James Belton Braswell (1835 - 1898) - Served Under Both Flags

 

Library of Congress

James Belton Braswell is believed to have been born 7 September 1835, in South Carolina.  He received training as a brickmason and later worked as a building contractor.

 When the Civil War broke out, he enlisted initially as a private in Company B, 26th Alabama Infantry (O’Neal’s Regiment), but in August 1862 he and his brother W. D. deserted.  They were captured by the Union Army at Camp Davies, Mississippi, on 28 December 1863.  Five months later, on 31 May 1864, they took a loyalty oath and served out the war in the U. S. Army.

 Braswell’s own account was much more colorful.  As he was wont to relate in his later years, he and a comrade named R. A. Crowley were fighting in Georgia when they deserted for the first time.  They were soon captured by their Confederate fellows.  The South being by then desperate for soldiers, the pair were not executed but were allowed to return.  After they made two more attempts to desert, the commanding officer ordered them to be shot at sunrise.

 As the condemned men sat in the guardhouse that night, Braswell persuaded Crowley to make one last break for it.  This time they were successful.  Before morning they reached a dense swamp and made their way to Sherman’s lines, where they surrendered.

 James Braswell married his first wife, Mary Jane DuBose in Indiana in 1863.  After the war, Braswell’s skills as a brickmason were undoubtedly in demand as new settlements sprang up out west.  By 1870, the Braswells were living in Elk City, Kansas, and were the parents of three children.

 The Braswells’ next home was in Missouri, where three more children were born.  Braswell’s wife Mary is presumed to have died around 1877 since, in 1878, Braswell married Virginia-born Sarah Elizabeth Hughes in Texas County, Missouri.  They soon had another three children of their own.  Around 1884, the Braswells moved to Arizona. Their last five children were born in Phoenix.

When Braswell expired on 13 January 1898, bottles of laudanum and paregoric were found in his pockets.  Thinking that he might have committed suicide, Justice Johnstone ordered an inquest.  The cause of death was cleared up when Mrs. Braswell testified that he habitually carried them to relieve a persistent ear ache. 

Braswell was initially buried in the section of Porter Cemetery reserved for Union veterans of the Civil War.  However, it was soon discovered that Mr. Braswell was “seated in the wrong pew”, so a few days later his coffin was taken up and reburied in the Confederate section of Porter.

-Profile by Sue Wilcox