The following application was made in April 1873 by 35 year-old Benjamin Hammond of Phillips county, Arkansas, for the unpaid “pay and bounty” of his brother, Samuel Johnson who served in Co. F, 46th U. S. Colored Troops and who died on 5 October 1863 at Goodrich Landing, Louisiana.
From the Company Descriptive Book of the 46th Regt. U. S. Col’d Infantry at Fold 3, we find that Samuel Johnson was 20 years old when he enlisted as a private on 1 May 1863 at Helena, Arkansas, for a period of three years. Samuel was described as a 5 feet-8 inch farmer, born in Missouri, when he enlisted. The details of his death are not given in the company records but it is presumed he died of disease.
It appears that Benjamin Hammond—who claimed to be the brother of the deceased soldier—is the same “Ben Hummond” who was enumerated as a farmer in Saint Francis, Phillips county, Arkansas, in 1900. According to that census record, Ben was born in November 1840 in Kentucky. He claimed his father was born in Virginia and his mother in Kentucky. His wife, Caroline, was born in September 1845 in Arkansas as were her parents. The couple were married in 1870. Neither could read or write in 1900.
Attesting to Benjamin’s claim were two fellow residents of Phillips county, Arkansas—Edward Proctor (born April 1823 in Kentucky), and Dudley Davis (born 1836 in Kentucky), both Black sharecroppers, as was Benjamin. Long after the Civil War, Black sharecroppers in Phillips county struggled to eke out a living. Almost fifty years after the Civil War (in 1919), when Black sharecroppers protested that landowners were sharing less and less of the profits and levying “supposed debts” upon them, violence erupted and resulted in what has become known today as the “Elaine Massacre.” [See The Massacre of Black Sharecroppers that led the Supreme Court to Curb the Racial Disparities of the Justice System, Smithsonian Magazine]
The following document is from Fold 3.
Spared & Shared 22 