1861. That was a real important year in our country’s history, for in 1861 this country split in two and the North and South went to war against each other. It’s a war that’s come down to us by many names. The War Between the States. The War to Free the Slaves. In the North it was called the War of Southern Rebellion; in the South, the War of Northern Aggression. The Civil War.
When the war began in April 1861, young men all over the North and South looked at each other and said, “We’ve got to sign up. This whole shooting match will be over in three months. If we don’t sign up now, we’ll miss our chance.”
In southwest Indiana, near the town of Winslow, one young man replied, “Can’t go. I made a promise to Maggie, and I aim to keep it.” The young man was Cyrus Humphrey. Maggie was Margaret Jones, a farmer’s daughter whose family farm was next door to the farm of Cyrus Humphrey’s family. Cyrus and Maggie had grown up together, and the summer of 1861 was the summer Cyrus had promised Maggie the two of them would be married.
So when his friends left, Cyrus stayed behind. His friends soon became members of the 24th Indiana Regiment. Cyrus stayed home, married Maggie, and the two of them set up housekeeping in a small cabin on their own farm, created from land given partly from his family and partly from hers.
Three months came and three months went. The war kept on.
By fall Cyrus and Maggie knew a child was on the way, so they felt their marriage was off to a fine start.
“Christmas,” folks said, “this war will be over by Christmas.” But Christmas came and Christmas went. The war kept on.
That winter Cyrus made a cradle for the coming baby. Maggie wove a coverlet for the baby’s cradle, and she knitted socks for Cyrus. She had a feeling Cyrus was going to become part of the war, and she knew all soldiers need good socks.
In April 1862 word arrived in Winslow of a battle in Tennessee, a battle that had taken place outside a small church by the name of Shiloh. The battle lasted just two days, April 6th and April 7th, but by the end of those two days thousands of young men from the North and the South lay dead and thousands more lay dying. Cyrus’s friends from the 24th Indiana Regiment were there at Shiloh, but they were among the Union reinforcements who arrived after the end of the first day’s fighting, so they weren’t as badly hurt as the Union soldiers who had been surprised by the attack.
When word of Shiloh reached Winslow, Cyrus turned to Maggie, “Maggie, this war’s going to take everybody, and I need to go do my part. But I promise you I will not leave until our crops are planted and our baby is safe in this world.”
Cyrus kept his promise. After the baby was born, once Cyrus could see both Maggie and the baby were strong and healthy, he said, “Maggie, I’ve got to go. I’ve kept my promise. The baby’s here. Our crops are in the ground. I’ve talked with your little brother. He says he’ll come help you at harvest time. I promise you, Maggie, I’ll tell the men I serve with that if anything happens to me, I want them to send my wedding ring back to you.”
“Cyrus Humphrey! The only way I want your wedding ring back is on your hand, with you walking it through the door.”
“I’ll do my best, Maggie,” he said, and he left. It was not long before Cyrus was a member of the 80th Indiana Regiment.
In late August word reached Winslow of General Kirby Smith’s invasion of Kentucky, and Maggie felt Cyrus had made the right decision. Summer ended, fall came. Maggie and her brother began harvesting the crops.
On the afternoon of October 8th Maggie rested on her porch. Her baby slept in the nearby cradle. Maggie watched Cyrus’s dogs play with each other, and she thought about her husband. As she thought, she twisted her wedding ring, and she hoped, wherever he was, Cyrus was taking as much comfort from his wedding ring as she was from hers.
It was moving on toward dark, so Maggie took the cradle inside, lit a fire, made herself a little supper, and sat down to eat. Then she heard the dogs. Oh, she knew how the dogs sounded when they scrapped with each other, but what she heard sounded like a fight. She lit a lantern and hurried outside. Sure enough, the dogs were fighting over something. Maggie moved closer, and she could see they were fighting over a hand. She had to kick at the dogs to make them let it loose. Then she knelt down to examine the hand. She saw a ring on a finger. Maggie worked the ring off and dropped it in her pocket. She picked up her lantern and the hand. She set the hand up in the fork of a tree so the dogs wouldn’t be able to get at it. Then she walked into the house.
