Thomas J. Lacy was a leader of the Arkansas legal community in the early days of statehood. One of the original members of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, he served for nine years before ill health forced him to step down in 1845. Thomas J. Lacy was born around 1806 in Rockingham County in North Carolina. The son of Batie Cocke Lacy and Elizabeth Overton Lacy, he was educated at what became the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reportedly graduating at the top of his class in 1825. Following graduation, he read law in the Springfield, Kentucky, office of John Pope, an ally of Andrew Jackson who would later serve as territorial governor in Arkansas. From Kentucky, Lacy …
aka: Skirmish at Green's Farm
This short skirmish appears to have taken place as part of general operations in southeastern Arkansas, with no direct connection to any larger Civil War campaign. At 7:00 a.m. on November 19, 1863, Major William J. Teed led the Eighth Missouri Cavalry (US) in an attack against a Confederate force commanded by Major John B. Cocke, eight miles west of Lawrenceville (Monroe County) on the farmland of a Dr. Green. Teed’s force captured and destroyed cooking utensils and a variety of other material goods and foodstuffs. The estimated casualties amounted to four Confederates killed. A claim made by local citizens that Maj. Cocke and a Lieutenant McBride numbered among the Confederate dead could not be confirmed by Teed. Maj. Cocke, …