SUBMITTED BY: Katy F. Sigmon
My name is Katy Louise Frye Sigmon. I am almost 93 years old. I was born and raised on this farm. The log house stood until December 1918 but burned to the ground then. As a child I knew where the brick oven stood, where the foundation of the house was, and also where the spring was. The log barn stood until sometime in the 1950s. One of my nephews still lives on 12 acres of the original farm. The story below was told to me by my paternal grandmother, Louise Camilla Caroline Frye. Born October 3, 1860 in Catawba County, NC, Jacobs Fork Township near Newton, NC.
After the War, as the Yankees were making their way back North, three Yankee soldiers stopped by the Frye farm and demanded that food be prepared for them. My great-grandmother “Betsy” (?) was home alone with three small daughters: Alice, Clara, and “Lou.” The men in the family were down by the river (Jacobs Fork) tending to the farm animals that had been hidden away in a “canebrake” to keep them safe.
Lou’s mother cooked over an open fire in the kitchen of the log house. She used a brick oven to bake bread. The brick oven was in a yard nearby. Water came from a spring about 800 feet from the house.
When the soldiers appeared, the little girls were hidden in the loft of the log house. My grandmother was 4 years old but remembered seeing two chickens being killed and cooked, plus bread being baked for the soldiers. Betsy was afraid to leave the house, so someone had to go to the spring to get water.
It took all day to cook the meal. The little girls stayed in the loft all day. Their “Bond servant” (slave) was hidden in the log barn that was nearly a quarter mile from the house.
My grandmother said her most vivid memory was as the sun was going down, she saw the Yankee soldiers walking across the hill with the sun shining on their backs.
