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Jacob Goodnight was born on January 15, 1807 and his wife Susannah Claiborne Hankla Goodnight was born on May 14, 1808. Jacob and Susannah was married on December 23, 1829. At the time of the battle, Jacob was fifty-five years old and his wife was fifty-four. They had eight children living in a house that was located along the Chaplin River, several hundred yards from the Walker house. At the time of the battle, their son James was 29, Thomas was 27, Elizabeth was 25, Hugh was 23, Mary Frances was 22, Henry was 17, William was 16, and Malcolm was 13.
When the battle occurred on October 8, 1862, they left their home. When they returned after the battle, they discovered that there home was converted into a Confederate field hospital. During the battle, Confederate General Benjamin Cheatham selected the Goodnight home as his field hospital. After the battle, Confederate General Braxton Bragg left Perryville during the night and on October 9, he left the Union to care and bury the Confederate wounded and dying on the field and in the makeshift hospitals. Most of the Confederate soldiers treated in the goodnight home were from Confederate General Benjamin Cheatham’s division, which was made up of Confederate General Daniel Donelson’s, General Alexander Stewart’s, and General George Maney’s brigades. According to Cheatham “the balance of the Confederate soldiers who were injured during the battle were left at the Goodnight house and “in fence corners.” He wrote that Dr. J. R. Buist “was left in charge of them, [and] he built shelters over them with brush and cornstalks to keep the sun off.i.” During the night, Sam Watkins, a private in Company H, 1st Tennessee Infantry stayed behind to transport the wounded to the Goodnight farm. He wrote that he helped “bring off a man by the name of Hodge with his under jaw shot off and his tongue lolling out. We brought off Captain Lute B. [Irwin]. Lute was shot through the lungs and was vomiting blood all the while, and begging us to lay him down and let him die. But Lute is living yet. Also, Lieutenant [Woldridge] with both eyes shot out. I found him rambling in a briar patch.ii.” Ethel Moore who a young woman who traveled with Cheatham’s division wrote that she spend all night on the battlefield gathering up the wounded of Cheatham’s division and sending them to the rear, “coming at daylight and going back to the Goodnight hospital, some three miles in the rear, finding Lieutenant Woldridge lying on the floor with a cloth over the upper part of his face, the sight from both eyes gone forever to this world.iii.” Amazingly Woldridge survived his wound. According to family accounts, a violin or fiddle player walked around the hospital entertaining wounded soldiers and helped comfort them.
Marcus Toney, of the 1st Tennessee Confederate Infantry stayed behind to attend to his fellow wounded Confederate soldiers and visited the Goodnight house. He wrote that after the battle, “the blue and the gray mingled together all that night removing the wounded. . . . It was a sad sight that night as I gazed upon the upturned, ghastly faces of our dead; and the cries of the wounded for "water!" "water!" "water!" was heartrending. Before daylight all of our wounded had been brought from the field. A farmer named Goodnight, who lived some half mile from the battlefield, had deserted his house on the eve of battle, and we turned it into a hospital. On the second floor in the small room were the following: T. H. Woldridge, B. P. Steele, T. H. Maney, M. B. Pilcher, Mac Campbell, Lute Irwin, I. H. Wheless, and Lieutenant Hammond. These eight men were my patients. Four of them were on the bedsteads and four on the floor. Comrade Woldridge lost both of his eyes and Captain Pilcher, Captain Steele, Lieutenant Maney, Mac Campbell, and Lute Irwin were all badly wounded. For three nights I did not close my eyes in sleep. iv.
Three days after the battle, Toney met Mrs. Betsy Sullivan, who traveled with Maney’s brigade and was known as “Mother Sullivan.” Toney wrote that she “was very, valuable in assisting the boys in needlework and cooking.” Her husband served in Company K, of the 1st Tennessee Infantry. During the battle of Perryville, her husband charged up the hill at Union General John Starkweather’s position and “received a hole in his forehead that exposed a part of his brain” and left on the field of battle since most assumed he was dead. At midnight, Mrs. Sullivan, waiting at the Goodnight farm, learned that her husband had been shot. By herself, she went to the battlefield to look for her husband’s body. She returned to the Goodnight farm several hours later. She found her husband and carried him on her shoulders to the hospital. Mrs. Sullivan attended to her husband’s care and two weeks later, Dr. Buist managed to buy a carryall for John and Betsy Sullivan, along with Woldridge, so they could head home to Pulaski, Tennessee. Unfortunately along the way, in Lebanon, Kentucky, Union authorities arrested John Sullivan and Woldridge and sent them to a prisoner. v.
