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Organization seeks to preserve history
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Beverly George, left, and Wilma Reed flank the bust of Pat Cleburne Layland Museum. George and Reed are among the last members of the former Pat Cleburne United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter. Jane Lane/Times-Review
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If Gen. Pat Cleburne’s famous Civil War gun could talk . . . well, it seems it can.
The members of the history-minded Pat Cleburne United Daughters of the Confederacy in Cleburne help give voice to its legacy because their 105-year old group made it possible for the Colt Model 1851 Navy revolver to be placed at the Layland Museum, said Beverly George of Cleburne.
Museum documents say the gun was stolen from Cleburne’s body after the Battle of Franklin, Tenn, on Nov. 30, 1864.
From there, the legend involves a gun thief in 1864, some children on a farm, a muddy recovery of the pistol and the keen thinking 80 years later of Mrs. T.W. Scott, daughter of a Civil War veteran and president of the local Daughters of the Confederacy.
George, a member of the Pat Cleburne United Daughters of the Confederacy, said the Sons of Confederate Veterans had possession of Cleburne’s gun. In 1938, it was stolen from their meeting room in the courthouse.
In 1944, some children found it in the mud on the farm of her father-in-law, W.T. George.
The children gave it to a scrap-metal dealer, and the sheriff was notified. The sheriff notified Scott, who bought the gun for $5 from the dealer. The Layland Museum received the gun on loan from the Pat Cleburne chapter through Mrs. Scott.
The Daughters of the Confederacy maintained ownership of the weapon until 2005 when they gave it to the museum, George said.
She has “no earthly idea” how Cleburne’s pistol came to be on her father-in-law’s farm, she said.
The Daughters
The Pat Cleburne chapter of the Daughters, whose membership has “dwindled,” George said, recently transferred to the Glen Rose chapter called Dixie Daughters.
The Cleburne group, No. 1971 that formed in 1903, transferred with four members: George, Wilma Reed, Barbara Peppers and Beulah Reid. George’s late daughter, Carolyn Burnett of Cleburne, had also been a member, she said.
The club is part of a national organization that was started after the Civil War as a support group for veterans of the war, George said.
She is a great-great granddaughter of a Civil War veteran and has been a member for 26 years, she said.
Reed’s great-grandfather was a Civil War veteran and one of the first 13 settlers of Johnson County, she said. She has been a club member for seven years.
The group gives regional scholarships and conducts food drives. Members have monthly meetings, including programs that relate to the Civil War and that period of time.
They visit graves of Confederate soldiers to honor them, George said, and they go to the Confederate Ball in December, wear period costumes when visiting the cemeteries to lay wreaths and put American flags on Civil War soldiers’ graves, she said.
Along with their service projects, the group has another traditional mission: keeping history relevant and accurate.
“I think we are more attuned to historical preservation,” Reed said on a recent afternoon at the Layland Museum.
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