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Catawba sent its own ‘brave’ to war
Phillip E. Arney was born to R. Henry and Elizabeth Carpenter Arney in Catawba County, North Carolina, in January of 1843. Phillip worked as a farmer during non-war time. At age 19 Phillip enlisted in Co. K, N.C. 46th Infantry Regiment on March 13, 1862. This company...
Catawba family gave three sons to the Confederacy
John Esley Arney, my great-grandfather, was a twin to Jonas Franklin Arney. The two of them, along with another brother, Phillip, all served in the Civil War. John was born to R. Henry and Elizabeth Carpenter Arney on Oct. 29, 1845. He enlisted in Company K, 46th...
The Twin who went to war
John Esley Arney, my great-grandfather, was a twin to Jonas Franklin Arney. The two of them, along with another brother, Phillip, all served in the Civil War. John and Jonas were born to R. Henry and Elizabeth Carpenter Arney on Oct. 29, 1845. Jonas enlisted in Co. K,...
Soldier’s service ended in prison
Abel Reid Pitts, my great-great-uncle, was born to John Henry and Sarah Lolly Rogers Pitts on August 30, 1826 in Lincoln County, North Carolina. Abel later lived in Burke County. He enlisted in Catawba County into Company K, N.C. 35th Infantry Regiment as a private,...
From Catawba County, Another Sacrifice
Conrad Pitts, a brother to Abel Reid Pitts, was born in 1832 to John Henry and Sarah Lolly Rogers. Conrad enlisted in Company C, 28th Regiment of North Carolina Infantry as a private on Aug. 13, 1861, in Catawba County. Conrad was not to survive the war. He mustered...
Buffalo soldiers’ raid had incidental casualties
When a party of Buffalo soldiers raided the family farm in 1863, my mother's two great-uncles were sent into the swamp to hide. Both of the teenage boys died soon after as a result of exposure. This story was told to me by my mother, Margaret Reed Small, who was told...
The Jennings Brothers in “The Pasquotank Boys”
My husband's great grandfather was one of three brothers who joined the Pasquotank Boys to serve in the Civil War. He was James Monroe Jennings (1830-1900), who served along with his brothers, William Harney Jennings (1838-1864) and Decader Cader Jennings (1844-1911)....
Civil War Letter Identified another Relative
My husband's great-grandfather, James Monroe Jennings, left behind a letter written during the Civil War to his mother, telling her of the death of his brother, William Harney Jennings. We discovered it in 2011 in an old chest. In the letter , which describes the...
Those Carpenters answered the call
Jonas Carpenter, brother to David and Henry, was born to Jonathan and Barbara Kistler Carpenter in Lincoln County, North Carolina on June 23, 1820. Jonas enlisted in Co. D, 1st N.C. Infantry Regiment as a Confederate private. It is noted that this regiment fought on...
Five Brothers in the Civil War
Submitted by: Brenda Kay Ledford and Barbara Ledford Wright The shadow of the Civil War loomed over Clay County, North Carolina. Thomas and Eliza Ledford worried that their five sons would enlist and get killed fighting for the Confederacy. Tillman enlisted at...
He Didn’t Have to Go, but
This story was told to me as a youngster in the 1950s by my great-aunt, Kate Dixon Murdock. When I was older I verified it through these soldiers' individual Confederate Army records and other research. Aunt Kate said that when the Civil War broke out her grandfather,...
Jacob Dixon was True Blue
Jacob Dixon was born near Snow Camp (now Alamance County) December 15, 1842. The son of Quakers Caleb and Mary Snotherly Dixon, he was opposed to the war, as were all members of the Society of Friends. The family story passed down from generation to generation was...
Confederate Veteran and Jack of Many Trades
Drury Alston Putnam, my great-great-grandfather, was born Dec. 23, 1830, in Cleveland county, North Carolina, to Roberts Putnam and Lucinda Weaver. He was a “jack of many trades.” The various censuses from 1850 until 1910 show him as a wagon maker, farmer,...
Serving with the 22nd North Carolina
A.J. Dula, of Caldwell County, shared in almost all of the Army of Northern Virginia's travails during the Civil War. After joining the 22nd North Carolina Regiment in Caldwell County in April of 1861, he served in almost all the battles of the Eastern...
David Oliver of Belgrade enlisted July 1, 1861
David Oliver was born in Onslow County where he resided as a farmer. He enlisted on July 1, 1861 at age 21. He was killed in Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. Want To Work With Us? Get involved with our exciting project. [do_widget...