During the battle of Perryville, Robert S. Hamilton, a soldier in the 1st Tennessee Infantry and a friend on Toney, was killed while charging cannons. Hamilton wrote Hamilton’s sister in law Mrs. Wesley C. Hamilton in Lexington, Kentucky, that Robert was killed in a charge and that he would take care of his remains until she had arrived to claim the body. On October 11, Mrs. Hamilton arrived at the Goodnight hospital. When she arrived, Toney was upstairs in the Goodnight house, where he found out that Mrs. Sullivan was waiting to see him. He wrote that “This was my first meeting with Mrs. Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton was with her and they brought a hearse and casket, and a carryall with blankets and provisions for our wounded. I accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton to the battlefield. I had buried twenty-seven of the Rock City Guards in a gully nearby where they fell, and not far from the battery that they charged so gallantly. I did not have any implement to bury with, but with the use of a breastplate taken from the body of a dead Federal I invented a tool which formed a kind of scoop, and with this covered our boys with the dirt. I had buried Robert Hamilton at the head of the twenty-seven, and when we reached the spot I raked the dirt from his face and said: "Mrs. Hamilton, this is Robert." "Is it possible," she replied, "that these are Robert's remains?" I said: "I will soon satisfy you." Reaching down, I caught one of his hands, and, brushing the dirt away, I said to her: "Do you see this"' She replied: "I am satisfied." Robert was a very studious young man, and in his deep studies I have seen him bite his nails to the quick and frequently brought blood. When Mrs. Hamilton saw the hand and the condition of the finger nails, she knew they were Robert's. When the body was taken to the hospital and prepared for burial, there was no doubt in her mind. We expected to bury W. J. Whitthorne, of the Maury Grays, Columbia, Tenn., but the body could not be found. He was shot through the neck, and Dr. Buist said that he would not live until we got him to the hospital.vi. Robert Sullivan was buried in the Lexington Cemetery and is the only known Confederate casualty from the battle of Perryville buried in the cemetery.
A soldier in Confederate Captain John M. Taylor, of the 27th Tennessee Infantry, Company K, also mentioned the Goodnight home. He wrote: “About sundown Captain Taylor, senior Captain, fell wounded three times— one shot crushing his right thigh. Lieutenant Andrews was wounded in the left hip, as was thought. Dick Love, Howard Cole, and others, were wounded. Our wounded were carried back to Goodnight's, and for weeks many of us were in the horse lot. Some who were slightly wounded were removed to Harrodsburg. After our army withdrew many of us fell into the hands of the Federals, and were prisoners of war. Our regiment came out of the fight with just one-half its number killed, wounded, and missing."vii.
Lieutenant James I. Hall, of the 9th Tennessee Infantry, was also one of the wounded Confederate soldiers taken to the Goodnight farm. Hall was wounded in the torso after charging Colonel Charles Parson’s battery. He was left on the battlefield all evening. Eventually he was taken to the Goodnight farm around midnight. He wrote that after the surgeons had examined his wound they “pronounced my wound necessarily mortal and I was placed on the ground under an apple tree between two men whose wounds were similar to mine. A liberal dose of morphine was given to each one of us and I remember its soothing effect of me. The other two men were suffering intensely from their wounds and knowing that my wound was similar to theirs kept me awake for a long time by asking me such questions as “how I felt” and “whether I thought I could last through the night.” I finally got to sleep and when I awoke the nest morning, I had a corpse at each elbows. The men had died while I slept. Contrary to the predictions of the surgeons, I was still alive.”viii. Hall remained outside the Goodnight farm house for several days. He was exposed to the elements, because the doctors had ripped away his clothing to examine his wound. He was placed under a crude shelter, but a heavy snow fell and caused him “discomfort to our men in the hospital since they weren’t all provided with shelter and clothing. A large number of our men, however, were taken to the homes of the good people in Harrodsburg and Danville.” Hall remained at the Goodnight for two weeks, but was transported to Danville and taken to the home of Colonel Joshua Barbee. Hall had boarded at the Barbee home when he was a college student at Centre College.
