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| Magnolia, photo by Alan on Flickr |
In researching my and my husband’s Cherokee County, Georgia
roots, I’ve learned that a number of them served in several companies of the
Georgia Infantry. There are a number of
good resources available for gathering this information, free resources such as
The Roster of Confederate Soldiers in
Georgia available on HaitiTrust and the National Parks Service Soldiers and
Sailors database, as well as subscription services such as fold3.com and Ancestry.com.
But what about the women whose family members where fighting
in the war? Nancy Mauldin Hillhouse, the
2 Great Grandmother of my husband, was one of those ancestors about whom I had
not been able to find much information.
She was easy to find in the 1840-1880 federal census records, always in Cherokee County, Georgia. Later in The
History of Cherokee County, I found a brief mention of her quilting
ability.(1)
She became more real to me as I was looking at The Roster of Confederate Soldiers in
Georgia. My intent was to see which
of my relatives might have been serving in the Confederate States Army in a
unit with my husband’s relatives. As I
was taking notes of names and regiments to check within our family trees, I
noticed my growing list of Hillhouse men serving in the Confederate Army.
Below is a table showing the soldiers along with their units. Looking through the family tree, I saw they
all had a relationship with Nancy Hillhouse.
| Name | Military Unit | Relationship to Nancy |
| Elijah Hillhouse | Co D, 28th Regiment, Georgia Infantry | husband |
| Samuel W Hillhouse | Co D, 28th Regiment, Georgia Infantry | brother-in-law |
| John Floyd Hillhouse | Co B, 34th Regiment, Georgia Infantry | son |
| George Haynes | Co B, 34th Regiment, Georgia Infantry | son-in-law |
| Robert W Hillhouse | Co B, 34th Regiment, then ransferred to Co D, 28th Regiment, Georgia Infantry | son |
| Thomas Nelson | Co B, 34th Regiment, Georgia Infantry | son-in-law |
It was sobering to think of that many people so
closely related were involved in the war at the same time. It was numbing to realize that when Nancy’s husband died at
the Battle of Richmond in 1862, she still had two sons fighting in the war as
well as two sons-in-law and a brother-in-law.
Nancy
was one of so many in this same situation.
Life still had to go on, there were children to raise, the farm to manage, maybe even find a little time to quilt. In my mind, Nancy and these other women had
to be “steel magnolias”.
(1) Marlin, Lloyd G. The History of Cherokee County. Florida: Wolfe Publishing Co. 1997.
