Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Fielding Hurst of Claiborne, Kentucky
Fielding Hurst is one of the more difficult men to place neatly inside Tennessee Civil War history. He was remembered as a Unionist, a slaveholder, a cavalry colonel, a political figure, a judge, and, depending on the memory being preserved, either a defender of loyal Tennesseans or one of the most hated men in West Tennessee.
Most published accounts identify him as Fielding Jackson Hurst, born in Claiborne County, Tennessee, in 1810. Find a Grave gives Big Barren in Claiborne County as his birthplace, while the Tennessee Encyclopedia also places him in East Tennessee and gives his life span as 1810 to 1882. That Claiborne County connection matters, but it should still be treated carefully. His later life is documented most heavily in McNairy County, military records, Reconstruction records, and Civil War correspondence. Anyone tracing Hurst’s earliest years should still check Claiborne County census, tax, marriage, deed, court, and probate records before treating every detail as settled.
What is clear is that Hurst came out of East Tennessee, a region whose Civil War loyalties often broke against the grain of the slaveholding South. Claiborne County sat near Cumberland Gap, where Unionist sentiment, mountain geography, family networks, and old political loyalties made the war bitterly personal. Hurst’s life would eventually carry him far from the mountains, but the contradictions that shaped East Tennessee Unionism followed him west.
From Claiborne County to McNairy County
Around 1834, Hurst and his wife, Melocky, moved to McNairy County in West Tennessee. There he worked as a surveyor and increased his land holdings. By the 1850s, the larger Hurst family had followed him west, and the family became one of the largest landholding groups in McNairy County. The area controlled or strongly influenced by the Hursts in northern McNairy County and present-day southern Chester County became known as the Hurst Nation.
This was not a simple story of poor mountain Unionism. Hurst was a landholder and slaveholder. A transcribed 1850 McNairy County slave schedule lists Fielding Hurst among slaveholders, and the Tennessee Encyclopedia states that he owned a separate plantation north of his home near Purdy with several enslaved families. That fact makes him harder to understand, but also more historically important. Hurst belonged to that complicated class of Southern Unionists who opposed secession without necessarily opposing slavery before the war.
Before the war, Hurst’s influence was local and practical. He was tied to land, surveying, kinship, and county power. The Hurst Nation was not a government, but in local memory it functioned like a place within a place, a family-centered stronghold that would become dangerous territory once Tennessee split apart.
A Unionist in a Secessionist Region
When Tennessee moved toward secession in 1861, Hurst publicly resisted it. According to the Tennessee Encyclopedia, he spoke against secession before voters in Purdy during the June 8, 1861 referendum. Afterward, he was arrested and imprisoned in the state penitentiary in Nashville with other vocal Union sympathizers.
His imprisonment became one of the turning points of his life. When Federal forces occupied Nashville, Hurst was released and returned to McNairy County. By then the war had become more than a contest of armies. It had become a neighborhood war of spies, raids, reprisals, burned houses, family betrayals, and old grudges with uniforms wrapped around them.
In McNairy County, the Hurst Nation stood as a Unionist bastion in a Confederate-leaning region. Hurst organized mounted scouts from his own circle and from local Unionists. These men knew the roads, creeks, farms, and hiding places of West Tennessee. To Federal commanders, they could be useful. To Confederate neighbors, they were dangerous renegades.
The Sixth Tennessee Cavalry
Hurst’s scouts eventually became part of the First West Tennessee Cavalry, later known as the Sixth Tennessee Cavalry, U.S.A. Tennessee’s military governor, Andrew Johnson, commissioned Hurst to command the regiment after Hurst pressed for formal recognition of his men.
The regiment’s organization shows how deeply local the unit was. TNGenWeb’s regimental summary identifies it as also called the First West Tennessee Cavalry Regiment and lists Fielding Hurst among its colonels. Several companies were organized at Bethel in McNairy County in August and September 1862, while others came from Wayne, Hardin, Decatur, Perry, Weakley, Gibson, and other West Tennessee counties.
