The Haworth Brothers Join the Union

Quaker abolitionists brothers march through the wilderness escaping Confederate conscription

When the Civil War broke out between the United States, the Confederate Army began conscripting men, particularly in divided East Tennessee where a community of Quakers were living in Jefferson County. Among them were the Haworth family who had three sons of age to be taken, and the family had some tough choices to make.

On April 8, 1862, one of the brothers, David Haworth, began a journal of his experiences. He wrote,

“Just before sundown three of us boys, my oldest Brother William C. Haworth, Isaac B., and myself left home, bid our mother and father good bye and started for Kentucky for the purpose of joining the Union Army. Old Ruben put us across the Holsten River at Stone’s Ferry in a canoe. There, John Sawyers, a guide, took charge of us. We traveled that night through the woods in single file, no one to speak above a whisper, wading creeks, and reached the widow Sawyer’s farm just before day. We lay hid in an old house at the back side of her farm; it was filled with fodder, and when night come we was called out and given instructions by Sawyer, then started on our journey for the promised land. We was soon joined by other squads until before morning, we numbered 115. And …after 4 nights of Hard marching, never traveled in a road, just at night, on the fifth day we come into London, Kentucky, where the government had a recruiting station. There were stars and stripes on a big flag pole and we marched around that with our hats off, cheering for Uncle Sam.”

The Haworth brothers were participants in the exodus of an estimated 20 to 30 thousand men who slipped out of East Tennessee, and crossed the Cumberland Gap of the Appalachian Mountains into Kentucky to avoid conscription by the Confederates and join the Union Army instead.

I am a descendant of William C Haworth, are you descended from the Haworths or others who made this journey?

LEARN MORE

The primary source for this story is the book: The Quaker Sergeant’s War: The Civil War Diary of Sergeant David M. Haworth, with Notes and Commentary by Gene Allen, 2020. Ask for it at your local bookstore, or see it here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-quaker-sergeants-war-gene-allen/1131420527?ean=9780875657257

The Haworth Association: https://haworthassociation.com/

Tennessee in the Civil War at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_in_the_American_Civil_War