Remembering Our Civil
War Heritage and Heroes:
1861-1865
Joe Wells: A Slave and His Confederate
Master Go To War
By Ken Robison
The River Press February 26, 2014
This
continues a monthly series commemorating the 150th Anniversary of
the Civil War and the veterans that came to Montana after the war. This issue
features the fascinating story of a slave who followed his master into service
of the Confederacy before coming to Montana’s gold mines to make and lose his
mining successes. Descendants of Montana
Civil War veterans are encouraged to send their stories and photos to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com.
When General Robert E. Lee surrendered his
army at Appomattox in April 1865, thirty-six African-Americans were listed on
the Confederate paroles. Most served as servants, musicians, cooks, teamsters,
or blacksmiths. Throughout the Civil War thousands of blacks accompanied
Confederate Army regiments though only a handful were accepted and armed as
combat soldiers until the last months of the war. The Confederate fighting
force was white but much of its support was black.
One young
slave, Joseph Wells, went into the Confederate Army early in the war as a “body
servant” for his master, Colonel Benjamin G. Wells. He would not have worn the
“gray,” yet on occasion he may have fought alongside his master though we
simply don’t know. We do know that Joseph remained in company with his master
throughout the war before coming to Montana Territory.
In Joseph’s
own words, Col. Wells was “a confederate soldier, and I went to war with him,
waiting on him during his service in the army. He was with General [Sterling]
Price. The first place we fought was at Blue Mill Landing. We had a little
skirmish there. We had a scrap at Lexington, Missouri, where General Price,
with 40,000 men, dislodged 3,000 Union soldiers, but not until he cut off the
water supply. We had brushes at Elk Grove and Oak Hill and a battle right at
Vicksburg. I went with the old man to Texas, from there we returned home” to
Buchanan County, Missouri.
The slave
that was to become Joseph Wells was born in 1838, the “property” of prominent
John Fry of Lexington, Kentucky. His mother was sold shortly after his birth so
another slave woman raised him. When he was ten years old Mr. Fry took Joseph
with the Fry family to live near St. Joseph, Buchanan County, Missouri. The
U.S. Census in 1850 recorded 57-year-old farmer John Fry living in Buchanan
County with his wife Mary, four sons, and one daughter. The Slave Schedule of
that census listed one 12 year-old Black Male slave (Joseph) in the household,
and some 25 other slaves spread around other parts of Missouri.
When John
Fry died his widow married Colonel Benjamin G. Wells in 1856. The U.S. Census
of 1860 showed the family of Wells with one 22 year-old male slave living at
Rushville in Buchanan County, and one year later off to the War of Southern
Independence went Col. Wells and his young slave. While Missouri did not secede
to join the Confederacy, a large segment of the population centered in northern
Missouri and Little Dixie along the Missouri River favored secession and many
men joined the Missouri State Guard under General Sterling Price to seize
control of the state.
In September
1861, the pro-secession State Guard were ordered to recruit more troops from
northwestern Missouri and concentrate at Lexington. Col. Benjamin Wells raised
a company in Rush Township in southwestern Buchanan County and with other
recruits departed to join Gen. Price. Some 4,000 State Guard troops including
Col. Wells passed through Liberty to cross the Missouri River at Blue Mills
Landing and proceed eastward to Lexington. A Union force of 600 men under Lt.
Col. John Scott was sent to intercept the State Guard troops at Blue Mills
Landing, arriving after most of the State Guard had already crossed the
Missouri. Scott’s troops moved to engage the remaining 600 State Guard soldiers,
including Col. Wells and his servant, who were positioned in the brush on both
sides of the road leading to the landing. In mid afternoon on September 17th,
Col. Scott’s troops marched into the ambush. In the one-hour skirmish that
followed Price’s men held the advantage with 18 Union soldiers killed and 80
wounded, at the cost of just 3 State Guard soldiers killed and 18 wounded.
