Our Arklahoma Heritage: An alliance with the Confederates saw a Crawford Couty farmer hanged byUunion bushwackers

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Thomas Jefferson Asbill was born on September 6 1816 in Madison County Kentucky to John Asbell and Jane Noland Asbill. T

His parents had married in Kentucky and established roots there before joining the westward migration that shaped so many American families in the early nineteenth century. T

homas grew up amid the challenges and opportunities of rural life in the Upper South where farming skills and self-reliance were essential.

On February 2 1836, at the age of nineteen, Thomas married Nancy Kincaid Wood in Madison County, Kentucky.

The union produced ten known children, beginning with their first daughter born while the couple still resided in Kentucky. The young family soon joined a larger kin network that included Thomas's parents and other relatives in a move that reflected the restless pioneer spirit of the era.

By 1840, Thomas Nancy and their two young children, a daughter Elizabeth, born in 1837 and a son John Henry, born in 1840, had settled in Goshen Township, Macon County, Missouri, alongside Thomas' parents.

The large sprawling county at that time extended northward toward the Iowa line, making precise locations difficult to pinpoint today. Family stories from this period include an account of Thomas' father John Asbill, surviving an Indian skirmish near The Cabins west of present-day Kirksville in Adair County where he was wounded by an arrow in the hand and carried it for miles before receiving aid.

The Asbill clan continued its westward journey. By 1850, Thomas and Nancy, along with Thomas's parents lived together in one household in Cove Creek Township, Washington County, Arkansas. Census records list Thomas's occupation as carpenter and detail the birthplaces of the children, revealing the family's migratory path: Kentucky for the older members, Missouri for several middle children, and Arkansas for the youngest at that time.

The household in 1850 included Thomas,, age thirty-four, Nancy age thirty-six, and children Elizabeth John Sherrod, Milton, and young Thomas, along with grandparents John and Jane.

A decade later in 1860 the family had relocated a short distance to Jasper Township in neighboring Crawford County near the Van Buren post office. Thomas, now forty-four, worked as a farmer supporting a growing household that included Nancy and nine children:

The Asbill's lived amid an extended network of relatives and neighbors in a region where farming communities clustered along creeks and bottomlands. This area around Jasper Township and Dripping Springs placed the family squarely in the rugged terrain of western Arkansas, where Lee Creek wound through the landscape, providing water for crops and livestock while also serving as a corridor for travelers and traders.

The Civil War brought profound disruption to the Asbill family and the broader border region.

On February 2, 1863, Thomas Jefferson Asbill, aged forty -six met a violent end along with one of his sons, most family accounts identifying the son as Andrew, though some narratives mention Sherrod in connection with the events.

The bushwhacker story remains the most consistent thread in family lore. Renegades, guerrillas or outlaws operating in the chaotic no man's land of western

Arkansas and the Indian Territory descended on the family farm along Lee Creek in the Jasper Township vicinity.

In this telling, Thomas and his son were murdered at or near their home in a robbery or targeted attack common during the irregular warfare that plagued the area. Alternative oral traditions describe the pair venturing into the Cherokee Nation to gather horses, possibly for Confederate use, and being hanged by Cherokee authorities for horse theft.

Given the fluidity of loyalties and the prevalence of horse stealing as a wartime necessity, the two accounts may overlap in the lawless environment where civilian families often found themselves caught between armies, guerrillas, and opportunistic bandits. The uncertainty surrounding the exact circumstances and location of the deaths meant that Thomas and his son likely received no formal marked burial if killed away from home.

Family members believe their remains may rest in or near the Asbill Family Cemetery in Crawford County, though this placement remains speculative based on the presence of Nancy and several children there.

Nancy Kincaid Wood Asbill survived her husband by twenty-five years, raising the remaining children amid the hardships of Reconstruction. She died on March 16, 1888 and was buried in the Asbill Family Cemetery.

The couple left a lasting legacy through their descendants. Sons such as John Henry who served in Arkansas Confederate units, William Green, who later became a Deputy United States Marshal in the Indian Territory, and others carried forward the family name into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Three younger sons, Andrew James and David, succumbed to childhood illnesses around the same wartime period, compounding the family's grief. Extended kin networks including the Woods and Noland's, interwove with the Asbill's, creating a web of relationships that spread across Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, and eventually, Indian Territory.

Thomas Jefferson Asbill exemplified the frontier farmer craftsman whose life traced the expansion of the American West. From Kentucky settlements to Missouri townships and finally, the Arkansas Ozarks, he adapted to new lands and economies while raising a large family.

His death at the height of the Civil War encapsulated the personal toll of a conflict that turned neighbor against neighbor and left many graves unmarked in remote hollows and creek bottoms.

Though official records of the exact events remain elusive, the oral histories preserved by descendants keep his story alive, reminding later generations of the sacrifices and uncertainties faced by ordinary families on the wartime frontier.