Remembering Rutherford, Daily News Journal, August 9, 2014, Greg Tucker
The first entry on page 32 of the recently discovered “Trial Docket” (1866-67) shows former Murfreesboro Mayor Alfred Miller filing a creditor’s claim against Bromfield Ridley, Confederate veteran and former Rutherford County chancellor. Entry #34 shows one of the Lytles being sued for “trespass.”
Barely a year after the Appomattox surrender ended the Civil War, the former mayor of Murfreesboro (Alfred Miller) filed debt collection suits against a former Confederate officer and a dozen others.
During most of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Rutherford County was occupied by the Federal army and under martial law. The civil courts were inactive. Land transfers and estates were not processed. Few Rutherford County courthouse records survived.
Although martial law and military oversight continued for an extended period after the war, the civil courts were promptly re-established, as evidenced by a volume of 1866-67 court records. Recently found among the books and papers of the late C. B. Arnette, this leather-bound “Trial Docket” lists Rutherford County civil cases from the March 1866 through the March 1867 terms of the Fifth Judicial Circuit (Wilson, Bedford, Franklin, Coffee and Rutherford counties).
(The old Trial Docket was delivered to General Sessions Judge Ben Hall McFarlin. “I knew that such a document should be in the permanent collection at the Rutherford County Archives,” explains McFarlin. “I immediately gave it to our Rutherford County historian, so it could be examined and properly preserved.”)
The docket confirms that the lawyers were quick to re-establish their trade. Among the most active were E.A. and H.P. Keeble (father and son). E.A. Keeble, from one of Rutherford’s “first families,” served as a Murfreesboro alderman and mayor before the war. Charles Ready, son of a Rutherford County founder, had a very active debt-collection practice. Joseph B. Palmer, former Confederate brigadier general who brought the Army of Tennessee home after the surrender, represented a number of prominent local citizens.
The most active plaintiff in 1866 was Alfred Miller, a Murfreesboro alderman before the war and city mayor for a short term during the first Federal occupation (1862). During the March term of the court, Miller filed 13 claims. The only other multiple plaintiff filed six claims.
Miller came to Rutherford County as a child with his widowed mother. Unable to support a family, his mother apprenticed 8-year-old Alfred to a hatter. The boy learned the trade and eventually became successful in his own business.
For “bragging rights” as a young adult, Miller paddled from Murfree Spring to New Orleans. While in the port city, he purchased a load of merchandise and booked passage home. Back in Murfreesboro, he profited handsomely from sale of his goods and thereafter prospered as a merchant living in a fine home on the corner of Academy and East College streets.
With substantial personal assets, Miller began making loans and dealing in commercial debt and mortgages. Enjoying considerable success as a “note trader,” Miller purchased farm land including a large tract south of town along the Shelbyville Turnpike. When the local Confederate militia was first organized in 1861, Miller made his farm available for military exercises. A year later when Murfreesboro Mayor J. E. Dromgoole refused to serve during federal occupation, Miller agreed to take the post under Union military direction.
At the end of the war, Miller was holding a quantity of prewar debt as assignee from others and as mortgagor. Most of the obligations were in default, and Miller went to court in an effort to realize value.
In one case, with Ready as his lawyer, Miller sued Bromfield Ridley in March 1866. Ridley, a former Confederate officer, had served as judge of the Rutherford County Chancery Court before the war and was a practicing attorney at the time of Miller’s lawsuit. Miller settled for a portion of the original debt.
During the July term of the court, Miller pursued claims against a number of prominent Murfreesboro residents including former mayor Dromgoole, J.B. Murfree, E.L. Jordan, William Spence and D.D. Wendell.
A grandson of Revolutionary War hero Hardy Murfree, J.B. Murfree was the assistant surgeon general for the Confederate Army and returned to Murfreesboro after the war to establish a distinguished medical practice. E.L. Jordan was a city alderman before the war and was appointed by the Union military to serve nominally in that role during the 1862 occupation. Along with others, Jordan petitioned the military to re-establish relations with the federal government in 1862. In 1866 Jordan founded a savings bank in Murfreesboro with himself as president. In 1868 he was elected mayor.
As a young man, William Spence worked as a volunteer medic during the Rutherford County cholera epidemic in 1835. Over the next 25 years Spence served variously as a city alderman and city treasurer. In 1852 Spence and his brother founded the Tennessee Exchange Bank. In 1855 the Spence brothers bought the Rio Mills. Following the war, Spence served as a state senator in the Reconstruction government.
D.D. Wendell was the Murfreesboro postmaster in the 1830s and served in various city and court clerk positions until the courts were shut down at the start of war. Following the war he served as the Murfreesboro recorder and treasurer.
On opening day of the 1866 November Term of the court, Miller showed his lack of reluctance to pursue every claim. Using the services of Gen. Palmer, Miller filed a debt collection suit against the county’s leading debt collection attorney — H.P. Keeble.
In most of his claims against prominent debtors Miller negotiated cash settlements and the lawsuits were dismissed. Against others, however, this “note shaver” often satisfied judgments by taking the debtors’ land and other possessions. Notably successful and somewhat unpopular, Miller died in 1868. Son Isaac took up his father’s trade.
Rutherford County Historian Greg Tucker can be reached at [email protected].