Maggie set the lantern on the table, sat down in her chair, and took out the ring. She examined it by lantern light, and then Maggie began to weep. For inside the ring she had read the initials MH and CH—for Margaret Humphrey, Cyrus Humphrey. Maggie knew she was holding Cyrus’s wedding ring.
The next morning the hand was gone.
Quite some time passed before Maggie received official word that Cyrus had been among the first killed when the 80th Indiana Regiment went into its first battle—the Battle of Perryville, in Kentucky.
There were those who were amazed the ring had found its way back to Maggie. But Maggie? She wasn’t amazed, for she knew she had married Cyrus Humphrey, a man who always did his best to keep his promises.
So how in the world does a story set in Indiana wind up in a book of Kentucky tales? Answer: Market forces and historical fiction.
Market forces? In 1995, I was hired to tell stories for “Literally, a Haunted House,” a multi-night event at the Culbertson Mansion State Historic Site in New Albany, Indiana.1 While brave souls waited to enter the “haunted” carriage house, others visited the formal parlor, where my job was to tell them haunting tales that were either set in or could have been told during Victorian days. So, I needed appropriate stories to tell. I had run across two versions of a Civil War–era legend about the return of a wedding ring, one collected by Michael Paul Henson,2 the other by Berniece T. Hiser.3 Kentucky was the setting for both versions, but other details varied, including the main characters’ names. Henson reported collecting the tale from Daniel Buck, of Barwick, Breathitt County, Kentucky, in 1958. In Henson’s version the main characters are named Josephine Tyler and George Thomas. George joins the Union Army, leaving when Josephine is pregnant. Josephine receives three letters from George, and in the third letter he tells her he “would see that, somehow, she would get his wedding ring if he should be killed.”4 When no more letters arrive, Josephine contacts the War Department and learns George had been killed before he could have written the last letter. In Henson’s version the ring reappears in 1865.5 In both the Hiser and Henson versions the wife finds the ring because of a ruckus raised by the dogs and the owner of the ring is verified by the initials engraved inside. In both versions the hand is gone by the next day.
Below is the Hiser-collected version of the story:
We lived [in] the last house above the head of the Creek, one of the little neighbor boys told an inquiring stranger, but even there the stork came. In those days there was no doctor for many a mile, so when one of us was to be born, my father went off through the wilderness and brought in a granny woman. I will never forget the one who come when Sister Audrey was born, for it was her that first made us aware of how horrible war can be. She was Aunt Polly Daingy McIntosh. She was then close to seventy-five, a real old withified looking soul, smoked a cob pipe, and wore a red kerchief tied around her head. We children were mortally afraid of her, and it was no wonder—the tales she and my Grandma Sally told as we sat scrounged around the fire at night! Witches, rapping spirits, tables being moved by unseen hands! Brother Oak and I set with our backs pressed to Mom’s knees, trying to make ourselves as small and unnoticeable as possible, but no matter how we shrank, came the moment when Aunt Polly would say in her long mountain drawl, Old sister,—(or brother, as the case may be)—go fetch me a splinter to light my pipe wit, and one of us would have to go into the fearful dark of the new room Dad was building onto our house and get her some shavings where he was hand-planing planks for the ceilings, and you can imagine the gladness when we once more set down in front of the fire.
Bill, she would say to my father, did you ever see a hant?
Dad would say he guessed he never did; but then he would remember the time he and Uncle John Strong had ridden into Jackson Town to see Bad Tom Smith hanged and how a critter like a big dog had jumped on their horses that night and rode all the way home with them and they couldn’t shoot it off.
Did I ever tell you how I got this wedding ring? Aunt Polly would ask, after a silent respect paid to Dad’s tale, holding her skeletony old hand out to the fire so the gold ring would flash in the light.
