Dennis Trammell
Dennis Trammell (1815-1891) was a captain in the Union army during the Civil War — not to be confused with his grandfather, Dennis Trammell, who was a veteran of the Revolutionary War and one of the first settlers of the Winfield area.
Biography
Born Feb. 18, 1815 in what is now Scott County, Dennis Trammell was the son of James Trammell (1774-1826) and Rachel Starks (1793-1871). His paternal grandfather, also named Dennis Trammell, was a militia captain during the Revolutionary War.
The Trammell family moved to present-day Scott County sometime between 1807 and 1810, initially settling on Pine Creek in the Oneida area before moving to the Angel Valley area of Jellico Creek. Tax records place the elder Dennis Trammell in Knox County, Ky. in 1807, and survey records show that he owned more than 200 acres on Pine Creek in 1810.
James Trammell, the son of Revolutionary War veteran Dennis Trammell and the father of Civil War veteran Dennis Trammell, was buried at Angel-Wright Cemetery at Angel Valley when he died in 1826. His headstone is the oldest identifiable headstone in Scott County.
Dennis Trammell married Mary “Polly” Baker. They had at least eight children together: Eliza Jane (born about 1835), Emeline “Millie” (born about 1835), James (1837), Marion (1838), Armilda (1842), William (1845), Rachel (1846) and Dennis Winfield Scott (1850).
Trammell is also believed to have fathered a child, named Ewell, with Camilla Blankenship.
Trammell also had at least four children with Vina LuAnn Bowling, whom he would marry following the death of his wife, Polley, in 1873. Those children were: Rheuminta Jane (born 1857), Hugh Hogan (1859), Andrew Johnson (1862) and Mary Ann (1868).
Following Vina’s death in 1886, Trammell married a third time to Pherbia Hughett Lloyd in 1890.
Civil War
Dennis Trammell served as one of the first justices of the peace in Scott County following its formation in 1849. He was also appointed a trustee of the Huntsville Academy when it was established in 1851.
After the Civil War began in 1861, Scott County quickly became a haven for lawlessness and raids by Confederate guerrillas, targeted in part for its loyalty to the Union. Following Tennessee’s secession vote in June 1861, Scott County leaders met in Huntsville to declare the Free and Independent State of Scott.
At another meeting in December 1861, responding to the lawlessness and the Confederate raids, a group of 71 men met at the county courthouse in Huntsville to form the Scott County Home Guard. Trammell was not one of those men, but he later joined the Home Guard, and was appointed a captain.
Later, when Gen. Ambrose Burnside encamped in the Winfield area as he marched his 10,000-man-strong army through Scott County towards Knoxville, he enlisted many members of the Home Guard, including Trammell. The men served in Company A of the 1st East Tennessee National Guard.
At one point while Trammell was away from home, his farm was raided by a Confederate regiment and his home was burned. As told by historian Esther Sharp Sanderson, “During (Trammell’s) absence from home, his house on Jellico Creek was burned by the Rebels. However, they allowed his wife Polley, who was blind, to be led safely from the house. The family spent the winter in a cave at Camp Safe on Jellico Creek and survived by eating ‘snow birds.'”
That raid likely occurred on Nov. 7, 1862, when a large number of Confederate forces entered Scott County from Kentucky. During that same raid, the Rebels stole 89 horses from various farms in the Winfield area. A separate detachment stole $690 in gold from the home of Carwell Cross in the Smith Creek area and drove away 14 of his horses. As they continued to burn houses and shoot livestock along the route from the Buffalo area to Huntsville, they came across three men — Ransom Vanover, Larken Cross and Oliver Duncan. Vanover was enlisted in the Union army. He was home on furlough, and was wearing his Union uniform. He and Cross were shot and their bodies hanged in an apple orchard. Duncan managed to escape.
After reading a newspaper account of that raid, Congressman Horace Maynard wrote to Maj. Gen. Henry Wager Halleck — who was at the time in command of the entire Union army — and said, “From that small county have gone many soldiers, now in our service, leaving their homes to such devastation as is here described. Oh, Lord, how long?”
Death
Dennis Trammell died on June 16, 1891, at age 76. He is buried at Trammell Cemetery on Jellico Creek, where each of his first two wives are also buried with matching headstones. His third wife, Pherbia Hughett Lloyd, is buried at Byrd Cemetery in Huntsville.