Clover Bottom Farm

Clover Bottom Farm. John McCline's Story. Dr. James Hoggatt, owner of the 1,500-acre Clover Bottom Farm, also owned sixty slaves here. One of them was John McCline, who lived here with his three brothers and his grandmother. McCline cared for the farm's horses and cattle among other tasks., McCline saw soldiers camped here twice during the war. On July 21, 1862, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his 3,000-man cavalry force bivouacked on the grounds. Beginning in November of the same year, Union Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden's corps also camped here. On December 18, the 13th Michigan Infantry was returning from a foraging expedition when the men encountered the ten-year-old McCline and shouted to him, “Come on, Johnny, and go with us up north, and we will set you free.” McCline jumped aboard an ambulance wagon and joined them. He spent the rest of the war as a teamster driving wagons for the regiment, and the men taught him to read and write., After the war, McCline lived in Michigan with several of the soldiers' families. He moved to Chicago in 1874 and worked as a porter at the Sherman Hotel. McCline subsequently returned to Nashville, attended Nashville Normal and Theological Institute in 1877, and taught school in Trousdale County. He worked at the Lindell Hotel in St. Louis from 1878 to 1890, when his health compelled him to relocate first to Colorado Springs and then to Santa Fe, where he worked for New Mexico territorial governor Herbert J. Hagerman. McCline, who died in 1948, wrote about his experiences in a manuscript later published as Slavery in the Clover Bottoms.