James R. Knight

Letters to Anna James R. Knight

This is an engaging account of how a young couple from the hills of middle Tennessee endured the darkest years in our nation's history. Their own words tell how they not only survived, but kept their love for each other and their faith in God alive through the most desperate of circumstances. These were not the wealthy plantation owners of the Southern stereotype, but the son of a cabinetmaker and the daughter of a blacksmith, the kind of hardworking small farmers that actually populated most of the antebellum South. Burton Warfield and his brother-in-law Alonzo (Lonny) Worley both made it home to Isom, TN after the war and a few years later bought a farm together. Burton later decided to move his family west to Arkansas, but the farm has remained in the Worley family, and we still produce grain and cattle there. When I stand on the little rise above Dry Fork Creek where their house once stood, I am reminded of a war-weary veteran who came here to rebuild his life, his family and his community after that great tragedy we know as the Civil War. Stephen G. Worley, Great-grandson of Samuel Alonzo (Lonny) Worley