The train, with a tender and four or five cars, driven by Isaiah P. Beauchamp, had been carrying Confederate reinforcements to the important Vicksburg garrison.

The train derailed and fell into the creek, killing about 75 passengers, some others being rescued by Confederates from the nearby 1st Choctaw Battalion.

The engine Hercules, which left here with a freight train at 4 o’clock this morning, ran into the river near the Chunkey.

Absalom F. Temples, the section master, attempted to halt trains by placing men near the tracks and setting up a signal.

Temples' statement was found in a Jackson, Mississippi newspaper The Daily Southern Crisis, On Monday morning after the rains of the day previous I took three hands, all I had in my employ, and with the hand car went over the whole line of my section, which is eight miles long, attending to shoving the drift from the different bridges.

By 3 o’clock, P. M., on Wednesday, the drift had accumulated so thick and the streams so much swollen, that I could not move it with a dozen hands, had they been with me.

There were several men at the bridge at the time, and I asked Mr. Green Harris, one of my neighbors, to stop the approaching train, which he did, while I returned to the section house.

The next morning I had the hands up before daylight, and was just going out on the road to work, having full confidence that Hardy would not let the trains pass the tank.

The cargo debris of barrels, boxes, and supplies could be found floating in the winter cold stream.

Between twenty-five and fifty persons are supposed to be lost—mostly soldiers, who broke open every car in the train and got in there before leaving here.

They were likely part of John W. Pierce's 1st Choctaw Battalion who were sanctioned by the Confederacy a couple of days before the wreck.

Samuel G. Spann, a Captain at that time, was also at the camp to recruit American Indians for his anticipated command—Spann's Independent Scouts.

The bridge had swerved out of plumb, and into the raging waters with nearly one hundred soldiers the rear car was precipitated.

I must not omit to say, however, that with a like valor and zeal Elder [Jackson], another full-blood Indian soldier, proved equal to the emergency.

Led by these two dauntless braves, every Indian present stripped and plunged into the raging river to the rescue of the drowning soldiers.

Twenty-two were resuscitated and returned to their commands, and all the balance were crudely interred upon the railroad right of way, where they now lie in full view of the passing train, except nine, who were afterwards disinterred by kind friends and given a more honorable burial.

He fully corroborates the statement of the other passengers in regard to the care and caution used by the conductor, before reaching the last Chunky bridge, at which time, he says, they were running faster than at any previous.

He went to the bottom, in about fifteen feet of water, but rose to the surface with the fragments of the broken car, and with great difficulty succeeded in getting to the shore.

[6]About a year before the wreck and in a "twist of fate," Norman was one of many Newton County citizens who petitioned the Choctaw Indians to serve in the Civil War.

One particular report was read by Brigadier General John Adams regarding commissary and the names of recovered bodies.

The Chunky Creek Train Wreck made newspaper headlines throughout the United and Confederate States.

When a passenger train was crossing Chunkey river, the bridge gave way, precipitating the engine, tandor and four cars into the water.

The accident occurred between this city and Meridian.A dispatch from Jackson, dated the 20th, says that as the out freight train from Meridian came to Chunky bridge last night it gave way, precipitating the engine and four cars into the river.

Between forty and fifty lives, mostly those of soldiers, are supposed to have been lost.Late Richmond papers give dispatches from Jackson, Miss., dated Feb. 20, which say as a train from Meredan [sic] came to Chunky bridge last night it gave way and precipitated the engine and four cars into the river.

The Lauderdale County Department of Archives & History director Jim Dawson made several trips to the Chunky Creek area.

Harold Graham and members of the Newton County Historical and Genealogical Society surveyed the wreck area for grave sites in 2004.

A New Orleans newspaper wrote, "a lasting monument should be erected upon that lone burial spot that will serve to perpetuate alike the death of the Southern martyrs and the dauntless courage and fraternal heroism of the Choctaws.