SUBMITTED BY: Adrienne Stanley (edited and vetted by Cheri Todd Molter)
Minnie McClenny Sutton was my great-grandmother, and I found two separate sheets of paper on which family members had recorded their interviews with Minnie while asking her about the Civil War.
Interview on Aug. 6, 1965 – Minnie was 78 years old:
She said, “The Yankees came through during the Civil War and they would steal the potatoes out of the potato hills, drive the mules away, and kill the hogs. Needham Crow’s father, Moses Crow, was well-to-do and he had a lot of hogs. They were pretty and fat. The Yankees would cut the ham off the hogs without killing them first. They were cruel soldiers! They would split mattresses to carry corn off in them. The Yankees drove their cows and newborns off. They would shoot the hogs with poison bullets.”
“My mother and grandmother would bury their silver and money and put brush and trees over it.”
Interview on Aug. 4, 1985 – Minnie at age 98:
She said that her folks hid potatoes, corn, etc. under the bed during the Civil War. It would be filled to the top.
Minnie’s father, James William McClenny, was eighteen years old when he enlisted in the Confederate Army on October 11, 1864. He served in Co E, 5th N.C. Infantry and was present at the Appomattox Court House on the day of surrender. He walked all the way home to Wayne County, N.C. afterward. When he got back, he put his military papers in a chest, locked it, and everyone was forbidden to open it. This chest is still in our family, along with its original contents—the documents James put inside it.
