Page 152 - Arkansas Confederate Women

Sketch of Mrs. Jared C. Martin 133

crowded with the sick. She nursed them and cared for them
tenderly, she said their mothers had worked and cared for them,
and it seemed dreadful for them to be neglected when they were
sick and wounded. Some of the wounded from the fight of Cot-

ton Plant stopped awhile at her house, and one wounded man

stayed three months; he recovered and went to his command.
Some were very sick and three from Texas died. In the spring
of 1863 her dear old home had to be abandoned. The line of
breast works that Gen. Price had built below Little Kock ex-
tended entirely across her farm, her houses and every improve-
ment were entirely destroyed, cotton burned, a hundred and
thirty bales, and with her younger children she sought refuge in
an old place she had ten miles southwest of Little Rock. Here
she and her four children toiled as they never had before,

plowing, hoeing, harvesting, cooking, washing, spinning, weav-
ing, and often after they had succeeded in raising a little crop,

the enemy came and took it all. She had a wagon and a yoke
of oxen, the only wagon and team in the neighborhood, and the
women living near brought their grain to her house, and she
sent it eight miles to mill for them. She was a fine manager
and her family never suffered for the necessaries of life, and
when Confederate scouts would occasionally come, she always
had something for them to eat and if they were in need of
clothes she would find some for them. Her two grown sons
were in the army and the servants all gone, stock of every
description had been taken. She never despaired but worked on
trusting in God for help and comfort.

When the cruel war was over with nothing but the land
left, in her old age, she had to begin to gather up something to
make a home again; she worked bravely for a few years, and

was taken to her reward February 14, 1877.