Tell us, Oak and I would beg, in horrible fascination, for she had told it to us once a night since she came, chilling our marrow.
Well, sir, Bill, you know my man John and me had jist got married when the war over the colored people broke out, and made us a little log cabin off yond way on Frozen Creek, and our youngun Henderson was a baby in the cradle, when he rid off to Lexington town in the Low Country and jined up with the United States Gover’ment to be a soldier. I recollect, hit was in the spring of the year he went, and my pap tried to get me to bring the baby and stay with him; but I woultn’t do er, for I was a strong young gal then and felt like I would better stay at home and raise us a corn crop, fer everybody knowed in reason the fightin would be over afore winter set in. I dug me in a puore hillside a corn and beans with pumkins and cushaws here and yander in them. I took the youngun to the field wid me and laid him in the shade and hoed for who laid the chunk, and when fall come I had as fine a crap a corn as eera man on the creek, and more shucky beans than I’ve ever had since. I missed my man awful, but I tended to the cowbrute and our sow and pigs and my chickens and garden sass, and played with the baby and John’s two hound dogs Jip and Jep. Time passed on and it got to be winter. I had hard work then, getting in wood and feeding the critters, but I made it. When it got real bad weather, one of my little brothers would stay a night or so with me. About the middle of December it come a warm spell, you know how it’ll do, Bill, and I was by myself. I put Hent in his side of the bed and set by the fire and read the three letters I’d had from John since he left. Directly, after I had almost dozed off from the warmth of the fire, the two hounds let up a clamor in the yard and I heard other dogs a-snapping and snarling around the house and yard. I boldened myself up and lit out of bed, and into the yard I went in my nightwrapper, with the fat-wood light I kept ready by the fireplace. I knowed in reason they was something big a-goin on, for I had never heared sicha afore in my life. I beat them with the broom and stuck the fat-wood light in their faces fer I seed they was a-eatin something.
And, Bill, you know what hit was? (Her voice fell to a whisper). Hit was a man’s hand they was a-fightin over. They drapped it and run and I picked it up a-goin to stick it up in the forks of a sweet apple tree thare in the yard and bury it the next mornin. But when I looked closter I seed it had a wedding ring on the ring finger. I worked it off, and, Bill, hit was my man John’s ring. She took it off her bone finger and held it out to the firelight. There inside air his and my letters JM & PM. That’s how I knowed it was his’n. I laid his hand up in the forks of the tree and went inside the house. Our dogs come in by the fireside, and I took up the baby. He was a-cryin and I was too. But tears didn’t bring back my John. God knows how his hand ever got thare. Hit was gone next morning and I never could hear any tell of him from the gov’ment. I got a war pension fer several years and Hent got one till he was eighteen. I got married atter a while, for a womarn can’t live alone to do no good; but I’ve allus wore this ring, and when my second man, Jack Kilburn, died back here about twenty year ago, I took back my name of McIntosh cause I allus felt more for my John than for any othern.6
I was attracted to the tender love between husband and wife in the stories as well as the mystery of the ring’s return. So, I decided to create a work of historical fiction, building on the common threads of both legends.
Growing up I had always heard that people really had thought the Civil War would end in just three months, and that there were soldiers who wanted to become involved quickly so they would have a chance to fight. The plot of both legends had begun with the war already underway, but I knew I wanted to include this bit of history in the story I told, so I decided I would begin the story at the beginning of the war. I also realized that if I started the story earlier, I could give the main character friends who left when the war began. And what better reason could he have for staying behind than love?
