Gen. Sherman Comes Calling on Scotland (from “Legacy of the Committed,” Laurinburg, Bill Evans Press, 1982)

Betty Myers of Laurinburg was my eighth grade history teacher — and a good one — and is the local history guru of that area. Sherman was at Old Laurel Hill Presbyterian Church, out in the country outside Laurinburg, for most of his time in that area. Betty sent me some pages from a couple of out-of-print books that she has. Part of the troops were in the Richmond Mill area, close to the town of Laurel Hill. There was a gun shop there and the owners put the guns in the mill pond and rescued them after the Yanks left. In “Legacy of the Committed,” Ruth Trivette wrote: “On March 8, the two columns of Sherman’s Fifteenth Corps united at Laurel Hill and encamped at the Presbyterian Church. Torrential rains turned the Old Stage Road into a sea of mud making further progress difficult… While the Union soldiers were here, two of their soldiers died and were buried in the Hillside Cemetery. One was an English lad named Butler; the other, a Yankee named Pete Joseph. Some of the Union soldiers climbed the steps into to the church tower where they inscribed the names and regiment numbers on the walls of the belfrey.” I remember climbing the steps into the bell tower to see the names written by the Yanks.