Lewis H. McLemore, Tennessee, CSA
If this is of any interest to anyone, I'd like to find out who Lewis's parents were.
The following account was written of the battle of Perryville, Ky., 8 October, 1862, by Captain Thomas Malone, formerly of the Company “A”, “Rock City Guards”, 1st Tennessee Infantry, in Memoir of Thomas H. Malone, by Thomas H. Malone, 1928.In the battle he was serving on the staff of Brig. Gen. George Earl Maney.
“A great many of my friends were killed in this battle (Perryville, Ky., 8 October, 1862).I could not if I would give all the names, but I cannot refrain from mentioning Tom Lanier, an old charter member of the Rock City Guards, and one of the bravest and best soldiers in the army.When I saw my friend Bill Kelley, just after Col. Patterson had been killed, he told me that a great number of our old company had been killed or badly wounded, and among others he mentioned a man named McLemore, and said, “Tom, your prophecy didn’t come true.You always said that the bullet had never been molded that could break his hard head; but he was shot and killed.”I grieved, for I had the greatest respect for McLemore.I knew the brave, fearless soldier was a true, good man.I had several times had occasion to see that in defense of what he believed to right he regarded his life as nothing, and I found him to be trustworthy, so far as I knew, without limit….Sewell, McLemore and a boy of the same sort, Dan Carter, were comrades and cronies, dividing their rations, tobacco and whisky, when they had any.I had myself set them up as soldiers and had learned to value them, and when I learned that two of the three were killed I was very much grieved.The next day (after the battle of Perryville), however, while the army was in motion and I had occasion to ride along the column, I heard a voice that seemed to come to me from the dead: “Howdy Captain, “ and there was old McLemore, hatless, with a bloody rag around his head, and Joe Sewell limping between him and Dan Carter, who had all three guns.Of course, I stopped, and to hide the emotion I felt I began cussing McLemore from “Dan to Beersheba”.Carter called out to me as I rode off that “Mac”, when he was shot, thought he was killed, but he managed to say, “Here, Dan, here’s my tobacco and here’s my sweetheart’s picture,” and keeled over dead, as he thought.He said they then moved forward upon the enemy, and he and Joe, though much grieved about “Mac”, didn’t have time to think very much about anything but fighting, but just in the midst of the fiercest of the battle , when they were lying within fifty yards of the enemy, he felt somebody seize his heel.He said he thought the devil had him, but he looked back and saw “Old Mac”, his face all covered with blood, saying “Get further, Dan, and let me in!”
Note: The Only “McLemore” listed in the “Rock City Guards” is “Lewis H. McLemore, Corporal, Co. A, 1st Tn. Inf.” (Tennesseans in the Civil War, Volume II, page 279)