With this
minor victory at Blue Mill Landing, also known as the Battle of Liberty, the northwest
Missouri troops proceeded on to join General Sterling Price at Lexington, on
the Missouri River twenty miles east of Kansas City. This First Battle of
Lexington, known as the Battle of the Hemp Bales, was an engagement from
September 13 to 20, 1861 between the Missouri State Guard and a Union garrison
of some 3,500 men under Col James A. Mulligan holding the town. Over the next
several days General Price’s Guard received ammunition wagons, other supplies
and reinforcements including those from Buchanan County.
By the 18th,
the State Guard now numbered more than 15,000 men, and Gen. Price ordered an
assault on Lexington. The State Guard moved forward into the face of heavy
artillery fire, pushing Union troops back into their inner defenses. On the
morning of the 20th, Price’s men advanced behind mobile breastworks,
made of dampened hemp that was immune to Union shells. By early afternoon, Col.
Mulligan’s men stacked their arms and surrendered. Lexington, the Union
stronghold had fallen, bolstering southern sentiment and briefly consolidating
Confederate control of the Missouri Valley.
Further details
of the activities of Col. Wells and his servant Joseph are sketchy although for
the rest of the Civil War though they apparently remained part of the Missouri
State Guard. Gen. Price with his men formally joined the Confederate cause in
Neosho, Missouri on October 30, 1861. Despite his early victories in Missouri, Gen.
Price did not have dominant popular support to hold the state in the face of
Union determination to control this vital Border State.
By early
1862, Union forces had pushed Price out of Missouri, and with their defeat at
the Battle of Pea Ridge in northwestern Arkansas March 6-8, Confederate hopes
of occupying Missouri ended. For most of 1862-1863, the Missouri State Guard
fought small skirmishes in Missouri and major battles in Arkansas and
Mississippi. Missouri remained threatened by guerrilla warfare from southern
bushwhacker raids throughout the war.
Although
Joseph Wells does not mention whether Col. Wells and he participated in the
Battle of Pea Ridge, he does state that they “had brushes at Elk Grove and Oak
Hill and a battle right at Vicksburg.” Wells’s mention of Oak Hill is
intriguing. The first major battle of the Trans-Mississippi was the Battle of
Wilson’s Creek fought on August 10, 1861, near Springfield, Missouri between
Union forces and the Missouri State Guard. That battle is also known as the
Battle of Oak Hills. The battle led to the death of brilliant Union commander
Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon and the retreat of Union forces resulting in
the battle also being called the “Bull Run of the West.” Col. Wells’s role, if
any, in the battle is not known.
During the
decisive Vicksburg Campaign from May 19 to July 4, 1863, Missouri infantry and
cavalry fought in the 1st and 2nd Brigades of Major
General John S. Bowen’s Division of the Confederate Army. As Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
began to move to capture Vicksburg, Gen. Bowen was assigned a division in Gen.
Pemberton’s Army defending Vicksburg. After uniting with Pemberton’s Army, Gen.
Bowen’s Division fought at the battle of Champion Hill, where their
counterattack almost split Grant’s army in half. When the rest of Pemberton’s
army failed to support Bowen’s attack, his Division was forced to retreat.
Bowen’s Division suffered defeat at the Battle of Big Black River Bridge,
retreated to Vicksburg, and took part in the final defense of Vicksburg. The
surrender of Vicksburg July 4, 1863 was a devastating blow to the Confederacy.
Not only were 2,872 men killed and wounded and 29,495 taken prisoner, but the
Confederacy strategically lost control of the Mississippi River and was cut in
two.
Details
about the end of the war and surrender of Col. Wells and Joseph are sketchy.
Joe Wells claimed that toward the end of the war, “I went with the old man to
Texas, from there we returned home.” It
is likely by May 1865, Joseph Wells, now a freedman, returned briefly to St.
Joseph, Missouri. There he was warned by his former mistress to leave because
of his Confederate Army service. In turn, Col. Wells offered Joseph a span of
mules worth $500, a wagon, and provisions for a year if he would stay and haul
timber from the river bottoms. But Joseph listened to Mrs. Wells.
