Re: Brotherton Descendant Tours Family's Historic Cabin at Chickamauga
Hi, My name is Mike Brotherton. I have been to the Brotherton cabin hundreds of times I think over the last 50 years. I met Adair many years ago and talked at length about the family. I am seeking books and other records of the Brotherton fammily of that time and place including information about his servant , a black man they called Uncle something. I hear Adair tell some good stories about him and the sons of Geaorge W. including a story about the day after a major battle in which one of the sones unrolled his nap sack and found dozens of rounds of ammo had pierced his bedding and kept him from being killed. Great story but I am wondering if their are any books or records of these stories.
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Brotherton Descendant Tours Family's Historic Cabin at Chickamauga
April 22, 2002--No tour of the Chickamauga battlefield takes place, it seems safe to say, without a visit to the Brotherton cabin, the structure in the middle of an open field where some of the fiercest fighting of the battle took place.
No visitors to the park can be more impressed to visit the humble wooden building than one who came by last week. Adair Brotherton is the great-grandson of George Washington Brotherton and his wife Mary who owned the cabin at the time of the battle.
George, in fact, refused to leave the building even while the fighting was going on, although Mary and the younger children evacuated.
"My great-grandad refused to leave the cabin during the battle," Brotherton told the Chattanooga Times-Free Press last week.
"My great-grandmother and the two younger boys went across to the hollow and stayed two days before returning," he added. "My grandfather said if you set foot on one side of the cabin you stepped in bloody horse flesh, and if you stepped on the other side you stepped in human flesh."
After the battle the gore got worse, not better, as the cabin was used as a field hospital by the victorious Confederate forces. Casualties in the Sept. 19-20, 1863, battle numbered more than 35,000 men either killed, wounded or missing from among the 124,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who fought.
Brotherton said his great-grandfather had purchased 160 acres from James Lee for $1,200 in 1860, coming from McDonald, Tennessee. While the parents and younger children stayed with the farm, the older boys enlisted.
His grandfather, James Brotherton, and great-uncle, Tom Brotherton, were members of the Confederate Army, and both were captured and taken to Rock Island, Ill., where they were held in a prisoner of war camp.
Brotherton, who still lives in the Chattanooga area, said the cabin always has been special to the Brotherton family. He said his father treated the cabin as a shrine and would salute when he drove by the cabin.
"He would stop and walk around the property like it was hallowed ground," Mr. Brotherton said. "I guess I think more of the cabin because I know what it meant to my dad. It will always have a special place in my heart."
Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park Superintendent Pat Reed said the cabin is a valuable structure for the park.
"This is a very pivotal point in the park," he said. "It is where all of our tours stop. I don't think it would be far-fetched to say that a couple hundred thousand people a year visit the Brotherton cabin."
Like any structure of that age, pieces of walls, flooring and roof have been replaced due to damage or decay, Reed said.
"There has been wood replaced in the cabin, and it has been rechinked," he said. "I doubt there is much original lumber in the cabin, but I am sure there is some."