At first, Hurst’s men lacked proper arms, equipment, and pay. Federal officers complained about them. Hurst complained about Federal officers. The regiment often operated in small detachments, scouting, pursuing guerrillas, and trying to control hostile countryside. This was not the polished war of parade grounds. It was cavalry work in a broken region, where one man’s scout was another man’s raider.
The Tennessee Encyclopedia notes that Federal leaders sometimes threatened to court-martial Hurst or disband his command when he operated outside regular authority. Yet the same command also became useful because Union forces needed local men who could fight guerrillas and protect supply lines in West Tennessee.
Hard War in Purdy and Jackson
Hurst’s name became tied to hard war tactics. In April 1863, he raided Purdy, his own county seat, and reportedly ordered the burning of the courthouse, church, and several homes. Federal authorities briefly arrested him for what happened there.
The trouble did not stop at Purdy. In July 1863, Hurst’s regiment took part in operations around Jackson, Tennessee, against Confederate forces returning to the area. After the fighting, looting and destruction became a major controversy. TNGenWeb’s regimental summary notes that reports from officers in the Sixth Tennessee placed blame for some of the looting on drunken soldiers from the Third Michigan Cavalry, while other accounts shifted blame toward Hurst’s men.
Confederate sources remembered it differently. They accused Hurst and his men of extortion, murder, burning homes, and mistreating prisoners. Federal sources did not always defend Hurst without reservation. His own side found him difficult, independent, and dangerous to control. By early 1864, his reputation had become so dark in Confederate circles that Nathan Bedford Forrest demanded action against him.
The Official Records preserve part of that controversy. Forrest later referred to a demand for the delivery of Hurst and others of his regiment to Confederate authorities, accusing them of killing Confederate soldiers in brutal fashion. These accusations were part of a larger wartime exchange between Confederate and Federal officers after Fort Pillow, and they show how Hurst’s name had become a symbol of retaliation, rumor, and fury.
Forrest, Bolivar, and Defeat
Forrest declared Hurst and his command outlaws, not entitled to be treated as prisoners of war if captured. TNGenWeb’s Sixth Tennessee Cavalry summary quotes Forrest’s notice against Hurst and his men and places it in the context of Forrest’s 1864 West Tennessee operations.
The U.S. Army Center of Military History describes the Sixth Tennessee Cavalry as a rowdy band of homegrown Unionists led by the controversial Colonel Fielding Hurst. During Forrest’s 1864 operations, Hurst’s command was defeated near Bolivar on March 29, losing its wagon train, ammunition, and many of its records to Confederate cavalry under Colonel James J. Neely.
The defeat near Bolivar damaged Hurst’s military standing. The Official Army Register later listed Colonel Fielding Hurst among officers of the Sixth Tennessee Cavalry who resigned, giving January 8, 1865 as the resignation date. The Tennessee Encyclopedia gives December 10, 1864 as the date he resigned his command near Nashville because of poor health. The difference is not necessarily impossible, since resignation, acceptance, and official recording could fall on different dates, but the conflict should be noted in any careful biography.
By the end of 1864, Hurst’s active military role was essentially over. His regiment continued without him and was mustered out in July 1865. Hurst, however, did not disappear from public life.
Reconstruction and the Judge’s Bench
After the war, Hurst entered Reconstruction politics. The Tennessee State Library and Archives roster of Tennessee senators lists Fielding Hurst as senator for the Twenty-first District, representing Hardin, McNairy, and Hardeman Counties, during the 1865 to 1867 General Assembly. The roster notes that he served in the first session and resigned after April 3, 1865.
Hurst later became a circuit court judge under Governor William G. Brownlow’s Reconstruction government. In that role, he remained controversial. A newspaper item from The Bolivar Bulletin, preserved through Chronicling America and transcribed by Hardeman County TNGenWeb, reported that Judge Fielding Hurst ruled unconstitutional a section of Tennessee’s franchise law that barred Black men from holding office or sitting on juries. The report stated that, in court at Purdy, he admitted Black men to the jury box and refused to swear in disenfranchised white men as jurors.
