Artilleryman Had a Long Walk Home

Joseph Haywood Chason, from Lumber Bridge, N.C., volunteered to join the Confederacy for a three-year enlistment in February 1862. He was assigned to Fort Fisher the entire time as an artilleryman, with the rank of private. Joseph was present for the epic battle when the fort fell; he was wounded and taken prisoner. The Union forces took him to Point Lookout, Md. as a prisoner of war. He was released in the summer of 1865 and walked home from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to Lumber Bridge, a distance of approximately 600 miles. After the Civil War ended, Joseph married and became a farmer in Robeson County. My grandfather, Charles Chason, was the tenth child from a family of eleven children. Joseph died in 1921 and is buried in a private family cemetery in Robeson County. G. Mark McLamb Wilmington