AUTHOR: Tim A. Sellers, Lumberton, NC
[Editor’s Note: This is an expanded version of “Death Reached Far Beyond the Battlefield,” by Billy Sellers.]
Neill Stephen Kinlaw, my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side, was 38 when he was captured at Fort Fisher.
He was taken to Elmira, New York, where he died a month later.
A farmer from Lumberton, in Robeson County, Neill was one of the 1,121 Confederate soldiers captured and taken to the prisoner of war camp in Elmira. At the close of the Civil War, a great mystery was that 46 percent of the prisoners sent to Elmira died of disease, poor food, contaminated water, and the most unsanitary conditions.
Neill has two great-great-grandsons who are Southern Baptist ministers, and one son who was a retired U. S. Navy Commander.