James Micajah Mayo

Colonel Nathan Mayo Sr. was my 3x grandfather and Talitha Mayo Pippen was his granddaughter. There is also a picture of her and her daughter, Talitha Malvina Lucretia Pippen, in the The Seven Blackbirds video to the right. Additionally I have a picture of her husband, as well as side by side pictures of Colonel Mayo and Joseph John Pippen who was Talitha's wife.
=============================================

James Micajah Mayo’ father was Thomas Mayo, his grandfather Micajah Mayo and his great grandfather Nathan Mayo Sr. Nathan Mayo Sr. was a Colonel in the Martin County NC Militia during the Revolutionary War, an early settler, landholder, and statesman from Edgecombe County NC. Micajah Mayo was a Captain during the War of 1812 for the Martin County NC Militia.

His mother Mary Williams Bryan was a descendant of Lord Hugh Bryan, another early settler and landholder of Edgecombe County NC.

He was raised on the Mayo farm, later known as the “Land” and eventually was called “Cutchin Farm” which was about three miles east of Whitakers, NC on State Route 33.

James Micajah studied law at the University of Virginia in 1859 and 1860. In October of 1861, following the outbreak of the Civil War, he was appointed to the rank of Captain in the Confederate States Army and organized the North Carolina 2nd Artillery Regiment, Company F (AKA North Carolina 36th regiment, Company F), nicknamed “The Pamlico Artillery”.

On March 14, 1862, at the Battle of New Bern, NC, his company defended Fort Ellis on the Neuse River about for miles south of New Bern.

(Today the Brinson Memorial School sits on the site of the former fort). The fort contained eight guns. When the union troops broke through the confederate defenses south of Fort Ellis, Mayo was ordered to destroy his guns and the ammunition magazine which contained over 3000 pounds of powder and 500 loaded shells, so that they would not fall into the hands of the enemy. He sent his men out of danger, placed the powder “trail” to the explosives and lit it himself. It was reported the the explosion was the largest and loudest of the entire battle.

Unfortunately, Captain Mayo was not far enough away from the magazine when it ignited and he was severally injured. It was estimated that he was thrown as far as one hundred feet by the blast. Both of his legs were broken, his flesh and eyes badly burned and he was reported as “killed” by some observers. That night he was found by Major W. B. Lowell of the Connecticut 11th who had him moved through Union lines to a hospital where he was treated by Dr. Whitcomb. As a captured Southerner under the doctors care , he slowly recovered and eventually regained his eyesight. Major Lowell visited him frequently, wrote letters to his mother, read and played the violin for him. After five months he was well enough to travel. General Burnside arranged for a special escort to return Captain James M. Mayo back to his home in Edgecombe County.

He re-enlisted in September of 1862 in the North Carolina 4th Calvary (North Carolina 59th Regiment) as a Field Officer, appointed to the rank of Major October 7, 1862. His unit first saw service in North Carolina and Sothern Virginia. In May of 1863, his unit was placed under the command of Brigadier General Beverly Robertson.

At the Battle of Upperville Virginia on June 21, 1863, leading a charge against Union Forces which ended in hand-to-hand combat, he was captured a second time. He was sent to Old Capital Prison in Washington DC and on August 8, 1853, transferred to Johnson Island Military Prison, Lake Erie, Sandusky, Ohio where he remained until February 24, 1865, and was then transferred to City Point, Virginia for exchange. On March 3, 1865 he was admitted to a hospital in Richmond, Virginia.

While a Prisoner of War at Johnson Island he ket a detailed diary of the day-to-day event of prison life. The first of two volumes, covering the period from August 7, 1863 through March 10, 1864, is in the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, and is stated to be one of the best accounts of prison life written by either Yankee or Rebel. A second volume, covering the period from March 1864 to his release in February 1865, has been lost.

An interesting event while a POW was the recommendation mad in November 1864, by Colonel Ferbee, Commanding Officer of the North Carolina 4th Calvary Regiment, to the Army General Staff that Major Mayo be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. The curt reply to the request states simply “No vacancy exist”.

Following the war, he returned to Edgecombe County where he practiced law serving as administrator, executor, guardian, ect., of numerous wills and estates.
　
On October 8, 1868, he married Florence Lyon, a resident of Edgecombe County and twelve years his junior. The union bore eight children, five of whom were still living in the 1960’s. One, Nathan Mayo, at the time of his death in 1960, had the distinction of being the longest serving elected official (Commissioner of Agriculture, State of Florida) in the United States. (37 years).
About 1886 he moved his family to Ocala, Florida. He became what today would be called a “Land Speculator” and an officer of a budding railroad line promoting its services. One story is that when a panhandle county was looking for a new site as its county seat, it was suggested that if Mayo would run a railroad line to a certain location within the county, the developer would name the place “Mayo.” True or not, the county seat of Lafayette County Florida, is named Mayo. In front of the courthouse is a Florida Department of State Heritage Site Marker commemorating naming the town for the Confederate Soldier.

In Florence, SC, on the morning of June 12, 1897, while crossing a railroad track, he was struck by a train and died of his injuries about three hours later. Newspapers in Florence and Columbia, SC, Tarboro and Raleigh, NC, and Ocala, Florida, carried the news of his death. He was buried in a small family cemetery on the old Mayo Farm, east of Whitaker, NC. No grave marker was erected at the time of his burial.
================================
James Micajah Mayo

Via Cousin Bill