Sweetwater Flames

Mrs. Lindsey is over ninety-five years old and her loss of teeth makes it difficult to understand, so I am interpretating what she recalls of that frightening time.

Olivia Dunning was nine years old when Sherman made her a prisoner of war. The heat was at her back, flames chasing her heels as she ran to catch up with her Ma.

Her Pa was fighting the Yankees and they hadn't heard from him in months. Olivia worked with her sister, Amy and their Ma at the textile mill where Confederate uniforms and tents were made. The mill had about one hundred workers and was five stories tall. The women were helping their husbands for a little pay and keeping them dressed warmly and covered for the Yankee winters.

Then Sherman had came to Atlanta and Olivia was feeling his destruction first hand. When he saw the mill was full of women and children, he decided to take them all prisoner.

There were so many Union soldiers, twice as many women, so they descended like locusts. Covering the mill, company store and bridge, they stole and then set fire to the remains.

Olivia was scared, her whole body shook and tears ran down her dirty face. Her big cornflower blue eyes were wide open with fright.

She didn't dare make a sound. Her Ma had always said, "Do not say a word, if we are ever captured".
Now she and her Ma were. So, she did what the soldiers told her to do. They said, "Stay out of the way!"

The women were being rounded up like cattle and Olivia still could not find her Ma or Amy. How she wanted to scream out. She had heard horror stories of what soldiers in blue did to girls. Olivia felt her bladder go as she thought about one of those big men putting his hands on her.

So the women and children were on the train cars and they were sent to Louisville. Then they were given a choice; to remain as prisoners or swear allegiance to the Union. If they took the Oath, they were set free to find work at a mill across the Ohio River in Indiana.

Olivia still had not seen her Ma or sister. She tried to get a woman who would say, "This is my child."
No one would. They didn't believe these men and expected rifles to emerge at any moment to kill them all.

Olivia, feeling very brave, said she would take the Oath. A soldier said they had no use for a child. Finally, Rose Stewart took Olivia by the hand. She had a kindly face and a large warm hand. But Rose wouldn't pledge her allegiance to the Union.

They remained prisoners but Olivia had Rose now. She didn't know where her own family was.
The prisoners were sent to work, picking different kinds of berries, a fruit they didn't know much about. The strawberries were taken back to Atlanta. People paid for this sweet fruit grown in black rich dirt not red clay.

When the war was over, the Stewarts settled where the berries were and made a decent living at it.
Olivia stayed with them until she was sixteen. Then she gathered clothes, money and food to find her folks. She loved Rose but she wasn't her kin.

It took a lot of courage to be a woman(white or dark) alone on the roads of the North and the South.
Olivia had a burning desire to find out what became of her family. She tried not to dwell on it but felt if they were alive, they would have found her.

She made it back to Roswell, near Atlanta, where they had lived. Their small farmhouse was ashes. She sat down on the chimney hearth and cried as good memories of games played with Amy, her Mom's sweet voice and kisses, and being Daddy's "little princess".
She spoke to people around town and found out her father had fallen at Kennesaw Mountain. That was very close to where the mill had been.

Her Ma came back to Atlanta also but was sick with consumption by the time she arrived there. The woman that had nursed her said she cried out for both girls constantly. She sang a song about a mouse named "General Tom" that was afraid to sleep without his golden spun blanket. Olivia's eyes spilled over with tears. That was the song Ma sung in her sweet voice each night before sleep.

She never did find out anything about Amy and prayed she had escaped and had a good life somewhere.
This war, like all wars, rips families apart, changing lives forever.
When she spoke of it, Olivia said she carried the scars of a broken heart that would always wound her.

Happiness came with a good man, Lindsey Chapman, that promised love and security. He had built a small cabin on twenty-five acres of Georgia land. They grew vegetable crops year after year and took them to the farmers market and Olivia was a beautiful seamstress that even made wedding gowns. They were fertile, out of six children, five survived to have families of their own.

A strong woman, she outlived four of her children. Her husband had died twenty years ago. She had money, probably a couple thousand under her mattress. She still cooked and took care of herself. A good Christian, she tells you it's all due to the good Lord's work.




By Kathie Stehr

The facts are: There was a mill at Sweetwater Creek in Atlanta during the Civil War.
The women and children that worked there were taken North as POW's.
The characters in the preceding are fiction.