“Pursued” contemporary figurative painting. acrylic on canvas. 30 in x 24 in.

“Pursued” contemporary figurative painting

This painting represents all that is left of a family story from the Civil War.  I heard my great grandfather tell it when I was a boy, and this is all that I remember of it:

• It happened somewhere up in Tennessee.

• The original teller was his grandfather John Fletcher Moorman.

• John Fletcher Moorman entered service at the beginning of the war at age 15 and served for the duration of the war.

• The event in the painting happened toward the end of the day.

• It was spring.

• They had camped in a cane break, and suddenly a large movement of Federal troops came down the road and was almost on top of them.

• They probably wouldn’t have been able to get away unseen had the road not been sunken (eroded into a trench).

• John didn’t know if he could get the mule across the river because he had just stolen it a few days before, and he didn’t know anything about that particular animal’s personality.

• Before the Federal troops stumbled over them, they had been debating whether or not to kill and eat the mule.

My great grandfather was born in 1897 and lived to be 102.  He had a very clear mind up until the end of his life and was always telling stories.  He had 17 children, including my grandfather and 13 great uncles, and they worked as share croppers and then tenant farmers on cotton plantations.  He first came down from the hills of Yalobusha county into the Delta in the early 1920s.  He lived through the Great Flood of 1927, WWI (cavalry, as a horse trainer too valuable for combat), the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, etc.  I really wish I had paid more attention to all the stories I heard as a boy.