REMINDERS OF PATRICK CLEBURNE are sprinkled throughout Tennessee—on battlefields at Chattanooga, Stones River, Spring Hill, and Franklin; in Ashwood, where his remains once rested among the oaks and magnolias; and in Nashville, where today you can examine for yourself a poignant artifact associated with the Irish-born general’s death.
But I begin my journey on the trail of “The Stonewall of the West” in aptly named Wartrace (population 700), “The Cradle of the Tennessee Walking Horse,” and according to a town source, a center of paranormal activity. My guide is 73-year-old Philip Gentry, a retired AT&T project manager, Vietnam War Purple Heart recipient, former gold panner, and longtime curator of the town’s Tennessee Walking Horse National Museum. (He poo-poos that ghost stuff.)
Gentry lives with his wife, Laura, and a black Lab/German Shepherd mix named Alexander the Great in a large house on a hill about a mile outside of town. After the Battle of Stones River, Confederate Lt. Gen. William
