Little Schoolhouse Wedding
My great-grandfather was Needham Outlaw of Duplin and Wayne counties. He was a private in Company I, 66th Regiment of North Carolina Troops. He served as a Confederate nurse and courier between eastern North Carolina and Richmond. It is unknown how much action he saw. Past the midpoint of the war, he was sidetracked for six months by an unspecified illness. By his own account he became ill “while doing service in the Medical Surveyor’s office in Wilmington, and on the road from Wilmington to Charlotte for the Confederate States, in charge of a boxcar full of medical supplies for the soldiers.” Ironically, the “happiest day” of Needham’s life came near the end of 1864, long after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, a few weeks before the fall of Fort Fisher and just as Sherman was issuing orders for his long, destructive march into the heart of Needham’s homeland. On November 9, 1864, Needham married his childhood sweetheart, Smithy Penelope Outlaw, in the little schoolhouse both of them had attended. Clyde McMillan Strickling November 9, 2014 (Ironically, celebrating 150 years ago that they married.)
