Bailey, Beth and everyone else,
Below is the article regarding Samuel's mother, Jennetta Mountcastle Carden.
I'm not certain, but I believe her husband Robert Carden died in 1841 and is
buried in the Rogersville Cemetery.
Chuck
Mrs. JEANETTA MOUNTCASTLE CARDEN
May be Oldest "Confederate Mother"
Written for the Sentinel by A. H. Webster
Special to The Sentinel
Jefferson City, Jan 14
Three miles east of this city lives Mrs. JENNETTA MOUNTCASTLE CARDEN, than
whom probably no more intelligent and interesting lady of her age now lives
in this southland. Born at Edgefield, South Carolina, January 10, 1812, she
has seen ninety-three winters ands enjoys the distinction as far as can be
learned of being the oldest living "confederate Mother".
She is also entitled to membership as a Daughter of The American Revolution.
Though her father did not fight in that great war, he volunteered and stood
in readiness with his regiment to march to the defense of his country, the
war closing before he was needed.
MRS. CARDEN was the fifth child of William and Susan Mountcastle, who reared
a family of ten, five sons and five daughters. The late Major Andrew
Mountcastle, who lived for many years at this city, being one of the sons,
and she is the aunt of Tennessee's distinguished member of the democratic
national committee, Hon. R. E. L. Mountcastle, of Knoxville, and of the late
Ralph Mountcastle.
Her father was one of two English brothers who came to America when he was a
lad of 14 years of age. He settled in Virginia and his brother in
Pennsylvania. William married a Miss Heart of South Carolina, a daughter of
a prominent planter of that state.
When quite young her parents moved to Tennessee and settled in Jonesboro,
where they lived several years, then moved to Rogersville, where they lived
many years and where the family mostly grew up and where she met and was
wooed by a gallant young Tennessean, ROBERT CARDEN, to whom she was married,
March 18, 1835. As the fruits of this marriage, she raised two sons and one
daughter, viz.: SAMUEL R. CARDEN, who served through the civil war in Col.
Ashby's dashing regiment of cavalry and with General Joe Wheeler, from 1861
to April 1865 and went through many a hard fought battle without a scratch,
and lived to get home and is the stay and support of his old mother in the
closing of her long and eventful life. He is 64 years of age, hale and
hardy, and never fails to attend every confederate reunion, no matter where.
The other son, JOSEPH, who served in a Texas regiment, never lived to get
home, but gave up his life for the defense of his beloved southland, at
Shreveport, La., in 1865.
The daughter, MRS. DEVINA, died some two years ago. MRS. MOUNTCASTLE
belonged to one of the old and cultured southern families and was given a
liberal education, attending the best schools of the state, being at
Rogersville and Athens, Tenn. After completing her education, having a large
acquaintance, being highly cultured and popular, she was sought after as a
school teacher, and although being a daughter of a wealthy and prominent
parents and not compelled to earn a livelihood, she taught school for quite
a number of years in East Tennessee, and quite a while at Athens, Tenn., and
became one of the most prominent teachers in East Tennessee at that day and
time, until her marriage.
When a young lady she moved in the best circles of society and has met and
known many of the prominent public men of that day, among whom were General
Andrew Jackson, when he came to Rogersville as a young practicing attorney
attending court. Landon C. Hayness, John Calhoun and Andrew Johnson.
While a girl of sixteen or eighteen she saw Jackson many times when with
Judge Peck and many lawyers they boarded at the old Rogers tavern in
Rogersville, which was situated near her father's home. She and her
schoolmates would pass by the large porch in front of the tavern where
Jackson and all the court people stopped. This tavern was a one-story log
affair with a large room at each end and one in the center. The family occup
ied one of the end rooms and the boarders attending court the other, and the
one in the center was the dining room, the kitchen being several feet in the
rear and opposite the dining room. This was the only tavern in the town and
received all of the patronage of the day and was frequently the temporary
home of the prominent men of the country.
She remembers that the fire place and hearth to the large room where the
lawyers stayed was very broad and wide, and at one time, when Jackson was
there the tavern people were placing new rock in, and repairing the hearth;
that he went and dressed out a handsome, smooth rock, carried it in and
placed it in the hearth, and sat upon it, and ever after it was called
Jackson's rock, and time and again the old tavern was repaired and the
hearth re-laid, but care was always taken to preserve and put back in its
place this same rock: and it was in the hearth when last she saw it. They
country at that time, around about the town was mostly a canebrake
wilderness.
Her husband died at Rogersville (where they had lived since their marriage),
in 1845, leaving her the three children to raise and educate, which she
succeeded in well doing.
When the great civil was came, she was for the union if it could stand and
be in peace, but said she told a neighbor when talking about succession that
if the north and the south could not live in peace they had better separate,
and when the state of Tennessee went out of the union she gave her all for
the land she loved so well, and bid a fond farewell and her blessing to her
two sons, as they left her to take up arms in defense of their home land,
one whose bright young face she was never to look into again. Being alone,
her married daughter living in Texas at the beginning of the war, she went
to live with the daughter and remained until its close. She then returned to
Tennessee and settled on the farm where she now lives. Here, surrounded with
every comfort and where every want and attention is supplied by the loving
hands of her devoted son, SAMUEL and her niece, Mrs. Susan Hendrix. Her
eyesight being dim and not being able to read the old family Bible - which
looks like it might be a hundred years old - these friends are a source of
great pleasure. She joined the Presbyterian Church at Rogersville when 18
years of age, and has been a devoted Christian ever since, and is at this
time a member of the Presbyterian Church of this City and has been a
continuous subscriber to that great religious journal, "The Christian
Observer", for the past eighty-eight years, which paper is only one year
younger than she, having been established in the year 1813.
It is a pleasure to meet and converse with this refined and cultured witness
of God's handiwork and mercy in enabling her to live so long and useful a
life, which life has been full of Christian work and beautiful example to so
many generations of her kith and kin and friends who have passed over the
great river years and years ago. The saintly lady whose mind is as clear as
though only fifty years of age delights to converse on things of the long
ago. Her memory being good, she can remember many interesting happenings, of
her girlhood days. It is the wish of her many and devoted friends that ere
the close of the sunset of her long and beautiful life shall appear, she
will celebrate her one hundredth birthday