at Camp Douglas in Chicago, and following his exchange he saw action in Mississippi and Georgia.

During the fighting at Pine Mountain, Georgia, in 1864 he was only about 100 yards away when General Leonidas Polk (formerly of Maury County) was killed when his chest was shattered by a cannon ball.

During Hood�s retreat through the county in Dec. 1864, young Merritt passed within a mile of his home. As he was almost barefooted, he was permitted to go home to get a pair of shoes.

After the surrender of the Confederate Army, he made his way slowly home, arriving home one Friday. By Monday morning he was out in the fields plowing using oxen as there were no horses left on the farm and it was necessary that a crop be made that year.

One day as he was plowing, a number of his neighbors, all former soldiers, came to him and asked him to teach their children. Schools had not been in session during the war and for almost four years education had been at a standstill. They told him if he would teach that they would do his plowing. After several years as a teacher, Tomlinson returned to farming.

In 1866 he married sixteen year old Mildred Dillard, whose father had been a Confederate scout and had died during the war. They made their home at Beechwood and raised a family of nine children. Beechwood burned a few years ago.

When he reached his nineties, Tomlinson was interviewed each year by a reporter from the Daily Herald. One year he told the reporter that the secret of his great age was that he had lived a life in the open, avoided dissipation, and had eaten wholesome food all his life � with the exception of those years in the army. His ideal night meal, and one he had for many years, was only bread and milk.

At the age of 98, however, he finally confessed the real reason for his remarkable longevity when he said with a twinkle in his eye that he attributed his age to the fact that he had always disobeyed all orders and rules of the doctors.

In 1938 Captain Tomlinson, then 98, was invited to speak to the student body at Central High School (where today�s Whitthorne is) on Robert E. Lee�s birthday. He walked from downtown Columbia to the school and following the address walked back to town. Only a few weeks before his death he was still riding horseback over his farm.

His lifetime spanned from the coming of the railroad to the age of air travel. In 1859 when the first railroad came into the county he had ridden on the first run, going from his home at Culleoka to Athens, Alabama, the end of the line at that time.

He had seen young Maurians first go off to war in Mexico in 1846 and at his death Nazi soldiers were goose-stepping in Germany. Although he did not live to see the outbreak of World War II, he had a strange premonition about Adolf Hitler and in one of his last interviews regretted to see that dictator�s rise to prominence in Europe.

Info compiled by Rick Gray. Updated 6/2/2007