Daniel Woolum Civil War Veteran

Ironton Register 28 June 1888 – Daniel Woolum of Vesuvius Furnace called at the Register office last week to order his paper for another year and having performed the righteous duty and expressed his approval of the charming features of the Register the reporter approached him for a war reminiscence.

“Can’t you give a ‘Narrow Escape,’ Mr. Daniel Woolum?”

“Well yes, I guess so, I was a member of Company H 9th Virginia, and the closest experience I had was on the 10th day of November 1861 about 9 o’clock at night when the rebel Colonels, Jenkins and Clarkson swooped down and captured the town of Guyandotte. I was there having just returned to the front with Anderson Vititoe.

We had been homesick on furlough and hadn’t got our guns yet when the news came that the rebels were right on us. We broke into the arsenal to get a gun apiece and joined the boys and when after a little the fight got so hot, we had to fly, a half dozen of us took refuge in a narrow space between two houses.

“There were in that party, besides me, William Wilson who was our Lieut., John Windle, George Sines, John Lany, and Arnold and Warner Felix. All but the last two were from this county. The valley was only about four feet wide and we were crouched in there while the rebels were prowling around the street and shooting and didn’t know how we were going to get out.

“It was a trying situation. We wondered if we hadn’t better risk it and make a break to get out, and while debating what I got to do, I got impatient and told the boys I was going to shoot. They implored me not to, but I did shoot and the next instant I thought the rebels pored 500 bullets into the alley.

Every one of the men with me was wounded. They were captured too, as I afterward learned, but I got away without a scratch and with 18 holes [in my] blouse made by rebel bullets. That was the most remarkable fusillade I ever heard of and how I escaped being hit. I don’t know but I did.

“I got out by creeping by the edge of the river bank nearby and when once under the bluff I rolled over and over until I had literally rolled myself out of Guyandotte and then I moved cautiously about a mile up the Guyandotte River.

“That was my ‘Narrow Escape’ but the next time I didn’t escape. As I lay there still in the same place behind a log and believing myself out of harm’s way there was a dead rebel near me whom I didn’t see. His comrades came along in due time to bury him and at the same time they took me in, and I went to Libby Prison for seven months and three days and found the other boys.”

---