Like many
white Confederate soldiers, Joseph headed west in early summer 1865, stopping
along the Overland Stage Line near today’s Cheyenne, Wyoming to work as a cook
before proceeding on to California. Wells then decided to move on to Denver,
Colorado, where he worked at odd jobs. From there he move northward to Alder
Gulch, Montana Territory, to try his hand at placer gold mining, with some
success accumulating $10,000.
By 1870 Joe
Wells lived at Fort Shaw, a servant working for Brevet Major S. A. Russell, 7th
Infantry Regiment, helping care for Russell’s four-year-old son Louis. Six
years later, Joe Wells stampeded to the Black Hills gold rush, where he claimed
that “Nigger Hill,” was named for him.
The Negro
Hill district, as it is now known, is a section in the western part of the
Black Hills that derived its name from a mountain that rears its head some
6,400 feet above sea level, and whose top is high above the surrounding peaks
of the rugged neighborhood. The steep slopes of Negro Hill form the heads of
various gulches—Bear, Mallory, Negro, Sand and Beaver—from which hundreds of
thousands of dollars in placer gold were taken.
Negro Hill and
Negro Gulch were named for several African Americans, including Joseph Wells,
who owned an immensely rich placer claim from which they took a fortune during
the summer of 1876. Four of these black miners took out $1,700 in a single day,
hauling their gravel hundreds of yards to wash it. Several other black miners
built a dam to accumulate water for sluicing and washed out $1,500 in one remarkable
half day.
The
reputation of these black miners was so colorful that the mountain was named to
commemorate them. These were the first placer gold strikes discovered in the
Northern Black Hills in the summer of 1876, and led to a stampede to the area. Joe
Wells successfully mined Negro Gulch and accumulated $30,000. Unfortunately in
just three months he squandered his riches, drinking and gambling before moving
on to Deadwood, Dakota Territory.
In the early
1880s, Joe Wells returned to Montana to lived in poverty and ill health in
Billings. Some years later he regained his strength and went back to mining
with six placer claims on Williams Creek on the Shoshone Reservation.
By the early
1900s Joseph Wells arrived in Missoula to become a favorite of Missoulian reporters. In August 1910 the
Missoulian told “Uncle Joe’s” story.
Joe claimed an age of 120 years, perhaps identifying in his mind with the age
of his older former master Col. Wells. His actual age was about 72 years. Other
details of his story ring true and are consistent with facts that can be
checked. He told about his early years in slavery, his service in the war with
his master, and his migration westward.
The Missoulian reporter assessed Uncle
Joe:
“There is no more unique citizen in western
Montana than Joe Wells. The general impression among his acquaintances, both
white and black, is that he has slipped a cog or two on his age . . . His
warped limbs, his wrinkled face, and his white hair indicate that he is close
to the century mark. In appearance he is scrawny and sharp. . . He is as
cunning as a fox.”
In the
interview the reporter quizzed Wells about his Black Hills experiences:
“’I went into the Black hills and crossed to
Nigger gulch, where I lifted $30,000 inside a month.’
“’What! You took out $30,000 worth of gold?’
“’Yes, sir, and the gulch was named after
me. I had $30,000 in clean cash at one time.’
“’What did you do with it?’
“’Squandered it,’ said he, indifferently as
he looked down at his frayed trousers. ‘In them days I did not know the value
of money. I drank and gambled my $30,000 away in three months.’
“’Were you not afraid somebody would rob
you.’
“’Not a bit. I carried the best of arms and
could use them like a man. I went with an English bull [Dog pocket revolver], a
dangerous pistol, up my sleeve all the time.’
“’Where did you keep your money?’
“’With me. I wore two pairs of pants, one
over the other, and had secret pockets. My outer garments were of buckskin.’
“’What sort of gambling did you do?’
“’Faro. That was the game them days.’
“’How long ago was that?’
“’Thirty years.’
“’Soon after the Nigger gulch find I went to
Billings. I was broke, and sick. For two years I lay there in the Sisters’
hospital. Every now and then I would tell the nurses that I was burning
daylight. As soon as I was able to travel I secured me a horse—a white one—and
went to Copper mountain. After three weeks of prospecting I sprung off to
Shoshone reservation and located six claims on Williams creek. I have them
yet.’
