Last updated: July 19, 2022
Person
Anderson J. Roach
Dale A. Roach
Quick Facts
Significance:
US Army soldier who enlisted with the 8th Tennessee Cavalry at Camp Nelson during the Civil War.
Place of Birth:
Grainger County, Tennessee
Date of Birth:
March 17, 1847
Place of Death:
Loudon County, Tennessee
Date of Death:
March 9, 1925
Place of Burial:
Blaine, Grainger County, Tennessee
Cemetery Name:
New Corinth Cemetery
The regiment in its marches and counter marches traveled three thousands three hundred and twenty three miles, less than fifty miles of this distance by rail, the balance except from Strawberry Planes to Camp Nelson, a distance of 170 miles, which was traveled on foot, was on horseback.
Early Life
Anderson J. Roach was born in Grainger County in East Tennessee on March 17, 1847. Roach’s family were farmers and lived in a one-room log house on thirty-five acres of land. Growing up, Roach only attended ten months of school in total, as he had to work most of the time on the family farm. Like many communities in East Tennessee, Grainger County had few slaveholders and the majority of the residents were poor farmers likes Roach’s family. According to Roach, there were few opportunities for young men to save up enough money to purchase their own farms or go into business for themselves. He remembered that the members of the community who owned enslaved people did not have close relations with the non-slaveholding residents. Roach stated that when an enslaver did employ a non-slaveholder, the worker “was principally looked on as being no better than a slave and was treated as one.”
Civil War
When the Civil War began, Anderson Roach was like many other East Tennesseans and remained loyal to the US government. At the age of sixteen, Roach left his home in Grainger County and traveled north to Kentucky, where he enlisted in the US Army at Camp Nelson on July 19, 1863. Roach was mustered in as a private in Company F of the 8th Tennessee Cavalry on August 11, 1863. Roach served with the regiment throughout the rest of the war, participating in numerous operations in Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina.
Between December 1863 and March 1864, Roach was absent from his unit without leave, likely because he was spending time at home with his family, but he rejoined the 8th Tennessee Cavalry and was restored to duty without any serious repercussions. As part of his military service, Roach fought Confederate forces to help secure US control of East Tennessee, raided enemy industrial infrastructure in Virginia, and performed garrison duty in his home region in the war’s aftermath. In a questionnaire completed in 1922 by surviving Civil War veterans in Tennessee, Roach recalled:
While in regular camps we had plenty to eat plenty to wear and good treatment but when we were on raids, as we were most of the time, we suffered untold agony from cold and exposure. There were several hundred of the soldiers feet froze and had to be amputated…The regiment in its marches and counter marches traveled three thousands three hundred and twenty three miles, less than fifty miles of this distance by rail, the balance except from Strawberry Planes to Camp Nelson, a distance of 170 miles, which was traveled on foot, was on horseback.
Roach was mustered out of Federal service at Knoxville on September 11, 1865.
Post-War Life
After the Civil War ended and he was discharged, Roach walked from Knoxville to his home in Grainger County. Roach once again took up farming and remained a farmer for the rest of his life. Roach married Susan L. McDaniel in November 1865, and after her death in 1879, he remarried to Darthula E. Walker around 1880.
Roach died in Loudon County, Tennessee, on March 9, 1925. He is intered at New Corinth Cemetery in Grainger County.