Spring 1877Mrs. W. H. L. Pemberton
Bookkeeper, Pemberton Feed & Grain
Nashville, Tennessee
Wilton, my husband, didn’t have a head for business so I always kept an eye on him.
One day he was up at the front counter—I could watch him from my desk in back—having a long and animated conversation with a man I’d never seen before—a good looking fellow with a full, black beard that hid most of his features.
“I was with Bragg,” I heard Wilton say, “at Chickamaugua and Lookout Mountain.”
“If the armies were to march tomorrow,” the handsome man said, “I’d be marching with them.”
When they shook hands and grinned like school chums, I grew suspicious. I went out to the loading dock and, as I feared, a wagon drawn by two, big mules was being loaded down with a dozen bales of alfalfa and two scor
