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Nashville, TN 37217

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DeWitt S. Jobe

DeWitt S. Jobe was born June 4, 1840 the tiny now-forgotten village of Mechanicsville, Tennessee.  His father was a woodworker who specialized in furniture, coffins and cotton gins. DeWitt followed his father’s trade until the Civil War in Tennessee came along.  He then joined Company D of the 20th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry Regiment.  His first cousin, Thomas Benton Smith, a lieutenant, recruited him.  DeWitt S. Jobe was in most of the major battles fought by the Army of Tennessee.  After the Battle of Stones River, like Sam Davis he joined Coleman’s Scouts delivering valuable information from behind enemy lines.  DeWitt S. Jobe’s luck ran out on August 30, 1864 when a squad of fifteen Union soldiers captured him in a thicket about a mile and a half off Nolensville Pike south of Nashville.  He had valuable papers on him that he stuffed in his mouth and started chewing when he realized his capture was eminent.  His captors, unable to read the spit-soaked ball that they knocked from his mouth tortured without mercy trying to get him to tell the contents of the now unreadable papers.  DeWitt S. Jobe wouldn’t tell them a thing.  So the Yankees gouged out his eyes and cut off his tongue and then wrapped a rope around his throat.  They pulled it so hard that they choked out the life of our hero, DeWitt S. Jobe. Upon hearing of the cruel murder of his dear friend and first cousin, Dee Smith raised the black flag and went on a wild killing spree.  He shot and killed every Yankee soldier that he got in his gun sights.  On each body, he pinned a note that said; "Part of the Debt for my Murdered friend DeWitt S. Jobe". Finally, after killing somewhere between thirty and fifty Yankees, Dee Smith was himself shot and killed. The complete story of the lives and adventures of DeWitt S. Jobe and his first cousin, Dee Smith is vividly told in the book, Three Cousins from Mechanicsville by John Bridges.  DeWitt S. Jobe is buried on a high hill behind his old home place in Mechanicsville, Tennessee.  Dee Smith is buried in an unmarked grave in the Old City Cemetery in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.