ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 14 (Summer 1955), p. 134
WATER BOUND IN ARKANSAS
By H. M. MCIVER (1)
PART I
- My father, Fountain A. McIver, was born near Selma, Alabama in 1850, the son of Capt. Alexander McIntosh McIver and Elizabeth Coleman McIver. My mother was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1857, and reared in south Louisiana and near Selma, Alabama. She was Lelia D. Holcombe, the daughter of Col. Henry B. Holcombe and Bridgitte Tanner Holcombe.
- Both of my grandfathers were Confederate soldiers. When the Civil War broke out, my mother and her mother went to live with her grand-mother, Mrs. Tanner, on the Orange Grove plantation. One day, when they returned from a business trip to Morgan City, they found that the Yankee army under General Banks had moved in, and were camped in the Tanner orange grove, and the Yankee soldiers were cutting down the orange trees for camp wood. The Yankee soldiers met them when they drove up, took their horses loose from the carriage and took them away, then ordered my grandmother and Mrs. Tanner to Gen. Banks' tent. Gen. Banks then ordered Mrs. Tanner to call home her husband, her sons, and Col. Holcombe, and have them sign the oath of allegiance. This these Confederate women flatly refused to do. He then threatened to burn every building on the plantation; but on the other hand, if they would comply with his request, he promised to protect their property. They still refused. Gen. Banks immediately ordered all buildings burned, including the home, sugar mill, barns, commissary, farm hospital and every Negro cabin on the place. My mother, her mother and Mrs. Tanner walked to a nearby home for shelter for the night. They later made their way to Mobile and then to Selma, Alabama, where the Holcombe family had a farm property and relatives.
- ________________________
- 1. H. M. McIver is a Texarkana engineer. He came to Rocky Comfort, Little River county, Arkansas, in
- 1880 at the age of five, and lived there until 1912.
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