Pvt. (CSA) Greenberry Wilburn Bailey

Green Berry Wilburn Bailey is the son of Wyatt & Margaret "Peggy" Turner of South Carolina. In 1834 several Bailey families, including Wyatt, moved to Bibb County, Alabama.

Green Berry married Clarissa Elizabeth Harlow Kyser 1839, moved to Bibb County, Alabama, and lived beside Green Berry's father, Wyatt Bailey. By 1841, Green Berry and Clarissa were living on a 602-acre farm on the Pea river in New Hope Community in Coffee County, Alabama, near her kinfolk.

They had eight children the first ten years of their marriage, and five more in the 1850's, and two more after the Civil War, bringing the total to fifteen. Despite the size of their brood, the family fared well for themselves, probably due to good health and hard work. Their land and personal possessions were valued at $7,000. Unfortunately, the Civil War and its aftermath would erase all that they had worked to acquire.

When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, their oldest son, James Ernest, wasted no time in answering President Jefferson Davis' call for volunteers. In 1863, another son, William, 17, joined his brother James' company. That same year, James Ernest Bailey died in the Battle of Chancellorsville in VA. With General Robert E. Lee calling for every able-bodied man to come and serve in the Confederate Army.

In July 1863, Green Berry and yet another son, John, hardly 16, signed up in the Alabama Infantry. Green Berry Bailey joined Company G, 61st Alabama Infantry regiment with his son John B. Wilburn Bailey on 17 July 1863. The last record of his service was on 15 October 1864. He served as a private (Civil War Record). By January 1865, Green Berry had returned to Coffee County. John and William were back home by the Fall of 1865.

In September 1871, due to hardship after the civil war, Green Berry and Clarissa decided to leave Alabama and sold their farm. Two months later, Green Berry and son, William M. "General" Bailey, rode horse back to Panola County, Texas, and paid for a 172-acre farm in the Buncombe Community. Three days after they returned home to get the family, Green Berry, age 52, died of pneumonia. Clarissa buried her husband in the Christopher Kyser family cemetery, marked the top of the grave with a layer of carefully placed brick and a proper headstone, and then prepared to go to Texas with money given by the Pea River Lodge. Clarissa would never know that nearly a century later, the graves in the Kyser family cemetery would be bull-dozed off into a nearby gully by a landowner.

See photos of his wife and children at Find A Grave.

He has a grave marker in Panola County, Texas.

His grave in Coffee, AL was destroyed.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=25742139

----------------------------

Source for middle name: Rutledge and Associated Famiies website:

http://www.ldrgen.org/f/p79.htm#i3575