Douglas W. Roberston
July 2002
Gaines Robertson
Company H, 3rd Kentucky Mounted Infantry
In 1860 my great-great grandfather, Gaines Robertson, was 24 years old and a farmer living in Weakly County, Tennessee. On the 1860 Census he had two children listed, and one of those listed became my great grandfather. (The other children listed are relatives of his wife living with them.) In the next four years he had two more children that are picked up on the 1870 Census. He was killed in 1864. His absence is ominous on the 1870 Census, because only his wife Mary along with six dependents is listed.
Gaines Robertson enlisted as a private in Company H, 3rd Kentucky Mounted Infantry, on April 1, 1864 at Murray, Kentucky. The handouts show his name on the rolls of the 3rd Calvary and that he got paid on March 1, 1864. The next pay sheet shows that he was absent without pay on May 1. As often happened then, he had gone home to check on his family. The story of what happened next has been handed down generation to generation through my family.
A group of guerrillas sympathetic to the North, Quantrill’s guerrillas in their run through Kentucky according to the story, arrived at my grandfather’s farmhouse. His wife Mary said that he was not home. But the guerrillas found his horse in the barn still warm from the ride. Knowing he was there, they searched until they found him hiding in a small cellar under the house. They got him out of the cellar and killed him.
As a footnote, Gaines Robertson’s son, my great grandfather, also met a tragic death. In the late 18th century there existed the threat of hoodlum farmers going up river and cutting the levy to release a flooding river and thereby removing or easing the threat of flood downstream. My great grandfather was guarding the levy on the Arkansas River near Kelso, Arkansas and was shot in the back of the head by men who came to cut the levy.
