MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PRICE

(1840-1923)

Born 10 October 1840 in Benton (now Calhoun) County, Alabama, the tenth of fifteen children born to Sterling Russell Price and Alcista Autrey. The family moved to Texas in 1848 and homesteaded approximately 700 acres in Smith County, just west of Tyler near what is today the Pounds Field Airport. In 1859, S. R. Price sold the Smith County farm and purchased over 900 acres on the headwaters of Kickapoo Creek about five miles northwest of Brownsboro, Henderson County, where they farmed cotton and corn and raised cattle, hogs, and a few horses.

Marquis, known as “Pal” to his family and friends, lived and worked at home until the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1860, he joined a local state militia unit and received his first military training. In 1861, along with brothers George J. and Benjamin Franklin, he joined the Seventeenth (Moore’s) Texas Cavalry Regiment, which was organized at Tyler. In February, 1862, they were mustered in as part of Company C and ordered to Dallas to rendezvous with other Texas regiments. From Dallas, they were sent to Arkansas, and participated in numerous skirmishes and minor battles. In July, 1862, the regiment gave up their horses due to the difficulties of finding forage in the area where they were operating, and was re- organized as the Seventeenth Texas Cavalry (Dismounted). For the remainder of the war they fought as infantry.

In late 1862, they marched to Arkansas Post, a fort on the Arkansas River, and there became part of the garrison.

The fort was attacked by a Federal force under General John. J. McClernand on 9 January, 1863, and surrendered two days later. The captured Confederate troops were loaded onto steamers and sent up the Mississippi River to Cairo, Illinois and transported overland by train to Chicago, where they were imprisoned at Camp Douglas.

Conditions on this journey were horrible: cold, rain, sleet, and snow. The river was choked with ice. Most of the prisoners did not have adequate clothing or blankets and were forced to travel exposed on the decks of the transports.

Regular rations were not issued and the men had to survive on what they could scrounge. They arrived at their destination exhausted, hungry, and sick. Conditions at Camp Douglas did little to improve their lot. Mud, inadequate housing, lack of sanitation, dirty water, and poor food led to disease and death. George and Benjamin both became ill and died shortly after arriving in February. Pal contracted typhoid fever and was so close to death that he became

comatose and was actually placed on a pile of bodies in a morgue. Regaining consciousness, he cried out until he was heard and carried to the barracks where others of his company cared for him until he regained his health.

(A comrade obtained a large “mustard plaster” through the graces of a sympathetic guard and applied it to Pal’s back and chest to “sweat” him. It proved to be so hot that it blistered him and he later declared that he didn’t know which was worse, the disease or the cure.)The Seventeenth remained at Camp Douglas until May, 1863, when they were transported by rail to City Point ,Virginia, and exchanged.

After a brief period of rest and reorganization in Northern Virginia, the regiment was marched south to Tennessee where it became part of General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. At this point in time, Pal’s official position was Private, Company C, Seventeenth Texas Cavalry, Deshler’s Brigade, Cleburne’s Division, Cheatham’s Corps, Army of Tennessee. General Cleburne had maintained sharpshooting units in his division since the battle of Shiloh and when the Seventeenth was attached, Pal was one of the marksmen chosen from his company and except for occasional and brief returns to his unit, spent the rest of the war on detached duty. This meant that he traveled with the sharpshooters to wherever the army was in closest contact with the enemy and tried to make life miserable for the men on the other side. The sharpshooters were equipped with imported English Whitworth long-range rifles fitted with telescopic sights. In tests, sharpshooters using these weapons hit targets the size of a man at ranges exceeding 1,700 yards. He later stated that throughout the war, he shot at hundreds, maybe over a thousand Federal officers and soldiers at long range, but was only sure of killing one, a Yankee officer who rode a horse right up to him during a battle. During the remainder of the war, Cleburne’s Division gained the reputation of being the best -led and hardest hitting division in the army, winning honors in battle after battle in Tennessee and during the fighting around Atlanta, and his “Texas Brigade”was the heart of the division. General Cleburne was killed and his division mostly destroyed at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee on 30 November 1864. When the Army of Tennessee finally surrendered in late April, 1865, of the 117 original members of Company C, only five remained to be paroled.

