DR. HENRY HEAD
Henry Head was born in Obion County, Tennessee, on January 1st, 1840. His father, Dr. Horace Head, was a leading physician in that part of Tennessee and young Henry, no doubt, had plans to follow in his father’s footsteps. Those plans were destined to be delayed with the outbreak of Civil War in 1861. Henry enlisted in a local unit known as the "Troy Avalanche", which soon became Company H of the 9th Tennessee Infantry. Though he enlisted as a Private, Henry was soon elected as the Company’s Captain when the man who had originally held that position was promoted.
The first major engagement experienced by Captain Head and the 9th was the epic two- day battle of Shiloh, fought in the 9th’s home state along the banks of the Tennessee River. A large Confederate army under the command of General Albert Sidney Johnston had gathered in the northern Mississippi town of Corinth, while twenty-five miles to the north a Union army under General U.S. Grant was concentrated on the banks of the river at Pittsburg Landing, waiting to link up with another Federal contingent under General Don Carlos Buell. Johnston realized the joining of these two forces would not only endanger his own command, but could also mean continued Union domination of both Central Tennessee and Northern Mississippi. To avert this possibility Johnston chose to move his entire force to strike at Grant’s army, setting out on April 3rd, 1862, from Corinth.
The Union troops and commanders were taken completely by surprise by the Confederate assault, which began shortly before dawn on April 6th. One Union regiment was caught so unprepared for battle that they lined up to face the charging Rebels and then realized that, in their haste, they had forgotten to bring any ammunition for their rifles. The Union line collapsed, but slowly began to reform and mount a coherent defense. The center of the battlefield held by the Federals was an old wagon road worn down by years of use, to be known in the decades since the battle as the " Sunken Road." In this half-mile section, Grant massed 5,700 infantry and 25 cannons. And it was here that the Confederates made their most determined effort to break the Union line. The first assault came at 11:00 A.M., and among the troops chosen for the task was Captain Head and the 9th Tennessee. They had to advance across 450 yards of open ground to reach their objective, and as they reached the 150-yard mark the Yankee artillery opened up on them with full fury. Great holes were torn in their ranks by the concentrated fire, but still they came. As they came within 50 yards of the road, the Union infantrymen unleashed a deadly volley of rifle fire. The Confederate survivors had to turn back, their ranks decimated, the dead and wounded laying like a carpet across the field. Stumbling back from the carnage, a Confederate soldier gasped, " It’s a hornet’s nest in there." The name stuck, and no soldier who lived through the battle of Shiloh ever forgot it.
After six hours of fighting, the Union line at the Hornet’s Nest finally collapsed. Grant and his men were pushed back almost against the Tennessee River, but held their position through the night. Reinforcements arrived for the Federals during the night, and on April 7th Grant was able to mount a dogged advance which culminated in the Confederates having to retreat back to Corinth. But the cost had been staggering, for both sides. Over 23,000 soldiers had been killed or wounded in the two-day battle, more casualties than the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined. Both nations, North and South, gasped at the horror of this battle, but the worse was yet to come. The Civil War still had three more years to go.
Captain Head and the 9th Tennessee still had three more years of fighting, also. They fought later at the battles of Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Atlanta, Franklin, and Nashville. At the battle of Franklin, Tennessee, in November of 1864, Captain Head emerged from the struggle with such torn clothes, and so powder stained and fatigued, that his own uncle didn’t recognize him. But it was all for naught; six months later the Confederacy, and the 9th Tennessee, surrendered. Henry returned home and began the study of medicine, graduating from the Nashville Medical College in 1869. That same year he met and married his wife, Miss Maria Caldwell. Henry and Mrs. Head moved to the village of Garden Grove in 1876, and he became the village’s first practicing physician. Many of the first settlers to this area owed their health and happiness to Dr. Head, who often took his patients home with him to be nursed by him and his wife. In 1883 Dr. Head was elected Assemblyman for his district, which was at that time still a part of Los Angeles County. He played a major part in the founding of the new county, Orange, and was part of the delegation sent to Sacramento to lobby for our independence from Los Angeles, an effort that was successful in 1890. Henry and Maria had nine children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. Interest in their education led him to the position of trustee for the Garden Grove school for 28 years. The Heads’ retired in 1905 and moved to Santa Ana, where Dr. Head died on December 5th, 1919. At the time of his death he was Surgeon-General for the Pacific Division of the United Confederate Veterans. He is buried in Santa Ana Cemetery.