Dewey County advocate. [volume] (Timber Lake, S.D.) 1910-1913, 1912-05-10
LIKE ENOcn ARDEN
HE WOULD NOT
I. STAY DEAD
How P. Thomson, Wanderer Ex-
traordinary, Returned to Sa-
vannah After Forty-seven
Years to Find His Wife With
New Husband and New Chill
dren-Wants Only to Die
], Where He Was Born.

- ORN from the arms Of his young
wife and baby daughter by the
fortunes Of war, exiled from
Savannah by the order Of
General Sherman, whose army
had just completed its famous march
through Georgia to the Sea, P. ].
y Thompson, recently Of Kentucky, wan
derer extraordinary, has returned to
his native state for the first time in
~ yeaf only to find his wife hap
ply martied to another man and the
& mother. Of many children; his daugh-
ter. whom he left an infant, grown
to womanhood and nursing babies Of
her own, and his sister scarcely able
to recognize him.
With the lines Of the years SCARED
deeply into his weather-beaten face,
and his back bent with the burden
OF many days, the heart Of the old
man cried for the red old hills that he
had wandered over as a barefoot boy,
and for news Of the little family from
whom he had parted in his youth. He
wished to rest his bones in the ground
that nourished him, and to feel for
the last time the breezes that the
"Gulf Stream, that wandering summer
of the sea-" brings to Georgia's shoes.
And so he turned his footsteps back
toward the land Of his nativity, and as
a consequence involves his wife in .
matrimonial tangle not yet unrav-
eled.
For after having spent the better
years Of long life as the wife Of an
other man and the mother Of his chill
dren. the old woman Is inclined to
look askance at this husband of her
early youth, whom she can now re-
member only dimly, and whom she
has SO long believed to be lying in an
unknown soldiers grave upon one of
the many battlefields with which the
bosom of the south was Redeemed. She
is as shy as a girl in the presence Of
her former husband. but she continues
to HyHx with her second husband.
a Man Without q Home.
Berry Jones, kindly eyed. white
whiskered. who wooed and won the
young Mrs. Thompson, after she had
given up her husband for dead, is not
inclined to part at this late date with
his life companion. He looks upon
the advent of Thompson as rather
humorous incident that will break the
monotony of existence for his women
folks a little while, and then be for
gotten. He cannot conceive that there
may DO a real interruption in the es-
tablished order Of things, and as to
his wife's leaving him-he accepts the
suggestion with laugh. These two
together have been the architects Of
too many human lives to allow dead
man come to life to break the placid
1ty yof their conugal relations. Enoch
Ardens are supposed to look through
windows upon happy firesides and
then to disappear again.
The story Of the adventures Of
Thompson is of intense interest.
Through all the years he has been q
man without home, wanderer, seek
ing always after the will-o'-thevwisp Of
q fortune that forever eludei him.
The one discordant note in the har-
mony is that he never made an at
tempt to return to his wife and home
after having been sent north by the
federal soldiers.
Thompson's Early Life.
When the war broke out Thompson,
not yet Of age, enlisted for six months.
On the expiration Of that period he
went into a cavalry troop aud saw
MUCH Service in Virginia and Tonnes
see. The beginning of the last year Of
the war found him in hospital in
Savannah. Becoming conva1escsnt,
he obtained leave to visit his family
in Pembroke, where he learned for the
first time that he was a father, and
for a brief and only period of his life
held his baby in his arms. While he
was still at Pembroke Sherman and
his legions swept across the state.
Bidding his wife hasty gooday, tho
Confederate soldier took refuge III the
swamps. That was the last that Mrs.
Thompson now also Mrs. Jones and
the wife of two men. ever saw u her
husband.
Driven from his hiding place By hum
ger, Thompson made his way across
the Ogeechee river bridge and felt into
the hands of a federal outpost, by
whom he was promptly dispatched into
Savannah, prisoner of war. He was
detained there and furnished with ra-
lions for a time, but an order finally
came that no more provisions were
to be served, and this, together with
an offer Of transportation north. left
Thompson and others in similar pre-
dicament no alternative but to 20 into
the land Of the enemy as hostages Of
war. He was sent by boat to New
York, where he remained until the
war closed.
Escaped oeath In Cyclone.
After the war Thompson wandered
into the west. Why he chose the west
tnstead of the south and homo has
never been satisfactorily explained.
He lived for q time in Cincinnati, but
driven by the unrest that was in him.
he q tinued his wanderings over ths
greater part Of the western cOuntrY,