John Humphrey enlisted at age 14
My great-grandfather joined the Confederate States Army in June, 1861. He was assigned to the 10th Heavy Artillery at Fort Lane in New Bern. It was noted in family lore that when he enlisted he was only 14 years old. To get around his age, he wrote "18" on a slip of...
Louisburg resident nursed an ill Union soldier until his death
Union General William T. Sherman met with Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston on April 26, 1865 at Bennett Place near what is now Durham, N.C., and Johnston surrendered his Army of Tennessee. At this time, Gen. Sherman headed back to Washington, D.C. His troops,...
William Moses Loftin walked home after the War
William Moses Loftin was at the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. He shook the hand of Gen. Robert E. Lee. His parole paper is still in our family. He walked home from the war. He was a county commissioner in 1868. His ancestor Col. William Loftin was a...
Nelson and Ava Tift volunteered their shipbuilding services to the Confederate Navy
Nelson Tift, my great-great-grandfather, was born in Groton, CT on July 23, 1810. In 1826 he moved to Key West, FL with his brother Asa for business exploration ventures. In 1830 he moved to Charleston, SC to test Southern culture, and in 1835 he moved on to Southern...
William Sharpe marched with Gen. Sherman from Atlanta to the sea
William Sharpe was my great-great-great-great-grandfather. He was born August 26, 1842 in Hendricks County, Indiana. He enlisted in Company C, 70th Regiment, Indiana Infantry Volunteers, on July 22, 1862 in Clayton, Indiana. He served in the 20th Corps, 1st Brigade,...
Pvt. William Townsend of Robeson County
William Townsend was born in 1842 in Robeson County. He was 6 feet, six inches tall and a private in the 18th North Carolina Regiment, 8th Volunteers, Branch and Lane Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia. After the war he farmed, and lived to age 86 in the town of St....
Pvt. William Baxter Tucker, Company I, 54th NC Infantry, CSA
William Baxter Tucker, great-great-grandfather of William Herbert Martin Tucker, was from Guilford County, North Carolina. He enlisted in Wake County on April 1, 1864. He was wounded at Drewry's Bluff, Virginia about May 22, 1864. He had a bad ankle wound and was...
50-year-old soldier served with three of his sons
John Duckworth Morrison (1813-1892) was my great-great-great-grandfather. He married Fannie Epley (1813-1914) and they had eight children, all born before the beginning of the Civil War and his enlistment. He had four sons who fought for the Confederacy. Three...
Iredell Cavalry Officer Saw Action
My great-great-grandfather, Hugh Caldwell Bennett (14 Dec. 1832 - 3 March 1907), was the son of George Stepto Bennett and Elizabeth Newland Bennett of Iredell County, N.C. He enlisted in Company F, North Carolina 3rd Cavalry Regiment as a corporal on 07 Oct. 1861...
Ancestor served, but had little to say
"My great-grandfather was named William Cahoon, but my grams called him Bill. He served in the Confederacy but my dad said he never heard him talk about it. My great-grandmother did receive money for a while after the war, and that helped them keep up part of the...
gun found on Hatteras
I once knew a man who had a gun he swore was found on the beaches of Hatteras, washed up after the Yankees came through the inlet. I never knew if he was pulling my leg, but he was proud of his gun! Want To Work With Us? Get involved with our exciting project....
A Novelist’s ties to Hyde County
Taken from stories written by William Stryon: "I've always been surprised by my direct link to the Old South -- the South of slavery and the Civil War. Many southerners of my vintage, and even some of those who are considerably older, can claim an ancestral connection...
Romance Kindled During Union Occupation of Fayetteville
As characteristic of the military presence in the Fayetteville area throughout the years, soldier boys met, fell in love with, and married local girls. This was true not only in the case of my parents, but also in my family's history. It was not long after General...
Grandmother’s locket
There are no records of when my grandmother was born, but her father was away fighting for the Confederacy. When he received news of her birth, he used that month's payment to buy a locket inscribed with the date 1864. That was the only record of her birth, and she...
A Deserter’s Story
George Deans (1831-1839), a Wayne County farmer, was a loyal Union man and bitterly opposed to the war between the states. In May 1862 he was conscripted by the Confederate army and taken from his home by about 15 armed men and sent to Richmond, Virginia. He was...
