To: the Sasser group From: Glenn E. Perry It seems that we have so little information about my gg grandfather, Jesse Sasser, in comparison with the rich body of documentary material that has recently been made available about his brother Adin. My grandmother related to me forty years ago that Jesse was in the Union Army and died and was buried somewhere near Nashville, Tennessee. I wish I could report some heroic circumstances, but the story I got was that he did not die in battle at all. My grandmother said that one of his comrades who had been with him at the time of his death "came through here [i.e., the Knox/Laurel County area] years later" and explained that one of the local people-- a woman, as I remember--around Nashville put poison in Jesse's food (I think it was milk). I guess it was not unusual for soldiers on both sides to demand food from the local population, as I have heard stories about some of my own ancestors, including Jesse's in-laws, whose chickens were all eaten up, in that case by Confederates. Those of you who have been receiving my messages may remember that I am always interested in seeing how the legends passed on to me hold up in the face of documentary material. In a letter of April 29, 1978, Robert W. Helton provided the following information, based on his research: Jesse Sasser born Jan. 30, 1982 Laurel Co. Ky. died Feb. 14, 1863 while serving with Co. A, 1st Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, Union Army. ..." Mr. Helton repeated some of the same in a letter to someone else that Debbie Mauleshagen recently shared with me from her archives, with the additonal observation that "He [Jesse] may have been killed at Lookout Mountain in the general fighting as Triune is close by and several battles were fought there." While most of Mr. Helton's information is compatible with my oral traditions, he does seem to contradict my grandmother's account of the location of Jesse's death. My first impulse was to conclude that oral tradition had been disproved. After all, I was not sure my grandmother had much idea about geographical locations; one of her daughters married a man from Nashville, and perhaps she just more or less automatically got it in her mind that Nashville was where Jesse died too. But then I checked a map last week and discovered that Triune is just outside Nashville, not close to Chattanooga or to Lookout Mountain, as Mr. Helton suggested. I was the one with the poor knowledge of geography-- at least of a small town such as Triune. The oral tradition was correct. Of course, the man who travelled through Knox/Laurel County years later may have been wrong about everything else. For all I know, he might have been a liar. But I thought such a story might be of interest. Aside from the usual information (dates of birth, marriage, etc., which we all have anyway, this is about all I remember from the oral traditon about Jesse. I have a lot of stories about his widow, my gg grandmother, and her family that I plan eventually to share. Yes, there was one other story, which I believe to be fully discredited. My grandmother said that she thought perhaps someone had once claimed that Jesse started out to join the Confederate Army and got conscripted by the Unionists instead. She never said she believed that story. I asked Rhoda Glass about it in 1959, and she adamantly denied it. The fact that Adin also was in the the Union army points to the family's sympathies, although we all know that it was not uncommon for brothers to fight on different sides (after all, his sister Piety Humfleet's family were on the Confederate side, a subject about which I have many stories to relate). More such tidbits as I find time. Glenn ***************************************** Glenn E. Perry Department of Political Science Indiana State University Terre Haute, IN 47809 USA E-Mail: psperrg@scifac.indstate.edu (812)237-2505 (office) (812)234-5661 (home) **************************************** ------------------------------