John McNairy Woodruff, 1828 – 1888
Catherine D. Dickinson Woodruff, 1843 – 1921
John McNairy Woodruff was born January 1, 1828 in Williamson County, Tennessee, son of Howell (Howel) S. Woodruff and Elizabeth Laughlin Woodruff. Howell was born in Virginia between 1770 and 1775, a descendent of Richard Woodruffe who immigrated to Virginia from England 1n 1643. Elizabeth Laughlin, Howell’s second wife, was probably born in Tennessee about 1800. Howell and Elizabeth were married in Williamson County June 5, 1820. Howell apparently had a son and a daughter by his first marriage; both appear as under 10 years old in the 1820 census but neither appears in the 1830 census, both having either left Howell’s household or deceased. We know nothing about the daughter but there is evidence that the son was William W. Woodruff who married Mary Ann Hamilton in Williamson County in 1835. At the time of his marriage William was living in Louisiana and, as we shall see, young John moved to Louisiana after the deaths of his parents. In the 1840 census William and his family were living in the Clinton, Louisiana area (East Feliciana Parish, north of Baton Rouge). Howell Woodruff died ca. 1835 (genealogical note – there was another “Howel S. Woodruff”, b. 1806, living in Williamson County at the time, nephew of the elder Howell) and Elizabeth Laughlin Woodruff died approximately 1844.
After his parents passed away, in 1844 or 1845 the teen-aged John Woodruff made his way to Louisiana. It is likely that he chose Louisiana in order to join with his closest living relatives, half-brother William and his family. At some point after that he began work with a surveying crew. In the spring of 1846 they were working in the Covington, Louisiana area when the Mexican War broke out with several skirmishes along the Rio Grande and the major battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma between Mexican forces and those of General Zachary Taylor. John enlisted immediately for a six-month hitch in what became Company G of the 4th Louisiana Volunteers, named the Montezuma Regiment, mustered in at New Orleans on May 15, 1846.
On May 21 his unit shipped from New Orleans to Point Isabel at the mouth of the Rio Grande, aboard the steamer Mary Kingsland (this same ship later transported General Taylor from Mexico back to a hero’s welcome in New Orleans, and in 1852 exploded on the Mississippi killing five crew members). The Montezuma Regiment then patrolled up the Rio Grande to the vicinity of the present-day Rio Grande City and Ciudad Camargo. There, after only three months in the Army, his regiment was disbanded because of bureaucratic blunders brought on by the overzealous recruiting of General Edmund P. Gaines, the commander of the Army’s Western Division in New Orleans. In early August John Woodruff’s company was shipped back to New Orleans aboard the steamer Alabama, and he was mustered out of the Army August 8, 1846 (The Alabama – not to be confused with the Confederate Navy CSS Alabama – was the ship that had transported General Taylor to Corpus Christi in July 1845).
Meanwhile, back in Tennessee the new Nashville and Chattanooga (N&C) Rail Road Company had been chartered by the state legislature in December 1845. Its general route between the two cities was chosen in early 1847, and surveying and engineering studies began soon after the route was selected. Some time after John Woodruff was released from the Army, he returned to Middle Tennessee to live with his maternal aunt, Mary Laughlin Leath, her husband William, and their family on the outskirts of Nashville. The 1850 census shows William Leath and John Woodruff as carpenters and the Leath home in the 9th Civil District (in 1850) of Davidson County. The location of the Leath home is not precisely known but it was in an area straddling the N&C main line between Nashville and Antioch, an area at present (2010) bounded by the 440 Parkway, Briley Parkway, the Nolensville Pike, and the Murfreesboro Road. Their neighbor on the next line of the 1850 census, Thomas Diller, was a railroad contractor, and a few houses away lived an overseer and a gatekeeper on the Murfreesboro Turnpike.
It is very likely that John Woodruff, fresh out of the Army with a surveying background, began work with the N&C as a surveyor in 1847, making him one of the earliest employees of the road – one who remained with the N&C and the NC&StL for some 40 years. It is virtually certain that William Leath and John Woodruff were working as carpenters for the N&C in 1850. Serious construction on the N&C began in March 1848, first from Nashville to Antioch then on to Murfreesboro. The road’s first engine was delivered in December 1850 and the first train rolled from Nashville to Murfreesboro on July 4, 1851. John Woodruff and his uncle were in the thick of these events.
There were significant engineering challenges in the construction of the N&C between its two eponymous cities – more than 600 feet of elevation to be gained between Nashville and Tullahoma, the tunnel through Cumberland Mountain, bridging the Tennessee River and the ravine near Raccoon Mountain, to name a few. Nevertheless the main route was completed in 1854 and the first freight rolled from Nashville to Chattanooga February 11 of that year. For his part, John Woodruff married Elizabeth J. Todd (probably born in Henderson County) on June 1, 1851, in Rutherford County (they probably lived in or near Murfreesboro at that time). Before 1860 they had four children, all born in Rutherford County – John W. born July 2, 1852; James W. B. born August 21, 1854 (died January 8, 1855); Mary E. born June 8, 1857; and Georgia Tennessee born November 18, 1859.
The 1860 census found the Woodruff family living in Kingston Springs, Cheatham County, and John’s occupation was noted as “day laborer”. In the mid-1850’s the N&C Rail Road had initiated a new project to connect the N&C to railroads being constructed in western Tennessee and Kentucky. This was done under the auspices of a newly chartered railroad company called the Nashville and Northwestern (N&NW), wholly owned by the N&C. Construction northwest out of Nashville was begun in the late 1850’s, and the 21 miles from Nashville to Kingston Springs was completed just before the outbreak of the Civil War. Obviously John Woodruff had been moved in 1859 from Rutherford to Cheatham County by the N&C, to work on the construction of the N&NW. Just as obviously, he was moved back to the relative, temporary, and illusory safety of Rutherford County, still mostly in Confederate hands, before Nashville fell to Union forces in February 1862.
