AUTHOR: Unknown
With little to his name and no family, Burwell Jackson Moore, born near Danville, Virginia in 1846, decided to join in the war effort. He enlisted in Northampton County, North Carolina on January 6, 1863 as a Private in Company A, 5th NC Cavalry (63rd NC State Troops) at age 16. His company saw little action until participating in the Pennsylvania campaign and the 3 day battle of Gettysburg. Following the army’s retreat south from Gettysburg, Burwell was captured at Hagerstown, Maryland on July 12, 1863 and was confined at Point Lookout, Maryland. He would stay in prison until being paroled and exchanged at City Point, Virginia on March 6, 1864.
Upon his release, against his parole orders, he immediately rejoined the company and was present and accounted for through the Spring of ’65. He was wounded in his left leg in action at Chamberlain Run, Virginia on March 31, 1865 and was admitted to the hospital in Danville on April 3, 1865. He was given furlough for 30 days on April 8, 1865, one day before Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia. Burwell therefore never took the Oath of Allegiance and always boasted that he was still a Confederate and would die one, and so he did in 1906 in the Snow Creek township of Iredell County, North Carolina.
