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Submitted: 10/6/23 • Approved: 10/6/23 • Last Updated: 10/9/23 • R1505316-G1505315-S3
October 5, 1812 - March 16, 1885
Jane Stringer was the second wife of Ellison Plunkett. They married on 13 NOV 1834 in either Hickman County or Perry County, Tennessee.
The Trials of Jane Stringer Plunkett
Prepared by June Carter, Material from descendent Mattie Brown
Jane Plunkett was born in Kentucky in 1812, the daughter of Robert and Mary Stringer. She married Ellison J. Plunkett and they moved to Arkansas in 1840 from Tennessee and settled in the northern part of what is now Logan County, a few miles west of Prairie View near Pleasant Grove Cemetery. Their twelve children grew up, bought land and reared their families in the neighborhood. Eleven of the children and many of the grandchildren are buried in the family cemetery known as “Pleasant Grove”.
During the Civil War, Sheridan Plunkett, one of the twelve children, joined the Union Army. In one of the battles he was wounded and his mother, Jane, nursed him back in health. When he was strong again she dressed him up like a woman and went with him back to his company.
Bushwhackers were always around to give families of Union soldiers a hard time. Once when the Plunketts heard them coming, they took their hen, meat and provisions and dug a hole under the manure pile in the barn lot and buried the provisions til the men were all gone. Before the outlaws left, they took the feather beds, tied them to the backs of their horses, then ran down east, past the Pleasant Grove Cemetery, feathers flying everywhere.
Following is one of Mattie Brown’s letters to “Dear Cousins” dated July 1970, includes some of the trials of her great-grandmother, Jane Stringer Plunkett.
The story of our great grandparents is typical of many other families. When Ellison and Jane Stringer Plunkett came to Arkansas in 1840 they had four children who had been born in Tennessee. Some of her relatives came also, but we have not found a record of other Plunketts. They built a “double log” house, a kitchen near the main house, a smoke house and barns all of logs. Within a short time a Cumberland Presbyterian Church was built about ¼ mile from the house and an acre across the road was set aside for the cemetery. I am searching for data on this church now. The families seemed to prosper for the next twenty years until the Civil War broke out. By that time three of the children had married and lived on farms near the homestead. The little church served as a school. James and John both enlisted in the Federal Army. Our grandfather, Sheridan, was only 14 years of age and not old enough for service. However, he went to DeValls Bluff in Eastern Arkansas on the White River and cooked in a camp there. This left Jane and her small children at home alone. I have no proof of Ellison’s enlistment but presumed that he had gone even though he was near 60 when the war started.
We have no record that Jane Plunkett and her young children were molested until the Fall of 1864. The Federals had taken Fort Smith September 1, 1863 and Little Rock September 10, 1863. This seemed to have freed a band of Confederates who left the regular army and began looting and terrorizing the countryside in the Arkansas Valley. Jane Plunkett recorded in her Bible that her house was burned by the Rebels November 12, 1864.
My mother and grandmother have told me that they remember seeing scars on great grandmother Jane’s shoulders and feet as a result of having been tied up and locked in their home while bushwhackers set the house on fire. One of her daughters, Nevie (who married John Foster) had hidden out somewhere near, came quickly. The children carried rails from a fence and battered the door down to release her after the men left. These men took her dishes and everything breakable, trampled the glass with their heavy boots , into wooden bins of wheat which had been garnered. They took her thirteen feather beds, ripped them open and rode up and down the road letting the feathers fly. The bushwhackers had also taken all their livestock.
They put Uncle “Frannie” on one of the horses and rode off with him. However, he was released a few miles from home and returned safely. This same band hanged a cousin of my father’s on the same night and burned his house to the ground. After this catastrophe the family was left without food, winter was near, and the house was practically demolished. They managed to survive the winter and in the Spring, Jane and two or three other women left their children with relatives and walked to Ft. Smith, more than fifty miles , to get food. They got an occasional ride of a few miles from friendly people on the way, but most of the distance was covered on foot. Fort Smith’s arsenal supplied Federal soldiers’ families the necessities after September 1863. The women constructed sleds and pulled the rations most of the way home. When Ellison and his sons returned after the war, they rebuilt the house but it was smaller than the original one. Walls of one log barn are still standing. The house has been covered with weather board and rooms added. Ellison died in 1867 and the homestead went to the youngest son, Francis. Jane lived with this son and his family until her death in 1885.
(Wagon Wheels, Logan County Arkansas Historical Society Quarterly, Summer 1981, Volume 1, No. 4)
Contributed on 10/6/23 by Billsully060
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Record #: 1505316