James Emanuel Wilson
James Emanuel Wilson (1819 – Feb. 26, 1862) was a Union soldier from Scott County who died during the Civil War.
See Also: Scott Countians killed in war
Biography
Born in Montgomery County, Va. about 1819, James E. Wilson was the son of Marcus Wilson (1795-1871) and Susannah Moore (1799-1886). He was the oldest of 13 children. His siblings included Joshua Dauswell Wilson (1821-1895), Andrew Wilson (1823-1912), Elizabeth Perkins (1828-1879), Mary Ann Creekmore (1834-1912), Burrell K. Wilson (1834-1884), William Franklin Wilson (1839-1914), Emily Ryan (1846-1907), and others.
James’ grandparents were Joshua Wilson II (1767-1835) and Sarah Lykins (1767-1878), and Isaac Lewis Moore (1779-1853) and Sarah Carico (1778-1858).
The Wilson family moved from Virginia to southeastern Kentucky between 1831 and 1834, settling in Whitley County.
James Wilson married Elizabeth Mahala Strunk (about 1821 – 1911) in 1838. She was the daughter of Abraham Strunk (1795-1880) and Abigail Daugherty (1798-1860). They had eight children: Gabriel Ballinger (1839-1917), Emanuel (Manuel, born about 1842), Serepta (born about 1844), Armelda Woodrum (1847-1917), Henry M. (1851-1895), Mary (born about 1855), Leroy (born about 1857), and Isaac (born about 1860).
James and Mahala moved to Scott County sometime after 1840 but prior to 1850.
Manuel Wilson married Hannah Armelda Gilreath (1842) on Dec. 20, 1861, in Scott County. She was the daughter of John Lindsey Gilreath (1811-1864) and Mary Ann Gregory (1811-1896) of Whitley County, Ky. They had a son, Manuel Wilson (1862-1922). Hannah also had a son named Solomon (1858-1900); it’s not clear who his father was. His birth record lists him as Solomon Gilreath and does not include a father’s name. He was listed in the 1870 and 1880 censuses as Wilson, but by the 1900 census had gone back to Gilreath.
Civil War
In Paul Roy’s Scott County in the Civil War, he lists a James Manuel Wilson Jr. who died during the war. That was actually a reference to James Emanuel Wilson. However, his son, James Emanuel “Manuel” Wilson Jr., also died during the war, just weeks before his father.
James Wilson enlisted in the Union army on Oct. 1, 1861 and was assigned to Co. G, 2nd Tennessee Infantry. He died of typhoid fever on Feb. 26, 1862, near Williamsburg, Ky.
Manuel Wilson enlisted in Co. G, 7th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry on Aug. 20, 1861. He died of pneumonia in Laurel County, Ky. on Feb. 2, 1862.
Aftermath
It is written that Mahala Strunk drove a wagon from Scott County to Williamsburg to pick up her husband’s body and return it to Scott County. He was buried at Wilson Cemetery in the Pleasant Grove area near Winfield. A military marker was placed at his grave in August 1888.
Manuel Wilson was initially buried on a farm near London, Ky. His body was later reinterred at Camp Nelson National Cemetery in Nicholasville, Ky.
Mahala remarried to John Rice on Nov. 11, 1864, in Scott County. It is commonly written that he served in the Union army (Co. D, 154th Illinois Infantry) and died of chronic diarrhea at Cumberland General Hospital in Nashville, Tenn. on July 31, 1865. It’s not entirely clear that John Rice from Illinois was the same John Rice who married Mahala Strunk Wilson. John Rice from Illinois appears to have enlisted in the Union army in Illinois in April 1865, and never lived in Tennessee. He’s buried at Nashville National Cemetery.
Regardless, Mahala’s second husband died shortly after their marriage. By 1870 she was married to Edward “Ned” Butler (born 1815). Their marriage may have occurred in 1866. They had a son, Marcus Butler, born in 1870, and a second son who died in infancy.
Ned was buried at Wilson Cemetery when he died, sometime after 1880 but before 1900. Mahala died in 1911 and was buried at Wilson Cemetery. Her stone lists her name as Wilson. She applied for a Civil War pension as a remarried widow in 1903.
Hannah Gilreath Wilson apparently did not remarry. She died on February. 20, 1894 in Idaho. She was buried in Harrison County, Ky. She had a brother, Benjamin Gilreath, who was killed in Georgia during the war.