'Lady Bushwhacker' tells of war's toll on family

Cass County historian Carol Bohl, portraying "Lady Bushwhacker" Rebecca Gabbert, tells of her Vernon County family's involvement in the Civil War, during which the lives of her husband and two of her sons were lost.

The Civil War was brutal on Vernon Countians, particularly those women who would go down in history as "The Lady Bushwhackers."

Portraying one of them, Cass County historian Carol Bohl of Harrisonville told 50 spectators Saturday afternoon at the Bushwhacker Museum that her family had intended only to be peaceful farmers when they bought 160 acres and moved to Dover Township, west of Montevallo, from Indiana.

In an 1860s costume as Rebecca Wade Gabbert, Bohl said she and Gabbert's husband, William "Old Man" Gabbert, had nine children "but never owned a slave.

"The war came right to our doorstep, literally, and it was up to our menfolk to stand up and protect what was rightfully theirs," she said, symbolically puffing a corn cob pipe.

Bohl said the Gabberts, the nearby Mayfield family and other Confederate partisans had been east to Cedar County in late May 1863 to burn the homes and businesses of Unionists. She said the men were lying outside after supper, exhausted, "when the federals were on us, shootin' and fightin.'

"William and the boys got away, but John and Crack Mayfield were killed," she said, pacing with a troubled look in her eyes. "Seven men were lyin' dead in the front yard.

"My daughter Eliza and Ella, Sallie and Lenora Mayfield and me took a wash basin and cleaned them up and buried them in Dunnegan's Grove. Eliza combed one of them's hair over his skull. I looked around at my house and it was ashes."

Bohl, in character as Gabbert, said her husband, actually only 48 years old when the war began, later died in Arkansas and that two of her sons also didn't survive.

She said the young Gabbert and Mayfield women became active participants, carrying military messages and ammunition under their clothing and riding horses to Fort Scott and Springfield to persuade federal authorities to release Confederate guerillas. "Sallie and Jennie Mayfield broke out of jail in St. Louis, using a knife on the door hinges," she said.

"Those girls were physically strong and spiritually tough. Ella Mayfield once rode a horse 125 miles in 24 hours."

Taking a photo of her late husband from her pocket, she caressed it, saying, "I can stroke his hair.

"I tell him what the children are up to and what we've been doing. My son John died at only 24 without ever seeing his newborn twins. The good book says, 'An eye for an eye,' only where does it all end?

"I'm afeared of when there ain't no eyes."