MARSHAL SLAIN IN 1892 HONORED
By Laura Militana: Herald-Citizen Staff
22 July 2012, front page
COOKEVILLE – Rebecca Tolbert didn't know her great-grandfather, but she knows that he made the
ultimate sacrifice – and never received any recognition for it.
Finally, he's getting that recognition – 120 years later, almost to the exact day he was killed.
"As a family, we always though he had been forgotten, so this honor is a great way to remember his
sacrifice," Tolbert said.
James H. Ballenger was a U. S. Marshal who was also a Gauger, mainly working in the Bloomington
Springs area, during the late 1800s. A Gauger was a person who went around moonshine distilleries to
measure whiskey and make sure the proper amount of taxes were paid. He left a stamp on his inspections.
"That was a very important job," Tolbert said. "Those taxes were big revenue for the government."
As a U. S. Marshal, he and Deputy Marshals B. C. Brown and A. W. Tilley were sent to arrest Frank Sloan,
a man who had been accused of stealing a check for $40 from a letter being transmitted in the U. S. mail
during the early morning hours of July 21, 1892.
According to records, during the early morning hours, Deputy Brown went to the house and awakened
Sloan's son. Brown was at Sloan's bedroom door, trying to coax Mrs. Sloan to open the door. That's
when Sloan allegedly fired a short from the window, striking and killing Ballenger who was outside.
"We always had questions of what happened," Tolbert Said. "He hadn't been in the service but two years
when he was killed."
So Tolbert decided to look into her great-grandfather's history after seeing a Cumberland Tale submission
by Michael Birdwell documenting the siege of Waterloo, an area near the Putnam-Overton County line
where the Marshals fought a number of moonshiners.
"The Gangers at that time were not very popular," Tolbert said.
During her research, she found many records from various area newspapers, with a number of conflicting
stories.