Pvt Drewry A. Mewborn made it home to North Carolina
Drewry Aldridge Mewborn, son of Parrott Mewborn and his wife Mary Aldridge, was born June 14, 1840. Drew was declared unfit for duty twice due to poor eyesight. However, on October 21, 1862 he was enlisted as a private in Company C, 47th North Carolina Infantry...
Pvt. Thomas Lafayette Morrison: farmer, soldier, POW, survivor.
T.L. Morrison, my great-great-grandfather, enlisted as a private in Company A of the 6th Regiment, North Carolina Infantry, on Sept. 22, 1862. Between Nov. 6 and Nov. 12, 1863, he was captured during a battle near Brandy Station in Virginia and taken to Point Lookout,...
Tried to hide his son from the Draft Board
Daniel Christenberry Kirk, my great-great-great-grandfather, was a farmer on Morrow Mountain along the Pee Dee River. When the war broke out, Daniel's two oldest sons, James and George, enlisted in the Confederate Army. Daniel was sick and crippled. We don't know the...
The Soldier’s Choice
A Confederate soldier is given an assignment to lie in wait for a Union courier who is carrying important papers. The Confederate is, "at all costs," to bring those documents back with him. The Union courier is singing a beloved hymn as he unknowingly approaches the...
Confederate POW Died on Johnson’s Island
Levi Branson Williams, was the son of Ezekiel Randolph and Agnes Williams, of Guilford County. Born on November 13th, 1837, at an early age, he was left an orphan and in the care of his grandfather, Nathan Williams, passed the happy days of childhood. Of an earnest...
Family stories of the Underground Railroad
Excerpted from "Ramblings of a Country Boy," by Stephen Arthur Cohagan (my grandfather), written 1953. (Private papers) "Grandfather (John Pugh Jay) and Grandmother (Rachel Commons Jay) maintained a station in 'the Underground Railroad' and back of the fruit bins...
Killing Yankees in the Hog Pen
My great-great-grandfather, James B. Vause, served with the "Lenoir Braves." He was captured at Hatteras Island and held as a prisoner of war at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, until his release in a prisoner exchange in 1862. His brother, Robert B. Vause, was killed at...
Jacob Wagner’s Civil War
Jacob Wagner, my great-great-grandfather, was a member of Wiedrich's New York Light Artillery from Buffalo, NY. He came alone from Germany at age 16 and joined the battery on his 21st birthday. His first battle was Gettysburg, where he fought the three days on...
Wounded at Appomattox
John Murphy Walton, son of Col. Thomas George Walton and Eliza Murphy Walton, was born at the family home "Creekside" in Morganton in 1844. When war was declared in 1861, he left military training at Hillsborough Academy at age 16 to enlist in the 6th Regiment, North...
Confederates stalking Confederates
A good shake of the family tree often brings down a hail of Civil War soldiers, each good for at least one war story pieced together from unit records or one personal anecdote preserved in a letter or diary entry. But what did it mean to belong, as did several of my...
Confederate veteran testifies to help Unionist neighbors
My great-great-grandfather, Samuel Bowman, was a farmer from Burke County. On October 7, 1861, he joined Captain Thomas G. Walton’s company of volunteers, the Davis Dragoons, a cavalry unit which would eventually become Company F of the 41st Regiment...
Ivey Lee’s Encounter with Yankee Bummers
Mr. Ivey Lee's Encounter With Yankee Bummers The time was the day before the last major battle of the War of Northern Aggression, the "Battle of Bentonville". Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Bummers inflicted not only property damage to one Southern Farmer...
The South before the war: an island in time
The first thing a modern time-traveler would notice, on arrival in the antebellum South, would most likely be the silence. There might be movement among dry leaves, or the snort of a horse. Bird songs, surely, and, somewhere, a barking dog. But no dense overlay of...
William Paul Roberts: The Youngest Confederate General
In 1861, 19-year-old William Paul Roberts, a Gates County native, enlisted in Company C, 19th Regiment, North Carolina Troops, which would later be designated 2nd Regiment, NC Calvary. Having served with distinction during regimental operations in the state, but with...
Special Private Tour of Chancellorsville Battleground
Come join us on August 15. Click here for Tour Details! Want To Work With Us? Get involved with our exciting project. Phone: 910-491-0602 Email: info@nccivilwarcenter.org 824 Branson Street Post Office Box 53865...
Henry Groner paid dearly for his service
Henry Lafayette Groner, my great-great-grandfather, enlisted for the Civil War on March 13, 1862 in the 20th North Carolina Infantry, Cabarrus Guards, at age 22. He was wounded in the left leg and captured at Fox's Gap, South Mountain, Maryland, on or about September...