The good news for John Woodruff was that his work for the railroad – already seen as vital to wartime logistics by both sides – undoubtedly kept him out of the Confederate Army. Other than that, the Civil War was catastrophic for him and his family. They found themselves living in the most hotly, bitterly, and continuously contested part of the Confederacy outside of Virginia, with foraging armies, raids, and major battles nearly continuous facts of life in that part of Middle Tennessee. A few examples include the fall of Nashville and the retreat of the Confederate army in February 1862, Forrest’s raid on Murfreesboro in July 1862, The Battle of Stones River (aka Murfreesboro) over New Years 1862-63, the foraging of the contending armies between Murfreesboro and Shelbyville during the spring of 1863, the Tullahoma Campaign in June 1863, the disastrous (for the Confederacy) Franklin – Nashville Campaign in November and December 1864, which included Forrest’s second raid on Murfreesboro. Numberless skirmishes also took place in this area.
During the Civil War the Woodruffs had three more children – Cora Hatton, born July 13, 1862 and died June 4, 1863; Susan J. who died May 14, 1865; and Arabelle, born February 27, 1865, the only one of the three to outlive the Civil War and its aftermath. In addition young Mary E. died March 30, 1863, wife Elizabeth died May 29 of that year, and eldest son John W. died May 14, 1865, the same day as his baby sister. These deaths are stark evidence of the privations suffered by those who lived in that time and place.
John Woodruff married his second wife, Susan Miller of Fosterville in southernmost Rutherford County, on January 7, 1864. Between the end of the Civil War and 1870 they had one child, Isaac Holt “Ike” born in 1868. The 1870 census found them living in Fosterville, on the N&C main line. At that time John Woodruff gave his occupation as carpenter, clearly working for the N&C – which officially changed its name to the NC&StL Railway by the mid-1870’s. During the 1870’s the Woodruffs had three more children – Sarah M. born 1871, who died before 1888; Sabrina Tommie, born January 11, 1874, and Margaret “Maggie” born in 1879. Wife Susan died July 8, 1879.
On New Years Day 1880, John Woodruff married Catherine D. Dickinson, his third wife, near Fosterville. The 1880 census shows them living in the 20th civil district of Rutherford County, and John’s occupation as “R. R. Agent”. We know independently that they were living near Christiana where he was the NC&StL depot agent. The couple had three children – Charles Marsh (I) born June 1881; Morris L. born 1882, who died before 1888; and the last of John Woodruff’s fourteen offspring, William Hamilton (I) born March 31, 1883.
In 1884 John Woodruff was the foreman of a fencing crew for the NC&StL, and had hired his young son Ike as water boy for the crew. John apparently retired from the NC&StL in 1887, the year he applied for his Mexican War pension. At the time he was living in Murfreesboro and listed his occupation as carpenter. His health soon failed him, and he died at his wife’s family home in Fosterville April 26, 1888.
John McNairy Woodruff’s Offspring and the NC&StL
Georgia Tennessee Woodruff Ballard (1859 – 1932): Georgia Woodruff married William M. Ballard in 1878. He was employed by the NC&StL at the time of their marriage. The 1880 census shows the Ballards living near Christiana and William’s occupation as “Rail Road Business”. By 1900 they had moved to Nashville and William was an engineer – during the intervening 20 years he had also served as brakeman. Sometime after 1900 he lost an arm in an accident on the NC&StL in Murfreesboro, but he continued to be employed by the road as a pumper. He died before 1910.
Isaac Holt Woodruff (1869 – 1939): Ike Woodruff began work with the NC&StL in 1884, as water boy for the fencing crew of which his father was foreman. He became a brakeman in 1888. The 1900 census shows him still a brakeman, a widower living in Smyrna with his widowed stepmother Catherine, sister Maggie, and half-brothers Charlie and Will. We have found no record of Ike Woodruff’s first marriage. By 1910 the Woodruffs had moved to Nashville and Ike had been promoted to freight conductor, a job he held until his retirement after more than 50 years with the NC&StL. Ike’s second marriage was to Cumie Harris, before 1914. They had one daughter, Mary Olive b. 1914, who never married and died in 1999. Ike and his family lived in Smyrna for many years and Ike died there in 1939.
Charles Marsh Woodruff (I) (1881 – 1908): Charlie Woodruff shows in only one census, that of 1900. At that time he was living with his mother’s family in Smyrna; his occupation was “R. R. Fencer”. Before 1908 he was promoted to brakeman. He was killed on the NC&StL July 7, 1908 when, while walking the cartops at Shellmound, he was swept off the train by an overpass. Family legend has it that the NC&StL installed warning telltales at all overpasses in response to this accident.
William Hamilton Woodruff (I) (1883 – 1923): Will Woodruff was living with his family in Smyrna in 1900, working for the NC&StL as a day laborer. By 1910 he was living in Nashville and had become a brakeman. In that year he married Clara French Caldwell Barnes, a widow whose husband James Marion Barnes Sr. had died in Tullahoma in 1908. Their son Charles Marsh Woodruff Sr. was born in 1911 and died 1999. Will was fired by the NC&StL in 1912 for giving his sister-in-law Maud Caldwell an unauthorized pass. The Caldwell sisters named the female NC&StL detective who caught Will “The Yellowhammer”, a synonym for coward. The company house where The Yellowhammer lived still stands on the main line, just west of Decherd. Will contracted tuberculosis and died in 1923.
