Pomeroy's Famous Guest

"Mrs. Clara Pomeroy Horton Pope, wife of General John Pope, died at the residence of her husband, in St. Louis, in her fifty-third year."

-The Evansville Journal, June 14th, 1888.

Daughter of Vermont native Valentine Horton and Clara Pomeroy (from Massachusetts) Clara Pomeroy Horton was born in Meigs County on September 18th, 1834. The Horton Farm was located west of Naylor's Run, where today the Emily Grace Deem Memorial park is located. Clara's father would serve on two different occasions as a United States congressman from Ohio's Eleventh District (first as a member of the Opposition Party, and second as a member of the Republican Party), and who was a member of the failed Peace Conference of 1861 that tried to prevent the secession of the southern states. Locally Valentine was involved in coal and salt ventures and built the first towboat in Meigs County. After the completion of his second stint in Congress he returned to Pomeroy and his business interests.

Location of the Horton Farm along Naylor's Run

On September 15th, 1859, Clara Pomeroy Horton married John E. Pope, a Louisville, Kentucky native but one who spent most of his formative years in Illinois. The fifth child of political leader Nathaniel Pope and Lucretia Backus, John graduated seventeenth in the Class of 1842 from the United States Military Academy (with other Civil War notables Abney Doubleday, James Longstreet, and William Rosecrans) and would serve several years as a topographical engineer. He saw service during the Mexican War, earning brevets for his bravery and performance while in the army of Zachary Taylor in northern Mexico.

Pope visited Pomeroy on a few occasions, most frequently while courting Clara. Clara would later become the sister-in-law to Medal of Honor recipient Manning Force while John was distantly related to Mary Todd Lincoln. The Pope's also spent time in Pomeroy after the Civil War visiting Clara's family. The couple would have four children.

Pope as a brigadier general of volunteers

Pope would rise in command during the Civil War, most notably for his ability to win decisions in relatively bloodless encounters, such as at New Madrid and Island No. 10 along the Mississippi River. He commanded a portion of the army that captured the important railroad town of Corinth, Mississippi in May 1862, and Pope recommended that Henry W. Halleck should be made commander-in-chief of the Federal forces over George B. McClellan. Ironically both Halleck and McClellan would play a hand in Pope's defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run - Halleck for his inability to make a decision that would leave him responsible for any adverse battlefield outcome, and McClellan not providing timely support due to Pope's denouncement of McClellan's operations outside of Richmond, Virginia. It did not help that Pope was a republican and McClellan a democrat. There is much more to this story, which is covered in detail Pope's biography (Abandoned by Lincoln: A Military Biography of General John Pope, written by Wallace Schutz and Walter Trenerry, University of Illinois Press, 1990).

After his defeat at Second Bull Run Pope would be assigned to command the Department of the Northwest, based in Minnesota. It was during his tenure as department commander that the Dakota Sioux Uprising would occur. Pope would become a leading expert in Indian affairs, and serve in the south as part of reconstruction. In 1867 he was temporarily reassigned to command the Reconstruction Third Military District, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. However, Pope was too republican for President Andrew Johnson who relieved Pope for his tough stance.

Pope would resume his career against the Native Indians when he was named commander of the Department of the Missouri, and would perform with distinction during the Apache Wars. The outspoken Pope raised a clamor in Washington when he suggested that the reservation system be managed by the military instead of the corrupt Indian Bureau, and also called out the need for humane treatment of the Native Indians.

John Pope would be promoted to major general in the regular army in 1882, and then take command of the Military Division of the Pacific the following year. This was his final assignment, and Pope retired in 1886. Clara would die in 1888, and Pope would die in his sleep on September 23, 1892 at the Soldier's Home in Sandusky, Ohio, is brother-in-law Manning Force at his side. General John Pope is buried beside his wife in St. Louis's Bellefontaine Cemetery.