Pvt. Thomas Lafayette Morrison: farmer, soldier, POW, survivor.

T.L. Morrison, my great-great-grandfather, enlisted as a private in Company A of the 6th Regiment, North Carolina Infantry, on Sept. 22, 1862. Between Nov. 6 and Nov. 12, 1863, he was captured during a battle near Brandy Station in Virginia and taken to Point Lookout, Maryland, as a prisoner of war. He was a POW for a year and six months. He was paroled and started home on Feb. 1, 1865. After the train got to Morganton, he walked the last 18 miles to see his wife and daughter. In his own words, “I was then back at home a gain a paroled prisner with my wife and child that I had not sean in two year, 5 months and one day. The war ended Apr. the 26, 1865.” This quote came from the last of 40 letters he wrote during the war. He asked his wife to keep the letters, and 150 years later I had the privilege of transcribing and typing them. At that point he picked up where he had left off at his enlistment, being a farmer, husband and father.