Greenwood Club Cavalry Goes to War

School Boys Go to War

Local Youth Played Critical Role in Battle of Marianna

 By: Dale Cox

When we think of the wars of America’s distant past, the pictures that usually come to mind are of uniformed soldiers facing each other across open fields. It is a stereotypical view of 19^th century warfare, but one that also is far from reality.

For example, when local residents gathered to defend Marianna from an attack by Union troops during the War Between the States, dozens of Jackson County’s school boys were among the men who took up arms to fight. Many of them were barely teenagers and one, Frank Baltzell, was only thirteen years old.

During the final stages of the war, Florida had become so depleted of manpower that Governor John Milton, himself a resident of Jackson County, was forced to order teenagers as young as fifteen to serve in the “Home Guards.” These units were part of the state militia, the equivalent of today’s National Guard, and in 1864 authorities raised thirty-eight companies of them across Florida.

In Jackson County alone, five companies were formed. The best known of these was Captain Jesse Norwood’s Marianna Home Guards, who called themselves the “Cradle to Grave” company because the members ranged in age from fifteen to over seventy. Similar companies were also assembled in Campbellton, Greenwood, at Cowpen Pond in eastern Jackson County and, near the end of the war, at what is now Kynesville southwest of Marianna.

These companies gathered on weekends to drill, but during the week the members went about their normal lives. Most of them had only drilled a couple of times before being called to serve at the Battle of Marianna, but two of the units had considerable more training. The Campbellton company, commanded by Captain Alexander R. Godwin, was a cavalry company that had been active in guarding creek and river crossings and chasing deserters. It was the Greenwood unit, however, that exemplified best just how desperate the South had become near the end of the war.

Greenwood at the time of the Civil War was an important trading and residential community that served as the center for a vast agricultural district. The town was the site of a school for boys, the Greenwood Academy, where local families sent their sons to study under the guidance of schoolmaster Henry J. Robinson. Only in his early twenties, Robinson was already a veteran having served in the 6^th Florida Infantry.

As the war deepened, Robinson decided to form his students into a military company. They all had horses, so he organized them into a cavalry unit dubbed the Greenwood Club Cavalry. Each day, they boys would take a break from their regular studies and conduct military drills on horseback. Tragically, they were among the best drilled soldiers in Jackson County when the attack against Marianna took place in 1864.

When news reached Marianna that the city would shortly become the scene of fighting, couriers went out to summon in the home guard units. The men and boys of Marianna were called to the courthouse by the sounding of the town’s bells. Although the Marianna Home Guard legally included members as young as fifteen, pretty much anyone capable of carrying and firing a weapon showed up to fight. Among these were: Robert Armistead, 15, Frank Baltzell, 13, Thomas Baltzell, 15, Richard Baltzell, 15, Charles Nickels, 14, and Henry Stephens, 15.

In Greenwood, Captain Robinson formed his students for the ride to Marianna to join the fight. As the citizens of the community watched their children and grandchildren preparing to head into battle, they found themselves unwilling to let them go alone. The only other men in town were individuals considered too old to join the service, but they grabbed their rifles and shotguns, mounted their horses and joined in with the school boys as they headed out. Among them was seventy-six year old Frank Allen, a senior deacon and Sunday School teacher at the Greenwood Baptist Church.

The young boys of Jackson County fought well at Marianna. Although they lost the battle, they killed and wounded dozens of Union soldiers, prompting the Northern officers to marvel at how well they could fight. When asked how they had been able to do it, one local resident responded that, “They were born to it.”

Of the local men killed, wounded or captured at the Battle of Marianna, seventeen of them were under the age of sixteen. Woody Nickels, 16, was killed in the battle, his body burned almost beyond recognition when Union troops set St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on fire to drive out the last of the local defenders.

Frank Allen, the seventy-six year old Greenwood deacon who took up arms to try to protect his town’s schoolboys, also died in the battle. His body was found in the ashes of the church, next to the remains of Woody Nickels.

Editor’s Note: Two Egg native Dale Cox is the author of The Battle of Marianna, Florida, a book released nationally this year and praised by critics. The son of Clinton and Pearl Cox of Jackson County, he attended Malone High School and Chipola College and now divides his time between the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and the piney woods of Jackson County.