Virginian served on land and sea
Clarence Cary, Confederate States Navy, was born in March of 1845, the son of Archibald Cary and Monimia Fairfax Cary, grandson of Thomas Fairfax, ninth Lord Fairfax of Cameron. He was a direct descendant of Pocahontas and John Rolfe and the Plantagenets of England....
Disease, Not Lead, Found This Trooper
Joseph W. Boys was a private in the United States Army, serving with the 112th New York. (A regimental history written by a chaplain with the 112th can be found online.) Joseph, a mortician, survived the action at Fort Fisher but was physically disabled by lung...
Coming Home Was Hard, Too
Private William Peoples, U.S. Army, served in Pennypacker's Brigade, in the Pennsylvania 203rd Regiment. He was from the part of Pennsylvania where Pennypacker lived. He survived both Fort Fisher and the war, but died at the age of 28 and appeared to have been in...
Junior Reserve Officer Saw Serious Action
Second Lieutenant George M. Glass served in the 4th Battalion, North Carolina Junior Reserves. He was stationed at Battery Buchanan, then went to Fort Holmes. He fought at Wise's Forks and then at Bentonville. He surrendered at Greensboro. After the war, George was a...
Long Walk Awaited P.O.W.
Elihu Weaver, a resident of Ashe County and my great-great-grandfather, enlisted in the Confederate army on July 8, 1862. He was part of the 5th North Carolina Cavalry Battalion that was organized in Jacksboro, Tenn. in the fall of 1862. He was promoted to Corporal in...
Persistence vs. Sherman’s Army
A story tells about General Sherman and his troops coming down Old Stage Road in Wake County through Willow Spring, to the Hugh Rias Blalock homeplace on what is now Highway 42 East. Sherman's men took mules, horses, wagons and other supplies. They ransacked the home,...
A “family history” like no other — the musings of blogger David Ivey
My Civil War commemoration began four years ago, on April 12, 2011. I watched from The Battery at Charleston Harbor as a giant spotlight sent a beam into the night sky above Fort Sumter. At 4:30 a.m. that beam split in two, signifying the moment the first shot of the...
John C. Fann Family Lost Four Sons
John C. Fann and Bythenia Kelly married and raised a large family, including seven sons. Six of their sons were soldiers in the Civil War. Four of them did not come home. James, John, and Owen enlisted in June and August of 1861. They were in Company I, 20th North...
Oldest son lost
Clay County was established in February 1861, mostly taken from Cherokee County. Because of the war, it wasn't fully organized until around 1868. But most of Company B, 7th Battalion, North Carolina Cavalry was made up of Clay County men and was commanded by Captain...
A Rough Knock on A Capitol Door
In the 1960's I would often go with my father, G. H. (Jerry) Elliott, then the Press Secretary to Governor Dan K. Moore, to his office in the Capitol in Raleigh. I would always stop to look at one of the first-floor doors which, along the bottom board, still bore the...
Great-Great-Grandfather Found
About 1990, I visited my great-aunt, Elsie Foster. Since she was the oldest living relative, I asked her about our family. She told me that her grandfather died in the Civil War, and that she and a sister (Sylvania, who had moved to Raleigh) had visited the grave in...
Shot in the Head at Gettysburg
My great-grandfather, John Bowden Hood, joined the Confederate army in Sampson County on Sept. 9, 1861. He was sent to the coast defense at Fort Fisher. Later, he was transferred to Stonewall Jackson's brigade and became part of Jackson's famous "foot cavalry." As a...
Wartime Letter Raises Question
My family left North Carolina for Alberta, Canada, in 1904, so little is known about my great-great-grandfather William Cheek's Confederate service. Born in Ashe County Apr. 14, 1844, he enlisted in Co. I, 61st North Carolina Infantry in Alleghany County in 1862. He...
Close Calls for Cumberland Trooper
James Larkin Bedsole, of the Cedar Creek area in Cumberland County, was a private in the Confederate States Army, serving in the 36th North Carolina Regiment, 2nd company C. I have found his name on records that show him transported from Fayetteville to Wilmington by...
Phone: 910-491-0602
Email: info@nccivilwarcenter.org
824 Branson Street
Post Office Box 53865
Fayetteville, NC 28305
Phone: 910-491-0602
Email: info@nccivilwarcenter.org
824 Branson Street
Post Office Box 53865
Fayetteville, NC 28305