That moment shows how far Hurst’s public career had moved since the antebellum years. Before the war he had been a slaveholder. After the war, as a Reconstruction judge, he stood inside a political order that extended civic rights to formerly enslaved men and punished ex-Confederates. That change does not erase the contradiction. It is the contradiction.
The Hurst Nation in Memory
Hurst’s memory remained bitter long after the shooting stopped. Tennessee Civil War Trails material identifies the Hurst house near Purdy and describes Hurst as a slave owner but devout Unionist who raised the Sixth Tennessee Cavalry. It also remembers the Hurst Nation as a Unionist stronghold in Confederate West Tennessee.
The Tennessee Encyclopedia notes that Hurst and his men remained hated by many Confederate neighbors after the war. Stories of alleged atrocities grew over time, and Hurst’s name became attached to many local tales of destruction and cruelty. It also states that Hurst died destitute in 1882, leaving no heirs except his wife, Melocky, and that even his grave became a target of scorn.
Find a Grave lists him as buried at Mount Gilead Cemetery in McNairy County, Tennessee, with a death date of April 3, 1882. As with his birthplace, cemetery records are useful evidence, but the best historical work would compare them with probate, court, land, and newspaper records from McNairy County.
Why Fielding Hurst Matters
Fielding Hurst matters because he refuses to fit into the simplest Civil War categories. He was from Appalachian East Tennessee, but his most documented career unfolded in West Tennessee. He was a Unionist, but he had been a slaveholder. He fought the Confederacy, but even Union officers sometimes distrusted him. He was denounced by Forrest, criticized by neighbors, defended by some Unionists, and remembered locally as both powerful and dangerous.
His story also shows how the Civil War in Tennessee was not only fought at places like Shiloh, Stones River, Chattanooga, and Nashville. It was fought in county seats, family districts, courthouse squares, roads between farms, and neighborhoods where yesterday’s acquaintance became today’s enemy. In those places, loyalty was personal, and revenge could become policy.
For Claiborne County, Hurst represents one of the far-reaching stories of East Tennessee Unionism. A man born near the Cumberland Gap region carried his loyalties, ambitions, contradictions, and violence into the western part of the state, where he helped create one of Tennessee’s most controversial Union cavalry commands. For McNairy County, he remains inseparable from the memory of the Hurst Nation, Purdy, and a war that did not end cleanly in 1865.
Fielding Hurst was not simply a hero or villain. He was a product of a divided Tennessee, a man whose life forces the historian to hold several truths at once. He was loyal to the Union. He benefited from slavery. He fought guerrillas. He used harsh methods. He became a Reconstruction judge. He left behind a name that still carries anger, fascination, and unfinished questions.
