A Dry Creek Soldier Comes Home

Saturday, September 7, 2024

Dry Creek, Louisiana

Taps There’s nothing quite like the sound of “Taps” echoing off a stand of tall pines.

My friend Randy Sanchez plays “Taps” on a small World War I “Trench Bugle” in the far corner of the Dry Creek Cemetery. The antique bugle’s unique, raw sound, which no trumpet can replicate, sends a chill through the air.

 

It’s appropriate because we’re bringing a Dry Creek soldier home today.

Andrew Jackson Wagnon will now have a marker beside his wife, Nancy.

We’re bringing him home to Dry Creek.

This spot in Dry Creek Cemetery doesn’t contain Andrew Jackson Wagnon’s remains. He was buried in 1863 in an unmarked grave near Opelousas, Louisiana.

It’s only a symbolic granite marker, but regardless, we’re bringing him home today. We’re placing a marker by his wife, Nancy. It’ll be a testimony that a man named Andrew J. Wagnon walked on this earth.

We’re doing the right thing today, and that’s what we try to do in the Pineywoods.

The right thing.

The words on the marker are simple and brief, but they tell an uncompleted story:

Lost at War

Andrew J. Wagnon

1824-1863

Co A Spaight’s Batt Tex. CSA

 

It’s a cool September morning as a group of thirty Wagnon descendants are clustered around the new marker.

I’m one of them.

Andrew Jackson Wagnon and his wife Nancy were my great-great-great grandparents, making me a fifth-generation descendant of these Dry Creek pioneers. 

As we stand around this marker, my paternal aunt, JoAnn Iles Edwards, traces the long journey of the Wagnons as they pull up stakes and leave western Georgia, headed to Louisiana’s No Man’s Land for free land and elbow room. 

We learn of the Wagnons’ arrival in Dry Creek along with two other Georgia families, the Lyles and Henderson. All three families still have deep roots in the Pineywoods. In about 1892, John Wesley Wagnon married Sarah Lyles, and they homesteaded a 120-acre plot and built a log cabin.

 

We call that cabin the Old House, and the Iles-Wagnon Clan still considers it the center of our universe. 

***

That open spot in Dry Creek Cemetery, between Nancy Wagnon and her son Jasper, has always bothered me. Last year, I stood there with Cemetery Board member Larry Singleton and lamented how Andrew Jackson Wagnon should have a marker.

Larry went to work. Even after the V.A. turned him down, he kept digging. He is a serious historian and researcher. He was able to track down Andrew’s military service with a Texas unit nicknamed “Spaight’s Angels,” who fought the invading Yankees at Sabine Pass and Calcasieu Pass.

Larry procured the marker, flags, and other items for the dedication. This day wouldn’t have happened without Larry Singleton.

Today’s dedication ceremony isn’t about the Confederacy, nor is it about the Civil War.

It’s about a family bringing their Dry Creek soldier home. 

It’s about time to do this. It’s been over 160 years since Andrew Jackson Wagnonn left Dry Creek for the War, never to return, dying of typhoid fever while encamped near Opelousas, Louisiana.

It’s a sobering fact that more Civil War soldiers died of disease than bullets.

***

We’re placing Andrew’s marker beside his wife Nancy, who lived forty-nine years as a war widow until she died in 1912.

Two noteworthy events take place during the ceremony:

Larry Singleton presents a Texas flag to Levi Wagnon, a junior at East Beauregard. Levi, a seventh-generation descendant, represents the Wagnon clan.

 

Levi Wagnon with father Derrick and grandfather Dennis

 

Next, we did an unusual thing: we said the Pledge of Allegiance. 

It may seem ironic that we said the pledge at the marker of a rebel soldier who took up arms against the United States.

Here’s what I told our family: “I want you to look around this cemetery. Every person buried here is an American, and that includes Andrew Jackson Wagnon and the other fifteen Confederate veterans buried here. We’re all Americans.”

We said the pledge together.

As I said earlier, it was the right thing to do.

Andrew Jackson Wagnon won’t be forgotten to history.

We brought a soldier home to Dry Creek.

May he rest in peace.