To meet the requirements of the job at the Culbertson Mansion, I knew the soldier would need to be from Indiana, but where? When the curator at the Culbertson Mansion mentioned that wounded soldiers from the Battle of Shiloh had been transported to New Albany, Indiana, for medical care,7 I decided I wanted to include Shiloh in my retelling. Yet, because I did not want to lose all Kentucky connections in the story, I decided I also wanted to include Perryville, in Boyle County, site of the best-known Civil War battle in Kentucky. Fortunately, my husband, Charles Wright, is a bit of a Civil War buff and owns books that include lists of which regiments fought in which battles. Here I could learn which Indiana regiments fought at Shiloh and Perryville.8 Armed with the list of Indiana units involved in both battles, I set out to learn if soldiers from the same part of Indiana could have been in different regiments, one fighting at Shiloh, the other at Perryville. That quest led to the Kentucky Historical Society Library, where I found a publication that listed each regiment that fought in the Civil War, including where the soldiers were from and when they were mustered in. Bingo! The 24th Indiana Regiment, Company E, who fought at Shiloh, were from Pike County, Indiana. The 80th Indiana Regiment, Company H, who fought at Perryville listed soldiers as residents of Winslow, Indiana, a Pike County community.9 I now had soldiers from the same area of Indiana present at each battle.
Next, I wondered when the Indiana Regiments formed? Could the 24th have been early enough to be a three-month enlistment? No, I learned the 24th Indiana, Company E, from Pike County mustered in July 31, 1861, for a three-year enlistment. Now I was faced with a decision: Stick with the facts and omit the three-month reference? Or include the three-month reference and fudge the facts a bit? Without direct lecturing, I wanted to tell my audiences that predicting the length of a war is simply not possible. People have miscalculated in the past, and we are foolish if we think we can calculate it now. Because this was important to me, the three-month reference stayed. I elected to imply that the 24th might have been early enough to be a three-month enlistment without directly saying so, which would have been a contradiction of the 24th’s history.
And when did the 80th muster in? Was there time enough between the formations of the 24th and the 80th for the soldier to stay behind, marry, hear about Shiloh, welcome his child, and plant crops before leaving? Yes, the 80th Indiana, Company H, from Winslow, mustered in August 19, 1862—time enough. My characters now had a home.
But the soldier still lacked a name. I knew I did not want to use the name of any real soldier, but I wanted a first and last name that fit the time. Nor did I want to use either of the two sets of names used by Hiser and Henson.10 In my husband’s books I found names of officers listed.11 The given name of Cyrus was listed more than once. It seemed common enough then, and uncommon enough today, to evoke an earlier time. I had already been thinking of her as Maggie, for I knew Margaret with Maggie as a nickname had a long history. Surnames of Jones and Humphrey were also verified from the lists of soldiers. No, they were not common in the Winslow area, but I did not want anyone from that area thinking I was actually retelling the story of one of their ancestors; I was telling fiction, not fact.
As I began telling the story to audiences, I could see that over and over again Cyrus kept his word to Maggie. As time and tellings went on, I saw multiple opportunities to use the word promise as both verb and noun. That worked well, and finally the title rose up: “Promises to Keep.”
Telling this story has greatly increased my appreciation of the skills used by those folks who perform historical material in which they must remember many, many more facts than I need for telling “Promises to Keep.” I actually have a difficult time keeping some facts in my head. So I start with the first number of my house, a six, to help me recall that Shiloh was April 6th and 7th; and then Perryville was October 8th. Once I learned the 24th fought the second day of Shiloh12 and the 80th went into its first battle at Perryville,13 I had no trouble recalling that information, but dates? I needed the memory crutch—hooray for my house number!
The story’s progression from war’s beginning in April 1861, to the summer marriage, the winter work, Shiloh in April 1862, through the baby’s birth that year, followed by Perryville in October 1862 I find easier to recall, probably because I am recalling images, not factual data. Although I don’t include the details when I’m telling, I do picture the changing of the seasons, the winter indoor work, the spring planting, and the fall harvesting of the crops, and so much more as I tell the tale. Those images seem to have a natural progression that helps me recall the story. Facts are different. Even though I’ve told the story oodles of times now, I still run the regiment numbers by my husband whenever I’m thinking of telling it because his memory for specific facts is much better than mine. Thank goodness I have a Civil War buff close by!