Sources & Further Reading
Derek W. Frisby. “Fielding Hurst.” Tennessee Encyclopedia. Tennessee Historical Society. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/fielding-hurst/
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, Vol. 32, Part 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth152618/
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, Vol. 32, Part 3. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891. https://archive.org/stream/warofrebellionco32unit/warofrebellionco32unit_djvu.txt
United States Adjutant-General’s Office. Official Army Register of the Volunteer Force of the United States Army for the Years 1861, ’62, ’63, ’64, ’65. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865. https://archive.org/details/cu31924092911092
Tennessee State Library and Archives. Tennessee Civil War Muster Rolls Collection, 1861-1865. Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives. https://sos-tn-gov-files.tnsosfiles.com/forms/TENNESSEE_CIVIL_WAR_MUSTER_ROLLS_COLLECTION_1861-1865_0.pdf
Tennessee State Library and Archives. Lt. Col. William K. M. Breckenridge Civil War Daybook, 1862-1863. Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives. https://archives.tnsos.gov/repositories/2/resources/204
National Archives. “Civil War Records: Basic Research Sources.” National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/resources
National Archives. “Civil War Compiled Service Records.” National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/military/civil-war-service-records-pamphlets.html
Fold3. “US, Civil War Service Records, CMSR, Union, Tennessee, 1861-1865.” Fold3, citing National Archives Microfilm Publication M395. https://www.fold3.com/publication/696/us-civil-war-service-records-cmsr-union-tennessee-1861-1865
Tennessee State Library and Archives. Members of the Tennessee General Assembly: Senate, 1796-2010. Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives. https://sostngovbuckets.s3.amazonaws.com/tsla/history/misc/tga-senate3.pdf
Hardeman County TNGenWeb. “Hurst, Fielding.” Transcriptions from The Bolivar Bulletin. https://tngenweb.org/hardeman/tag/hurst-fielding/
Tennessee Civil War Trails. Civil War Trails Installation Sites with Descriptions. Tennessee Department of Tourist Development. https://tnmap.tn.gov/civilwar/Civil%20War%20Trails%20Installation%20Sites%20with%20descriptions.pdf
National Park Service. “6th Tennessee Cavalry, 1st West Tennessee Cavalry.” Vicksburg National Military Park. https://www.nps.gov/vick/learn/historyculture/6th-tennessee-cavalry-1st-west-tennessee-cavalry.htm
U.S. Army Center of Military History. Campaigns in Mississippi and Tennessee, February-December 1864. Washington, DC: Center of Military History. https://history.army.mil/portals/143/Images/Publications/catalog/75-15.pdf
TNGenWeb. “6th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment.” Tennessee and the Civil War. https://tngenweb.org/civilwar/6th-tennessee-cavalry-regiment/
USGenWeb Archives. “1850 Federal Census Slave Schedule, McNairy County, Tennessee.” USGenWeb Archives. https://files.usgwarchives.net/tn/mcnairy/census/1850/1850slave.txt
Find a Grave. “Fielding Jackson Hurst.” Find a Grave Memorial. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/18045659/fielding_jackson-hurst
Historical Marker Database. “Fielding Hurst and Purdy.” HMdb.org. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=74875
Historical Marker Database. “The Hurst Nation.” HMdb.org. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=250774
PBS. “Colonel Fielding Hurst.” Tennessee Civil War 150. https://www.pbs.org/video/colonel-fielding-hurst-figures-tennessee-civil-war-150-qaynk/
University of Memphis Special Collections. Civil War Collection Finding Aid. University of Memphis Libraries. https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1164&context=speccoll-findingaids
W. W. Chester. “The Civil War Skirmish Near Bolivar, Tennessee.” Journal of the West Tennessee Historical Society. https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1275&context=jphs
Andrew Brown. “Sol Street: Confederate Partisan Leader.” Journal of Mississippi History. https://aquila.usm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1109&context=jmh
Charles L. Lufkin. “Divided Loyalties: Sectionalism in Civil War McNairy County, Tennessee.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 47, no. 3, 1988. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42626734
Kevin D. McCann. Hurst’s Wurst: Colonel Fielding Hurst and the Sixth Tennessee Cavalry U.S.A. Savannah, TN: McCann Publishing, 2007. https://kevindmccann.wordpress.com/category/hursts-wurst/
John E. Talbott. In the Shadow of the Devil: William K. M. Breckenridge in Fielding Hurst’s First West Tennessee U.S. Cavalry. Savannah, TN: BrayBree Publishing, 2020. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55830313-in-the-shadow-of-the-devil
Derek W. Frisby. “Homemade Yankees: West Tennessee Unionists in the Civil War Era.” PhD diss., University of Alabama, 2004. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/fielding-hurst/
Tennessee State Library and Archives. Civil War Sourcebook. Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives. https://www.tnsos.net/TSLA/cwsourcebook/biblio.php
Author Note: Fielding Hurst’s story is a complicated one, and this article intentionally treats him as neither a simple hero nor a simple villain. Readers should see him as part of Tennessee’s divided Civil War world, where Unionism, slavery, local revenge, and Reconstruction politics often overlapped.