Christopher Columbus Sexton

 

Nancy and Christopher Sexton's children

      Christopher Columbus Sexton, Nancy Belle Waters' maternal grandfather, and his friend, Leonadus Smith, fought together during the Civil War. “On” made Chris promise to take care of his wife if he didn‘t return. Smith, died in 1862, during the war, and Chris took his responsibility seriously. Though they never married, between 1866 and 1876, Christopher and Sarah West Smith had three sons and one daughter. During the same years (1867-1881), he and Sarah’s cousin, Nancy V. Phillips, had nine children. Nancy V. and Christopher married in 1868. Nancy V. was Nancy Belle’s grandmother. There was a third companion, but apparently, that relationship was not as open, or perhaps not as “fruitful,” as the other two. The woman’s name may have been Honicutt or Honeycut, I've found no historical records. When the children of the first two relationships were in their teens, they became aware of their common father, and the West kids took the Sexton name.


 

The Great Smoky Mountains
of Tennessee

     At first, I made the assumption that Christopher Columbus had served the Confederacy. When I found copies of his pension, I realized that Sexton had been in Tennessee Cavalry and fought for the Union!  I double-checked, the record was correct. A little research led to an interesting set of facts. When the Civil War started, Scott County, Tennessee was rural with small family-owned farms. The entire county had sixty one slaves, a number smaller than any other county in the entire state. When the vote for Tennessee secession was taken on June 8, 1861, over seventy percent of those in Eastern Tennessee voted to not leave the Union. In Scott County, the vote was 385 against secession and only 29 for. However, the more populous western part of Tennessee dominated; the state seceded and joined the Confederacy. Scott County then decided to leave the state, and in December of 1861, they became the “Free and Independent State of Scott.”  The county didn't officially rejoin Tennessee until 1986.