Barney Kemp (1831-1863)
Born: 14 December 1831
Married:
Died: 1863,Little Rock, Arkansas (while serving in the Civil War)
14 December 1831 brought a fourth son to Thomas and Rhoda. He was named Barney Kemp Riggs. A traditional naming pattern would have been that Barney or possibly Kemp was the maiden name of Rhoda’s mother. There are several Barney families and Kemp families in the area where the Riggs’ lived. Either the first or middle name could have been given because of a special friendship with a Barney or a Kemp. The story taken from the book “Mother Monroe”, tells that Thomas had a good friend, Mr. Tapley Kemp, in Alabama that later came to visit him in Arkansas. Did the middle name Kemp come from their good friend? As with the other children, we don’t know if Barney was born in Pickens or Marion County.
Barney Kemp married Louiza (Eliza) Jane Hilger on ??????? Their children were Fannie Fleunoy Pochahontas b. 1858, William Austin b. 1859 and Martha b. 1861.
Barney was a private in Company I, 27th Arkansas Regiment under Shaler. He later became a 2nd Lieutenant and was a Courier at Little Rock, Arkansas. A sad statistic that came from the Civil War is that 2 out of every 3 soldiers who died during the war died from diseases like measles, mumps, diarrhea, pneumonia and Typhoid fever not from war wounds. The soldiers died because they didn’t know how important it was for the camps where the soldiers lived be clean. They didn’t have sufficient healthy food to eat and they lacked the right kind of medicine to prevent or treat the diseases. Barney died in 1863 of pneumonia as the result of exposure. He was buried in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Louiza later married John Frances Durham in 1868.