His wife and twin boys had not survived.

[**The following takes place following the Battle of Paducah. Context, courtesy of Wikipedia: “The Battle of Paducah was fought on March 25, 1864, during the American Civil War. A Confederate cavalry force led by Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest moved into Tennessee and Kentucky to capture Union supplies. Tennessee had been occupied by Union troops since 1862. He launched a successful raid on Paducah, Kentucky, on the Ohio River.”**] >Unable to find fit housing for his wife and twin babies at Fort Pillow, an Alabaman orderly sergeant in Bradford’s Company A named George Craig had sent his family up to Paducah. After Forrest’s assault on Fort Anderson, Craig had heard nothing from his wife. He would later claim that on April 10 he volunteered to ride to Paducah to track down a number of the late Captain Gregory’s loyalists who had deserted from Craig’s company, “carrying with them the Arms and Ammunition and &c, belonging to the company.” But it is just as likely that after news reached him of [Forrest](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Nathan_B._Forrest_-_LOCc.jpg)’s attack, he simply deserted the 13th to find his family. >In any case, when Craig reached Paducah he was horrified to learn that his wife and twin boys had not survived Forrest’s attack three weeks before. Having missed the barges that carried the town’s noncombatants across the river, Craig’s wife had sought refuge from the Union gunboats’ incessant cannonade in a canal filled with mud and water. There she had died of exposure, and the twins with her, and someone in Hicks’s garrison did not spare Craig the details: that their bodies “lay unattended for 48 hours after death,” during which rats had eaten one of his wife’s breasts “and the head off of one of my little babes.” ______________________________ **Source:** Ward, Andrew. “Paducah.” *River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War*. Viking, 2005. 125. Print. **Original Source Listed:** Pension file of George W. Craig. George Craig in pension file of William H. Albritton. Pension file of Thomas Loftis. _____________________________ **Further Reading:** [Nathan Bedford Forrest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest) [Battle of Paducah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Paducah) ___________________________ **If you enjoy this type of content, please consider donating to my [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/HistoryLockeBox)!**