In 1863, a thriving farming community stood along West Chickamauga Creek near Birds Mill, where the Childress Plantation was one of the most important plantations and Childress Road, now Old Bethel Road, bore the family's name during the war. John Owings had come from North Carolina with his wife Elizabeth and their seven children, and the 1860 Federal Census listed him as a farmer who owned six slaves. Richard Childress had come to Walker County from South Carolina, his wife was from North Carolina, they had five children, and in 1860 he was a 72 year-old farmer who owned nine slaves. Owing's Ford, called Owen's Ford in official records, was an important crossing point on West Chickamauga Creek during the Chickamauga campaign. By the second week of September, 1863, General Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee was largely consolidated on the east side of the creek, while General William S. Rosecrans's Federal Army of the Cumberland remained widely scattered on the other side. Seeking to protect his men while marching north, Rosecrans tried to cover likely crossings south of Lee and Gordon's Mills, including Owen's Ford, where wartime records indicate a major skirmish. John Lindsey dated the fighting there to September 18 and wrote that the 8th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment of Dibrell's Brigade in Armstrong's Division of General Nathan Bedford Forrest's Corps skirmished all day at Owen's Ford and, aided by Captain A. L. Huggin's Tennessee battery, held the position taken during the day. General Daniel H. Hill wrote that just before sundown on September 18 Confederate cavalry pickets were driven away at Owen's Ford, that Federal troops crossed there in considerable force, and that he hurried to the site with Daniel W. Adams' brigade, but the Federals advanced no farther than Childress', after which Adams' brigade was withdrawn to Glass' Mill the next morning. When the Federal Army entered the area, livestock and provisions were confiscated and residents were told to seek refuge, causing many civilians to leave for safer places. Among them was Susannah Childress Jones, wife of Dr. George W. Jones, who wanted to go to Pigeon Mountain because it remained in Confederate hands; after the army had taken all horses and mules, she and her baby Kirby were nevertheless pulled there in a buggy by one of the enslaved Africans. The Childress site today includes a two-story frame house with front columns believed to have been the wartime plantation's main house, later remembered locally as the Henderson House after a Henderson relative of the last Childress widow acquired the property.

Photo: Duane and Tracy Marsteller