Little Mound Baptist Church and Cemetery

Emma Sansom Johnson is the story the plaque tells, and the Encyclopedia of Alabama gives it more exactly. On May 2, 1863, at sixteen, she guided Nathan Bedford Forrest to a ford on Black Creek near Gadsden after Union forces destroyed the bridge. She married Christopher B. Johnson in October 1864, moved to Upshur County around 1868, was widowed in 1887 and died August 9, 1900. The encyclopedia says some of the story's dialogue was probably dramatized. In 2020 some descendants asked for the removal of her statue in Gadsden.

What the plaque says

Little Mound Baptist Church and Cemetery Unmarked burials in this cemetery may have begun in the late 1860s, predating the founding of the church. The oldest marked grave is that of E. Hoggue, who died in 1877. One year later, in 1878, residents of the thriving pioneer village of Calloway organized Little Mount Baptist Church and met for worship in a structure near the burial ground. Situated on a steep hill called "Little Mound," the one-room building had previously served as a Union church and schoolhouse. It stood on land owned by W. C. Bradshaw, who gave the cemetery and church site to the congregation in 1881. By 1897 the original church building had become too small. Lumber from the structure was used to build another meetinghouse across the road on property donated by J. s. and Sophronia Wallis in 1902. The second structure was torn down in 1925 and again all the usable lumber was incorporated in a new church building, erected on the site of the original. Buried in this cemetery is Confederate heroine Emma Sansom (Mrs.C. B.) Johnson (1847-1900), who at age 16 led Gen. N. B. Forrest's troops across the Black River in her native state of Alabama to attack Federal forces. She later moved to Texas and joined this church. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tyler State Park — 19 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• Governor Hogg Shrine — 19 mi
  Quitman's 27-acre city park, once a state historical park, where two houses tied to James Stephen Hogg's marriage stand beside an arboretum, a nature walk and the grounds of the Old Settlers Reunion.
• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 23 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 24 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.

More markers nearby

• Rhonesboro — 2.3 mi
• Harmony I.S.D. — 2.6 mi
• Alex Earp — 3.6 mi
• Kelsey School — 4.9 mi