Julia Marcum
Julia Ann Marcum (November 7, 1844 – May 9, 1936) was a school teacher best remembered for helping her family fend off an attack by Confederate soldiers at their Buffalo Creek home in Scott County during the Civil War.
Early Life
Julia Marcum was born November 7, 1844 in Scott County, the daughter of Hiram C. Marcum and Permelia Huff Marcum. The Marcum family was one of Scott County’s earliest pioneer families, and Hiram Marcum was born on Buffalo Creek east of Huntsville in 1813. His parents, Arthur Marcum and Anna Bransgrove, had migrated to Tennessee from Virginia.
Julia Marcum was the third of five children. Her siblings included Dedany M. Marcum, Minerva Marcum, Claborn Marcum and Martha E. Marcum.
Union Loyalty
Hiram Marcum was a slaveowner; he was listed in the 1860 census as owning a one-year-old black girl. He was one of nine slaveowners in Scott County at the time of secession.
However, Marcum — like most Scott Countians — was fiercely loyal to the Union. Julia Marcum later wrote, “Hiram Marcum was for freedom of our nation and its liberties for the people. In the year of 1861, the secedents declared war against the North. Father stood for the Union and its principles.”
Hiram Marcum, his daughter wrote, was “a farmer, lived on his farm, made a living and was a happy, law-abiding Christian man and also his family. He stood for the flag, the freedom of America, and its perfect laws.”
Scott County voted against secession in June 1861 by a margin of 151-19. Marcum was one of several Scott County scouts who helped escort East Tennesseans who were slipping north into Kentucky to join the Union Army to the state line several miles north of his home and out of Confederate territory.
Confederate Attack
More: Scott County’s Civil War heroine, a chapter of “Enclave,” which can be purchased from Barnes & Noble.
On September 7, 1861, approximately three dozen soldiers from the 11th Tennessee regiment, which was encamped on Buffalo Creek, raided the Marcum home.
Hiram Marcum had heard rumors that the Rebels intended to kill him for giving aid to East Tennessee men who were escaping northward to join the Union Army, and he hid in the woods at night, away from the house, to avoid being ambushed.
“They sent their armies there to kill and destroy our men, women and property,” Julia Marcum wrote. “They came to our house and hunted for Marcum, watched night and day to kill him because he was a union man for the federal side and threatened his family with death if we did not tell where he was.”
The attack occurred at 2 a.m. on the morning of September 7. The Confederate soldiers demanded that Hiram Marcum be turned over, or the women of the home would be killed and their bodies burned in the house.
One of the soldiers began choking Permelia Marcum, Julia Marcum’s mother. Didama Marcum ran upstairs to get a candle for light, and the soldier grabbed her and threatened to cut her throat.
Another daughter, Minerva Marcum, grabbed an axe. Julia grabbed another axe. As they did, two more soldiers burst through the door. One of them swung at Julia with his bayonet. She managed to strike him in the face and chest with her axe. She wrote, “Cut him to the hollow and split his chin open with the axe, getting the best of him.” The soldier dropped his gun and pleaded, “Don’t chop me any more.”
However, the soldier was able to retrieve his gun and struck Julia Marcum in the forehead with his bayonet. “Burst my skull, knocked my brains out, put out my left eye and shot the third finger off my write hand,” she wrote.
It was at that point that Hiram Marcum, flushed from hiding, burst through the front door and finished off the invader by shooting him.
The remaining Confederate soldiers fled in the mayhem. But 16-year-old Julia Marcum was gravely wounded and was not expected to last through the night. Her 14-year-old brother, Clayburn, grabbed the dead Rebel soldier’s horse and rode through the night, begging for help at neighbors’ farms.
Aftermath
Col. George W. Gordon, one of the field officers in command of the 11th Tennessee and a man who would play a key role in the formation of the Ku Klux Klan after the war, brought some of his soldiers to retrieve their dead comrade. When he saw Julia Marcum’s wounds, he sent for the regiment’s doctors at their camp.
“They dressed my wounds and took the dead man away,” Julia Marcum wrote. “We were left in a terrible fix to the mercy of the Rebels but they went away.”
Julia Marcum was bedridden for three months and never fully recovered from her wounds.
Second attack
In January 1862, the Rebels returned to the Marcum farm on Buffalo Creek. Julia’s cousin, George Marcum, was at home on leave from the Union Army at the time. He was not in uniform, and was waiting for a chance to slip through the Confederate troops and head north to rejoin his company.
When Confederate troops approached that morning, Julia Marcum ran from the house to warn George, who was hiding in the barn. One of the soldiers fired at her, missing but cutting a lock of hair from her head. George Marcum was gunned down as he fled the barn. The soldiers threatened to kill Julia and Didama, but left the farm. George Marcum died a few hours later.
The second attack was enough to convince the Marcums to leave Buffalo Creek. Hiram Marcum joined the Union Army. He was assigned to the 13th Cavalry of Tennessee, but died of smallpox in Nashville in February 1864, at the age of 51. He was buried at a military cemetery in Nashville.
The rest of the family sought refuse in Casey County, Ky., northwest of modern-day Somerset. They never returned to their Buffalo Creek farm, which was sold by Scott County Court after the war to satisfy taxes owed on the property.
After the war
The Marcum family moved to Flat Lick Creek northeast of Somerset, Ky. Permelia died in August 1865, just after the war ended, at the age of 53. She is buried at Flat Lick Baptist Church.
Didama Marcum married Dr. Lafayette Sprout in Kentucky. She died in 1908 and is buried at Highland Cemetery in Williamsburg, Ky.
Minerva Marcum married Albert Wolford, a brother of Union Col. Frank Wolford. She died in Casey County, Ky.
Clayburn Marcum married Emma Brown in Casey County, Ky.
Martha Marcum married John Ford.
Julia Marcum returned to Tennessee and was a schoolteacher for 12 years before her injuries forced her to retire. She petitioned Congress for a Civil War pension. It was eventually granted, thanks to efforts of Col. Frank Wolford, who was elected to Congress after the war. She was one of only a handful of women to be granted a Civil War pension, and was the only woman in the United States granted a pension as a combatant in the war. Her pension was $30 a month, which would have been worth about $620 a month today.
In 1926, when Julia Marcum wrote a short autobiography, all of her brothers and sisters and their spouses had died. “I am still here yet to enjoy the great blessings of life and God’s love,” she wrote.
Death
Julia Marcum died of pneumonia at her Williamsburg, Ky. home on May 9, 1936. She was buried at the Highland Cemetery, near her sister Didama.
Today, a plaque on the lawn of the Whitley County Courthouse in downtown Williamsburg, Ky. recognizes “Aunt Julia” Marcum as the only woman to receive a U.S. pension as a fighter during the Civil War.