ALFRED CUMMINS

Gone, but not forgotten

The Sunday Herald-Tribune, Nevada, MO.  Sunday, June 12, 2005

By Patrick Brophy

Special to the Herald

"An early settler of this county, closely identified with its history and growth,"

     He whose name heads this brief sketch needs no introduction. Occupying prominent official positions, of trust and responsibility, he has been kept prominently before the people, whose every interest has been carefully guarded, and by no word or action has he brought aught but credit to those whose suffrage placed him in these various positions."

     So his obituary and his 1911 "History of Vernon County" entry. Ah, but how fleeting is fame! Till his great-granddaughter turned up, the present writer seemed to be the only modern Nevadan to have heard, however vaguely, of Alfred "Dick" Cummins, well-known Nevadan of an earlier day, whose family (like the present writer's) was burned out of house and home along with other townsfolk, while he was off leaving an arm on the field of battle.

     Nan Nelson, of Big Bear City, Calif., turned up in the Bushwhacker Museum last summer lamenting that her ancestor's grave in Deepwood Cemetery had no headstone.

     It was a disgrace she proceeded to rectify. Under the radar, it would seem, of the politically correct, the Federal government indeed furnishes soldiers' stones, on application, even for Confederates. In March, after a spell in the present writer's garage, Cummins' stone was duly installed by members of the Col. John T. Coffee Camp No. 1934 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The Camp will dedicate it, and commemorate Cummins, at 11 a.m., June 18, in a colorful public ceremony, to be attended by Nan Nelson and one or more other descendants.

     Alfred Cummins was born in Camden County, Mo., in 1836. Picking up a bride on the way, he came to Vernon County in 1859, when county and town were only 4 years old.

     He was a country schoolteacher when, just two years later, war broke out.

     "Determined to support the principles which he believed were right," he enlisted in Co. B (the "Vernon Guards") of Hunter's regiment, of which he shortly found himself orderly sergeant. He served with it through the actions at Carthage, Wilson's Creek, and Drywood. His luck ran out in March, 1862. Recovering, after having lost an arm at Pea Ridge, he reenlisted and passed the rest of the war in the Confederate States Army commissary department.

     The late Talbot Wight used to tell some of the stories handed down by his Grandmother Cummins about the travails of a Confederate soldier's family living in technically occupied territory, interminably plagued by legitimized thieves and murderers from nearby Kansas. Her big concern, he said, was "a barrel of flour," their most precious possession in a period of universal want and hardship. Would those blue-bellied brigands at last sniff out that barrel of flour and lay hands on it? Would it be lost to their next wanton act of arson?

     No longer hagridden over the barrel of flour, or worries about her absent soldier husband, Susan A. Cummins, "Maxey," lies in peace beside him, beneath a badly-broken marble marker which has been repaired, as best it could be, at Nan Nelson's expense.

     Ex-Capt. Cummins tried returning to his boyhood trade of farming and stock-raising; but handicapped as he was he moved into Nevada in 1869 and offered himself to the voters. He was successively elected assessor, collector, clerk, and treasurer of the county. He also served a term as Nevada's police judge, and as steward, or lay administrator, of the State Hospital.

     Nan Nelson isn't sure, but it would seem the aging Cummins either fell on hard times or became the victim of family squabbles.

     Perhaps he "just lived too long," at least as younger generations saw it. In any case, despite his prominence, and his links to Nevada's nearest thing to an "aristocracy" (the Wights, the Talbots, etc.), and his wife's stone, clearly bought by himself, his own grave went unmarked. In 1913 he applied for a Confederate state pension.

     And at age 84, in the last year of his life, he was reduced to applying for admission to the Confederate Veterans' Home at Higginsville, Mo.

     Doubtless this was when it was revealed that, in the chaos of the Confederacy's collapse, his military records hadn't survived (explaining why no rank or unit are given on the new stone). His service and rank were verified in affidavits from such dauntingly respectable figures as Judge W.B. Martin, Presiding Judge Bert Triplett, O.B. Fuller, and A.J. King.

     But alas, Cummins had hardly settled in at Higginsville when death came for him. Judge Martin went up and saw him back to join his wife in Deepwood Cemetery.

     The body was consigned to daughter Nannie, wife of the well-known Nevada jeweler J.W. Talbot, with whom Cummins had lived before leaving for Higginsville.

     Marie, a daughter of the Talbots, in turn married Ward Wight, Talbot Wight's father. Nan Nelson's father was the Talbots's son, John Talbot Jr. He and his went west about 1924, Nan says, by which time Cummins' other children may already have been gone from Nevada.

     She wishes she knew more. "I remember my grandmother, his (Alfred's) second daughter, Nancy, a.k.a. Nannie, being very adamant that whenever I heard 'Dixie' played I was to stand and clap. My husband Ed still teases me about it, and I still have a great tendency to rise promptly!" We should all have such grandmothers, and great-grandfathers!

     She didn't even have a photograph of Great-grandfather Cummins; not, that is, till Terry Ramsey, the Bushwhacker Museum coordinator, found him in the well-known group portrait of ex-Confederates on the porch of the no-longer-extant Frank White home, gathered in honor of the 1901 return visit of Col. DeWitt C. Hunter, who'd led them all in battle, and who in later life had moved to Chetoquah in the Indian Territory, not yet Oklahoma.

     And that brings up "a whole nother story." It was always assumed Col. Hunter was buried down there where he'd died. Lo and behold, up turned a death notice saying his body was on its way home by train, to lie with, not just his family, but more than 50 of his men.

     So, a second veteran's stone waits in the present writer's garage; the Coffee Camp plots another dedication and commemoration, probably for the fall. A double dedication was first contemplated. But it was concluded it just wouldn't do for the long-forgotten captain to be overshadowed, even in remembrance, by his commanding officer!

     Look forward, then, to the colonel getting his deserts this fall, and meantime come enjoy the very deserved ritual salute to Capt. Alfred "Dick" Cummins, Confederate soldier who fought and bled for "principles which he believed were right" and local leader who long filled "positions of trust and responsibility" and "guarded every interest" of his admiring public.

Used with permission

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