William I. Cole was a prosperous fifty-one-year-old farmer in the 1860 federal census, living with his wife and three children, and with a plantation on Squirrel Town Creek he was one of the best known slave owners in Dade County. In addition to his plantation, he operated a boarding school for boys known as Cole's Academy, which had a reputation throughout the South; General Edward Porter Alexander later recalled having heard of Trenton nearly twenty years earlier as the location of an awfully strict and severe boarding school for boys. When it became apparent that a major Federal army was coming toward Dade County, Cole sent all the slaves south to Alabama under the charge of a mature woman named Adaline, called "Ad," giving her a thousand dollars in gold to use if necessary to keep them together and to return home after the war. Two Federal divisions camped on Cole's property in September 1863, and soldiers of the 105th Ohio Infantry wrote of taking potatoes, honey, hogs, sheep, apples, and corn from the farm after Cole refused greenbacks in payment. General John M. Brannan of the 3rd Division of the 14th Army Corps wrote that on the night of the 7th he advanced to Squirrel Town Spring on the Cole plantation with the remaining portion of his command and encamped there, noting that the water was plentiful enough for a large army. The war devastated Cole's plantation and left him utterly destitute, but after the war Adaline led the group back home, and although they were no longer slaves, she returned to Cole all of the thousand dollars in gold that he had entrusted to her, which he used to rebuild the plantation.