My Genealogy Hound

MILES OVERTON, farmer and stock-raiser, section 15, post-office Avilla. He was one of the first settlers of Jasper county, born in Wayne county, Tenn., April 1, 1827. When very young his parents moved to Arkansas, and after a stay of two or three years came to southwest Missouri and settled in McDonald township, Jasper county, in 1840. When his father died in November, 1849, our subject spent his youth in assisting in the farm duties. He acquired a limited education by the irregular means adopted by the early settlers. He was married Jan. 29, 1849, to Miss Elizabeth Stockton, a native of Kentucky. In 1854 he located a farm on White Oak, which he cleared up and improved, now owned by James Poole. During the civil war Mr. Overton had a varied and exciting experience. He was from the first a staunch Union man, and became identified with the Union forces as guide and scout. His losses in property were quite severe, and in the privations and dangers of these times he bore more than an equal share. He was frequently sought for by parties of rebel scouts and bushwhackers with dire intent. His family were left entirely destitute by their depredations. One party took him prisoner and intended to hang him, but by a disagreement among themselves he was released. On another occasion a rebel squad came to take him, but being away from home for the purpose of warning a neighbor of impending danger, he evaded them. His brother and a neighbor being at his house and not noticing their coming in time to beat a retreat, were obliged to give them a fight, severely wounding one rebel and succeeded in driving off the rest. Mr. Overton’s daughter, Mariette, then a child of eight years of age, was shot through the shoulder in the melee, and quite seriously wounded. He enlisted in 1863, in Company G, Seventy-sixth Regiment E. M. M. Much of his service was in the capacity of scout, and the many daring enterprises and hairbreadth escapes that he experienced show that he was under the protection of some special providence. He was present with several others at the house of Dr. Stemmons when the attack was made upon his residence, when Dr. Stemmons and Lathan Duncan were killed and the house burned. In July, 1864, he and P. Dyer were the only ones to escape from the squad of twenty men of Captain Stemmons’s company which surrendered near Carthage to a superior force, where eight men were killed and the others taken prisoners, striped, and paroled. In September following he was returning from the funeral of his own child, which had sickened and died, in company with a son of Captain Fisher; they came face to face with some three hundred rebels. Poor Fisher was instantly killed and Mr. Overton taken prisoner. Seeing they intended taking his life, he seized hold of one of them and dexteriously swinging him around several times to prevent their shooting, and letting him go with a powerful swing, made one grand break for life and liberty. In the discharge that followed he received two very severe wounds through the left arm and the right thigh. Still he pressed on and how he managed to escape from three hundred well-armed and well mounted men is indeed a mystery. Lying in the brush during the day, when night came, though weak from fatigue and loss of blood, he managed to crawl to the house of the widow Blake, some one hundred and fifty yards distant, but it took him nearly three hours to accomplish it. Miss Jane Fishburn, now Mrs. J. C. Moose, stopping at the house of the widow Blake, assisted him to a place of safety in the brush, where he remained secreted ten days without any attendance whatever. At the end of that time he was sought out by his own command and brought to Mt. Vernon where he was placed in the hospital. Not liking the confinement he was removed to a private house, but long before his wounds were healed he was trundled around in a baggage wagon and moved with the rest of the command. The war leaving him bare and penniless, at the cessation of hostilities he started in with renewed energy and accumulated a nice property. The homestead consists of 120 acres; he also owns 40 acres four miles from Carthage, on Spring River, and other property in other parts of the county. He has reared a family of five children: Mariette, now Mrs. Musgrove; Sarah Jane, wife of Ellis Done; Nancy A. C., Eliza J., and John J. His wife died Oct. 21, 1878, under very sorrowful circumstances.