John Saunders "Colonel Jack" Gooch

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John Saunders "Colonel Jack" Gooch.

Birth: Jun. 7, 1842, Smyrna, Rutherford County, Tennessee.
Death: Dec. 23, 1915, Smyrna, Rutherford County, Tennessee.

Wife: Evie W Hume Gooch (1845 - 1924).

Children: Marnie E. Gooch Neeley.

Burial: Mapleview Cemetery, Smyrna, Rutherford County, Tennessee.

Tennessee Twentieth Infantry, C. S. A., Regimental History.

John S. Gooch.

In the beginning of hostilities between the States the subject of this sketch, Lieut. -Col. John Saunders Gooch, was a student at the Military Academy at Nashville, Tenn. His friends at his home near Smyrna, Tenn., organized a company and elected him captain in his absence, without his knowledge, and unsolicited. He accepted the honor thus conferred.

The company was sent by the proper authority to Camp Trousdale, where it was drilled and organized into the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment of Volunteers, Battle s regiment, his company being Company E. The regiment was ordered to Virginia, but was stopped at Bristol, and ordered into Kentucky through Cumberland Gap.

At Fishing Creek or Mills Springs, Ky., Captain Gooch, in leading his company in a desperate charge, received a severe wound, which at the time was thought to be fatal. His men rescued and brought him off the field, as they thought in a dy1ng condition. He rallied, however, and was furloughed.

At the organization of the army at Corinth, Miss., during his absence, he was elected lieutenant-colonel of his regiment in his nineteenth year, showing the regard and esteem in which he was held by his comrades in arms.

He rejoined the army at Vicksburg, Miss., where his regiment had been sent, and reported for duty, but on account of his wound, which was in an unhealed condition, and no prospects for an early recovery, he resigned his commission, and was honorably discharged from the army.

It was many years after the close of the war before he recovered from his wound. Since the war he has remained on his farm near Smyrna, and represents the true type of a Southern gentleman.