Despite all the killing he had been involved in, the thing that Pal was most proud of from his wartime service was saving a life. In June, 1864, while back with his unit from sharpshooter duty, the Seventeenth became involved in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. On the morning of June 16, while moving from one set of entrenchments to another they were caught in the open by heavy Federal infantry fire. Company C’s Captain Bryan Marsh was struck in the left arm and right hand by rifle balls. He fell immobilized and bleeding to death as his men continued to retreat. Pal noticed that his captain was missing and went back under fire to locate him. Fortunately, he found him quickly, picked him up and carried him to the regimental field hospital, where the arm and three fingers of the hand were amputated. Captain Marsh survived the war to become a Texas Ranger and Sheriff of Smith County, Texas.

He always credited Pal with saving his life.

After the War, Pal returned to Texas to an incredible scenario. His father had died in April, 1863, five of his six brothers had died in Confederate service, and the sixth brother, Howard, had run away to avoid conscription. His mother and one of his sisters had been running the farm almost alone for over two years, at the same time taking care of a widowed sister-in-law and orphaned niece. Property and commodity values had plummeted and money was hard to come by. Refusing to be discouraged, he went right to work, and in less than a year had the farm back in shape. On 16 May 1866, he married Mary Frances Lowery, whose family owned a nearby farm. Over the next twenty-eight years they had sixteen children, the last being our grandmother, Lottie Florence Price Temple. Sometime after 1870, for reasons unknown, Pal moved his growing family back to Smith County, then returned to the Henderson County homestead in the 1880's. The farm was extremely productive and successful even while neighbors were struggling. In the 1890's, Pal bought out the other surviving heirs to his parents’ property and decided to retire. He sold the farm in 1904 and moved to Brownsboro, using the money from the sale to purchase several dozen lots, build a home for his family, construct five rent houses, purchase a livery stable, and make other investments. He never lost his touch with the land, however, maintaining a beautiful garden and raising a few hogs to stock his smokehouse until well into his seventies. He was also very active in Confederate veterans activities, and took advantage of his free Confederate veterans railroad pass to attend reunions and meetings as far away as Little Rock and Atlanta. One of his greatest pleasures was taking the train from Brownsboro into Tyler or Athens (each about a twenty mile trip) to visit, reminisce, and although nominally a Baptist, share a drink with old friends. He was always welcome at Captain Marsh’s house.

On 25 March 1923, Pal started out from his house to go to the store for sugar and forgot his walking cane. Mary Frances called to him to come back and get it, but when he reached the back porch, he slipped and fell, breaking his hip. The family carried him to his bed and Dr. T. O. Wells was called. Dr. Wells set the hip and put him in a sort of traction device consisting of a wooden half-cast (described as a “trough”) and a weight suspended from his foot, but the trauma of such an injury at his age proved to be more than he could stand, and he died three days later. His final resting place is in the shade of a beautiful old oak in Asbury Cemetery, Van Zandt County, just a short distance from the old homestead where he spent much of his life.

This biography is based primarily on the oral reminiscences of Marquis D. L. Price as told to his daughter Lottie Price Temple, who then passed the stories on to her children and grandchildren. Much of the information has been confirmed through research in the United States Censuses, various records of Smith and Henderson Counties, and the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. Non-primary sources consulted include Stonewall of the West: Patrick Cleburne and the Civil War by Craig L. Symonds, This Band of Heroes: Granbury’s Texas Brigade by James M. McCaffrey, and One of Cleburne’s Command: the Reminiscences and Diary of Capt. Samuel T. Foster ed. By Norman D. Brown.

Submitted by Charley Temple

Marcus D. Lafayette Price June 16, 1921

Price Family Reunion Sept. 1, 1940

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