“’Some fellow tried to get them out of me
but I told him that I was from Missouri. He was tricky.’
“’What are you doing now?’
“’I am on the way to Flathead to prospect.
If I get up there, and find anything I will go to work.’
“’How do you go about it?
“’I have done my work along. I cut the
timber, and go in with my wheel-barrow. Give me a bit of giant powder and I can
do the rest. I know how to handle that, boy.’”
In the opinion
of the Missoulian reporter, “There is
no more unique citizen in western Montana than Joe Wells. The general
impression among his acquaintances, both white and black, is that he has
slipped a cog or two on his age but all agree that he is far beyond the three
score and ten milepost. His warped limbs, his wrinkled face, and his white hair
indicate that he is close to the century mark. In appearance he is scrawny and
sharp. On his face there stands, at irregular intervals, bunches of
whiskers--sagebrush—and on his head a scanty stand of hair. On the point of his
little black chin there hangs, like a bit of Florida moss, a tuft of beard done
in a three-stand plait. The Missoulian
man, when trying to locate him, asked a neighbor if she had seen him. She
looked into space, in an effort to recall him, but the moment the twig of
whiskers was mentioned, she smiled, and said: ‘He’s right there—next door.’
“Two friends Joe Wells keeps near him, a
pocket magnifying glass to help in his search for gold, and Nailer, a big,
shaggy dog. With these he roams in search of a fortune. The old fellow’s heart
is full of hope and so long as he is able to move he will hunt for gold. News
of strikes at Dixon has reached his ear and he is eager to get back in harness.
“’Oh, but if I could make one more lucky
strike,’ is his song.
“If Joe Wells were to step into a Kentucky
street some old-time southern man would greet him: ‘Good morning Uncle Joe, how
are you?’ and he would respond: ‘Thank you, Marse John; poly thank Gawd.’ But
out here, he is as gay and chipper as a tree frog, and knows all of the
up-to-date vernacular. He is as cunning as a fox.”
Ten years
later in 1920 Joe Wells remained in Missoula renting a house with a white lodger
who worded as a barber. In December 1922 Joe Wells died at St. Patrick’s
Hospital in Missoula. His death was noted with a short obituary with more
exaggerations and a photograph published by the Montana Newspaper Association
on January 8, 1923:
“Missoula Centenarian Dies. Joseph Well,
colored, once winner of the Kentucky derby, believed to be the oldest
inhabitant in Missoula, died at St. Patrick’s hospital a few days ago.
“‘Uncle Joe’ as he was best known in the
city, claimed to have been born at Louisville, Ky., in 1807, placing his age at
115 years. His mother, a slave in the southern city, was sold shortly after his
birth and . . . [he was] reared by another colored woman. The aged negro often
narrated the vicissitudes of his fortune during early slavery times, the
stirring days of rebellion and the new era following the Civil war. He made
many trips up and down the ‘ol’ Mississippi’ with traders . . .
“His story of once winning the Kentucky
derby as [a Negro] jockey, strapped to the back of the winner of the blue-grass
classic, was one worthy of literary prominence. To have heard old ‘Uncle Joe’
tell it himself in his own mannerisms was still more interesting.“
Oh, to have
been able to interview Joseph Wells, learn more details, and probe some of his
stories. From the first Kentucky Derby in 1875 until Jim Crow laws ended it
about 1900, almost all Derby jockeys were African American. Thirteen of the
fifteen riders in the first Kentucky Derby were black jockeys, and fifteen of
the first twenty-eight runnings of the Derby featured blacks. The names of
these early day black sports superstars are readily available . . . and, sadly,
Joseph Wells is not among them.
Despite his
exaggerations, Joseph Wells, slave, Confederate service soldier, gold miner,
servant, rich man, poor man, drinker and carouser, and finally kindly “Uncle
Joe” the story teller, lived a more than full life before passing on in
Missoula December 16, 1922. His burial location is unknown.
Ken Robison is a local historian and
author of Montana Territory and the Civil War: A Frontier Forged on the
Battlefield.
