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88-year-old Casa Grande woman recalls life of Civil War veteran dad
• The Casa Grande resident’s father fought in the war that ended 132 years ago.
Not many people living today can say their father fought in the Civil War, which ended 132 years ago.
Effie Turner of Casa Grande can.
Turner, 88, is the daughter of Thomas Wood Machen, who was a soldier in the Confederate Army of Alabama.
She was a child of his second marriage, born May 1, 1909, in Arkansas when Machen was 76.
Her mother, Blanche Wilson Lockett, was a 34-year-old widow with one daughter when she married the 71-year-old Machen in 1904. The marriage license said he was 57, but that may have been a clerical error.
Machen died at 87 on Nov. 7, 1920, when Turner was 11.
She doesn’t remember him telling stories about his Civil War service – only that he was a kind and religious man. After all, the War Between the States ended 44 years before Turner was born.
”He and my mother didn’t just send their kids to church, they took us,” Turner said.
Machen was born March 16, 1833, in Cherokee County, Ala. He grew up as a farmer and joined the Confederate Army in 1862 at age 29.
Life was hard. Confederate soldiers on the march had little to eat, so when they did get a scrap of food they tried to keep it a secret.
”They just didn’t have any food, they were so hungry,” said Nadine Hackler, Turner’s daughter, who lives across the street from her. ”He (Machen) had a meat skin (bacon rind) in his knapsack he was hoarding. One night someone stole it.”
As a member of Company G of the 31st Alabama Infantry, he was captured May 19, 1863, by the Union Army after the Battle of Big Black in Tennessee.
He was imprisoned at Memphis but was part of a prisoner of war exchange in August 1863 and rejoined his company. He was captured again Nov. 25, 1863, at Missionary Ridge.
Missionary Ridge was part of the Battle of Chattanooga, which raged from Nov. 23-25. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant commanded 60,000 Union troops against 40,000 Confederate troops led by Gen. Braxton Bragg.
In December 1863, Machen was taken to a prison camp at Rock Island, Ill.
By September 1864, the Union had moved most of its frontier troops eastward, leaving its position in the West vulnerable to Sioux Indian attacks.
Machen was one of 6,000 Confederate soldiers at crowded Union prisons who were promised their freedom if they would serve on the frontier. They would not be ordered to fight Confederate troops.
The ”Galvanized Yankees,” as they were nicknamed, delivered mail, restored downed telegraph lines, manned Union forts, protected stagecoach routes and fought the Sioux.
Machen served the Union Army in Kansas before being discharged at Fort Leavenworth in November 1865. He was given transportation to Selma, Ala., where he resumed his life as a farmer.
Machen later moved to Texas, then to Arkansas. His first wife, Leticia, died in 1894.
Despite their 37-year age difference, Blanche Lockett decided to marry the long-widowed Machen a decade later. He and Leticia had had four children, and their grandchildren were already grown by the time he married Blanche.
The Machens settled in Mt. Holly, Ark. Their first child was stillborn in 1905. A son, Custer, was born in 1907, and Effie arrived two years later.
By the 1890s, Machen tried to obtain a Union Army pension.
”There was a lot of the correspondence with the War Department,” Hackler said. ”His letters said that when he went into the army he was a healthy, fit man, but since he’s been home (from the war) he has not been able to do a good day’s work.”
He was awarded a pension of $28 per month in 1912, but he applied for more. After he died in 1920, the government raised the sum to $30 per month for his widow, plus $6 apiece for Custer and Effie until they turned 16.
That doesn’t sound like much money by today’s standards, but in pre-Depression Arkansas it was enough to sustain a family, Hackler said.
In 1923, Effie, 14, married A.L. ”Buck” Turner, who was 23.
”Granny was this widow with two kids, and Daddy started courting Mama and wanted to marry her, and Granny agreed,” Hackler said, noting that women of that era often married in their early teens.
They settled in Prescott, Ark., which is near President Clinton’s hometown of Hope.
In 1938, the Turners moved to Casa Grande. Buck Turner, a carpenter and contractor, built their house in the southern part of town in 1946. Buck died in 1976, but Effie still lives there.
”This was all desert here (in 1946),” Hackler said. ”Only this little house was here.”
The couple raised four children in the house. Hackler said Machen has two more descendants still living in Arkansas, Custer’s twins – Benny of Mt. Holly and Betty of Little Rock.
”When I say my grandfather was a Civil War veteran, (people) say, ‘No, he couldn’t be,’ ” Hackler said.
”Yes, he was, because he was 76 when Mama was born,” she said. ”He was 72 when their first child was stillborn. And then 74 when my uncle Custer was born.
”So I don’t think that war disabled him too much,” she said. ”I mean, not totally disabled.”