Three days after the battle of Perryville, Union doctors took control of the field hospital at the Goodnight farm and administered to the Confederate wounded. John A. Martin of the 8th Kansas Infantry described the scene at the Goodnight farm. He wrote that he could tell that the Confederates made a hasty retreat as the Federals took control of the battlefield. He wrote that the Confederate dead and wounded “were left uncared for, and the ground was covered with guns, blankets, and knapsacks, indicating the confusion in which they had fled.”ix. Wilbur Hinman visited the area and wrote that lying upon the ground “with no shelter from the fierce hear of the sun by day or the dew by night were some three hundred rebel wounded. They had as yet received no care from the surgeons. Many of them were in the most horrible condition that the mind can conceive. Some were shot through the head, body or limbs, others mangled by fragments of shell, and all suffering the greatest torments. We gave them water, and shared with them the contents of our haversacks, but there was nothing else that we could do. Words are powerless to convey as adequate idea of these harrowing scenes.”x. As Confederate soldiers were dying, the bodies were placed in a mass pit in the family cemetery, which was located one hundred yards from the house. According to L. G. Hankla, the Confederate mass pit contained over one hundred bodies. The family also dug a trench where the amputated arms, legs and other body parts were buried on the Goodnight farm. Several weeks after the battle, the Union doctors closed the field hospital and the remaining patients were taken to Harrodsburg or Danville. The Confederate and Union surgeons left the house severely damaged. In 1879, Susannah filed a claim with the Federal Government to recover financial losses incurred during the war. The war claim revealed that the Union Army occupied the area for several days and that the Goodnights suffered a loss of $1,759.50. The cost was for the Union army’s use of their plank fencing, three hundred cords of firewood, 154 barrels of corn, 153 shocks of fodder, 1700 bundles of oats, hay, and a horse were removed, and the house and furniture were damaged.xi. As with many Government claims in Perryville, the Federal government did not pay out any money. In 1920, the Goodnight house was razed.xii. In the early 1900’s the United States erected marker on the Goodnight cemetery “to mark the burial place of an unascertained number of soldiers said to have died while prisoner of war at the Goodnight farmhouse from wounds received at the battle of Perryville October 8, 1862 whose graves cannot now be identified and whose names are unknown.” Recently a survey was done in the cemetery to determine where the mass pit was located and a large anomaly was discovered indicating the section of the cemetery where the mass pit may have been located.
At the time of the battle of Perryville, Lorenzo Goodnight Hankla was sixteen years old and lived near the battlefield. After the battle, he was curious to see the aftermath, A Union officer saw him looking around and told him to bury the bodies, but he became very ill at the site of the bloated and mangled bodies, and he fled the battlefield as soon as he had the chance. In 1830, Robert Walker built a brick home and passed the home down to Thomas Williams. Lorenzo Goodnight Hankla married into the Williams family. He and his wife Nannie occupied the Walker home after Thomas Williams died. Later, Nannie died and Lorenzo married Laura Lankford. They had five children, all of whom were born in the Walker house. Of the five children, Henry Hankla was born and his children were Scott and Ren Hankla, who currently own the Goodnight farm and Walker home.
Other family members who were affected by the Civil War in the Hankla family were William Hart Pettus, from Stanford, Kentucky who was a surgeon and captain in the 6th Kentucky Confederate Cavalry. He fought in the battle of Perryville and was captured after the battle and send to Camp Douglas. He was an uncle to the Hankla family.
Joseph Pettus was William Pettus’s son and he also fought with his father in the 6th Kentucky Confederate cavalry. He was a private and was also captured and sent to Camp Douglas. After the war, he settled in Louisville, Kentucky. He was a first cousin, once removed from the Hankla family.
Frank Terry Leak, Jr was a private in the 34th Mississippi Infantry and fought at the battle of Perryville. According to official reports, he was “wounded dangerously in the right leg, head, and left side of body.” Leak was related to the Hankla’s half-brother David Bitzer.
Special Thanks to Scott, Ren, and Faye Hankla for access to their family research.
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