Stone Gardens: Grave on Linker Mountain southwest of Dover holds remains of a transplanted preacher
Jeremiah David Daily was born on September 20, 1817, in Tennessee, the son of George J. Daily and Barbara Ratliff, and died on April 1, 1898, in Russellville.
The stone at Forehand Cemetery, on Linker Mountain southwest of Dover, calls him a reverend and a captain. Between those two lines he was a Franklin County farmer and Primitive Baptist preacher, a wounded cavalryman, and, late in life, a schoolteacher who followed a son west and stayed.
He married Malinda Swindle on August 22, 1837, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She was born in 1816 in South Carolina, a daughter of Joel and Sarah Swindle, and the entry sits in Tuscaloosa County marriage Record Book 1, page 27. The 1840 and 1850 censuses place them in Blount County.
Family accounts say that in the 1850s they homesteaded near Frankfort, just inside present Franklin County, and built a three-room log cabin there. The 1860 census still finds them together in the Western Division of Franklin County, Jeremiah listed as a farmer, age 43, born in Tennessee, Malinda age 44, born in South Carolina, with children in the house.
No school record has been found. Family compilers say he seems to have been well educated and that copies of some of his sermons survive. He was ordained a Primitive Baptist preacher on the Saturday before the second Sabbath in September 1844, at age 27, and served at Zion Rest, Alabama. A family note also calls him a director of the First State Bank of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, a claim repeated on the memorial and not confirmed in a bank ledger reviewed here.
With Malinda the memorial names George Daniel, John H., Ransom Selkirk, Lovin Lafayette, Greenberry Rudolph, Barbara Jane, Jeremiah Solon, called Sole, Licurgus Bunyan, Benjamin, and William Jasper. A family compilation sometimes counts eight sons and one daughter and folds Benjamin into Licurgus, called Bun.
The household comes apart in the census before any second marriage is recorded. In 1870 Malinda Daily, age 52, born in South Carolina, is listed as a farmer and head of household in Township 6, Range 13, Franklin County, with Barbara, Jeremiah S., Licurgus, and William still at home. Jeremiah is not in that household. No divorce decree has been found in Tuscaloosa, Franklin, or Colbert County records.
On April 24, 1874, at Florence in Colbert County, he married Sarah Emiline Duncan, also spelled Emaline, the entry standing in Colbert County Marriage Record A for 1867 to 1874. Malinda was still living. She died on March 13, 1896, in Franklin County, Alabama, and is buried at Russellville there, not in Arkansas
.Family researchers say Colbert County courthouse files show a Confederate pension drawn in her name on his service. That note is difficult to square with her dying two years before him, and it may be a wife’s claim, a file opened near his death, or a misread docket. What the records do show is a separation already in place by the summer of 1870, a second marriage in 1874 while the first wife lived, and Malinda remaining on the Franklin County place until her death.
Sarah was born on September 11, 1843, and died on October 24, 1922. With her he had Jonathan Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson, Dolphus, called Dow, who died in infancy, and James David Christian. The 1880 census finds the new household in Valley Township, Pope County, Arkansas: Jeremiah, age 62, teacher and preacher, born in Tennessee; Sarah E., age 36, born in Alabama; and young sons born in Tennessee.
Those Tennessee birthplaces put the family still east of the Mississippi in the middle 1870s, after the Florence marriage and before the Pope County enumeration.
The move followed Ransom. Family accounts say Ransom and his wife left Franklin County for Arkansas after the war to start over, and that Jeremiah came later to join him. Valley Township is the Dover country, the ridge and valley district north of Russellville, and by 1880 the old captain was teaching and preaching there rather than farming the Frankfort cabin.
On March 2, 1889, a Pope County record, cited by the family as book 4, page 53, instrument 328, shows him conveying 160 acres in Alabama to Bunyan and his wife, Fannie, a closing of the Alabama estate from the Arkansas side. On July 29, 1896, in Pope County, he applied for a Confederate veteran’s pension, number 2822. He was 78.
His war service was short and local to the Tennessee Valley. He joined on September 7, 1862, and a roster of the 4th Alabama Cavalry, Roddey’s regiment, lists a Franklin County company under Jere. Daily until it was reorganized, with Edward J. Odum following him.
That is the Company E on his stone, in General Philip Dale Roddey’s brigade. The regiment was organized at Tuscumbia in October 1862 and sent to middle Tennessee for the winter. In the spring of 1863 it came back to the valley, met a Union column under General Grenville Dodge below Tuscumbia, and fought toward Town Creek.
Family papers place his wound, a left knee, at the skirmish at Barton Station in October 1863. Barton sat on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad about ten miles west of Tuscumbia, and fighting there on October 20 and October 26, 1863, is in the official record. His resignation is dated January 4, 1864, at Frankfort, Alabama, written by Colonel William A. Johnson. Discharge for hardship followed on February 5, 1864.
A Pope County gravestone note says he served from 1861 to 1864 and was wounded. The September 1862 enlistment and the January 1864 resignation are the tighter dates.
He died on April 1, 1898, in Russellville, and was carried back to the Dover ridge. Forehand Cemetery, also called Battenfield, lies on Linker Mountain southwest of Dover. The road from Russellville comes in on Highway 7, turns onto Valley Street just inside Dover, then onto Peaceful Valley Road, and climbs to the cemetery lane at the end of North Linker Road.
The ground holds the Forehand and Battenfield families the place is named for, and it holds the Dailys who made the Arkansas move. Sarah Emeline is there, September 1843 to October 1922. So are children of Ransom and Sarah E. Thorn, including Maybell, who died in 1879, and an infant son, E. A. Daily, who died in 1884. Later stones tie the ridge to the next generation, among them children of Laura Allie Daily and John Daniel Arnold.
The transcription lists him as Rev. Jeremiah Daily, husband of Malinda Swindle and Sarah Emeline Duncan, Captain, Company E, 4th Regiment, Alabama Cavalry. The marker is on Linker Mountain because the last household was in Valley Township, not because Alabama had given him up cleanly.
Malinda stayed in Franklin County. He, Sarah, and the son who had gone ahead of him stayed on the Dover side of the river.
