The brochure said “...At the Magee farm it's always 1865!”
and it certainly felt that way.
Billed as “The Last Appomattox,”
the house in Kushla, Alabama, was where Union Major General Edward
Canby and Confederate Lieutenant General Richard Taylor met on April
29, 1865 to negotiate a cease fire and the surrender of the last
Confederate forces east of the Mississippi. The actual surrender took
place several days later on May 4 at nearby Citronelle, Alabama. (For
more details see my blog post on April 9, 2015.)
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| Ken McGhee on the front porch of the Jacob Magee House |
“That was a surprise!” I wrote in
my journal that night. I had visited Magnolia Cemetery in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, in 1998 and photographed B. F. Tisdale's name on the
monument there along with his wife Eliza Pratt Tisdale and other
family members. (See my blog post of January 31, 2018.) We knew from
the obituary that he had died at the home of Dr. Grace in Whistler,
now part of Mobile, but the story of where he was buried had not come
down in our branch of the family.
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| Mary Eliza Tisdale Magee |
By the time we got back to the front porch the rest of the tour group had arrived and our guide showed us
through the house. Photos of Jacob and Mary were on the mantel in the
parlor where the two generals had met. The dining room table was set for
the luncheon the generals shared after their discussions. There was
even a photo of Belle's youngest brother Charles Harry Tisdale in the
small one room museum.
General Richard Taylor, son of
President Zachary Taylor wrote in his autobiography, Destruction
and Reconstruction:
"...A
bountiful luncheon was spread, of which we partook, with joyous
poppings of champagne corks for accompaniment, the first agreeable
explosive sounds I had heard in years. The air of “Hail Columbia,”
which the band in attendance struck up, was instantly changed by
Canby's order to that of “Dixie,” but I insisted on the first,
and expressed a hope that Columbia would be again a happy land, a
sentiment honored by many libations.”
[http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/mageefarm.html]
The
Tisdale family has another connection to the Magee Farm in addition
to Aunt Mary Tisdale Magee. In 1898 the property was bought by
Alfred Henry Sturdevant and his wife Harriet Morse of Illinois. They
had six children, among them daughter Helen Morse Sturtevant who was
21 years old at the time. At a dance in Mobile Helen met a young man
named Marion Eugene Tisdale, Belle's brother. She brought him home to
meet her family and as the wagon pulled up the road to the house he
exclaimed, “This is my Aunt's house!”
On
August 15, 1903 Marion Eugene Tisdale and Helen Sturtevant were
married at Magee Farm, linking the house once again to the Tisdale
family. Unfortunately the wedding was marred by tragedy. Helen's
younger brother Bradford drowned in Chickasabougue Creek the week
before the wedding on August 9, 1903.
Marion
Eugene Tisdale, Jr. writes, “After the wedding ceremony, the bride
and groom along with Alfred Henry and Harriet Sturtevant and the
groom's mother Eliza Pratt Tisdale went out to the family cemetery
where the bride placed the flowers she had carried on the newly made
grave of her brother Bradford, near the grave of Benjamin Franklin
Tisdale, Eliza's late husband...” “...Marion
Eugene Tisdale evidently had an early stage brain cancer and was
destined to live less than 11 years after the wedding...”
Helen
and Marion had four children, Dorothy Hope, Margaret Helen, Bradford,
and Harry Lee. Harry Lee was born just four and a half months before his father died and his name was changed to Marion Eugene shortly
thereafter. His son Marion E. Tisdale Jr. is the author of the
manuscript “Some Memories of the Magee Farmhouse” quoted above. It
was on line but has now disappeared.
The
Magee Farm was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1988 and opened as a museum in 2004. In 2010 it was named a Place in
Peril, one of Alabama's most endangered places, by the Alabama
Historical Commission. It ceased operation soon afterward. I'm thankful we discovered it before it closed.
