Brock,
Do you know of author Brenda Chambers McKean? A friend gave me a recent book by her (Blood and War at My Doorstep) and you (and I) are mentioned in the acknowledgments. Seems to be a solidly-researched book on the fate of NC civilians during the war, most interesting and well-written.
Bernhard
Amazon.com: Blood and War at my
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Colonel William M. Parsley of New Hanover County
Eliza Nutt Parsley,
wife of Lt-Col. William Parsley of the Third North Carolina, refugeed in
Robeson County with her two small children where she thought herself
safe from invading troops. Her story of terror and near-starvation was
recently re-told by reenactress Kelly Hinson in the living history,
“General Hoke at Duplin Roads.”
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Eliza Nutt Parsley Refugees at Floral College
“As
the Yankee troops marched through . . . the counties, they set fire to
the turpentine distilleries and barrels of tar along the trek, creating
dense black smoke. Pine forests caught fire lighting their way at night.
Early in March, Sherman’s men destroyed in Lumberton the bridge over
Lumber river, otherwise known as Drowning Creek, in addition to the
railroad depot and six boxcars. Shoe Heel [present-day Maxton], located
on the railroad had only a depot and one old turpentine distillery at
the stop, which was demolished.
The
Reverend Hector McLean, at Edinboro Plantation, had most of his
possessions stolen. The bummers must have thought they hit the jackpot
because of the enormous bounty they took consisting of four mules, six
horses, five cows, one hundred and twenty-four hogs, two-thousand
bushels of peas, one hundred bushels of wheat, twenty bushels of rice,
sixty-five hundred pounds of fodder, seven thousand pounds of bacon,
sixty gallons of syrup, one hundred chickens, and twenty-five thousand
fence rails.
Reverend
McLean wrote “Antioch Church was greatly injured by Sherman’s army . . .
our Sabbath School [library] either destroyed or taken away.” For
unknown reasons, the Lumber Bridge Presbyterian Church was burned after
visits from Union troops.
Beside
the Humphrey/Williams/Smith Plantation stood the Raft Swamp Post
Office. Used by local citizens first, the office swarmed with bluecoats
when the Fourteenth Corps swept through, plundering homes in the area.
Elizabeth Nutt Parsley [of Wilmington], wife of Captain [later Lt-Col.
William Murdock] Parsley, [refugeed] in Robeson County at Floral
College.
The
school was closed for students, but remained open to accept refugees.
While her husband was away, the enemy came and took twelve horses. The
Yankees tried to persuade her slave, Uncle Titus, by bribing him with a
pearl-handle knife to come away with them. He refused. While at Floral
College with her family [in early April], Mrs. Parsley received news of
her husband’s death [three days before Appomattox].
To
make matters worse, she had to leave her refuge because Sherman’s men
burglarized the interior. Another prominent refugee family from
Wilmington, Dr. [John D.] Bellamy, stayed at the college. They ran from
the Federals only to collide with them again at Red Springs. Bellamy’s
daughters told after the war that their mother, in searching for food,
scratched around in the ground for corn kernels dropped by the enemy’s
horses while at Shoe Heel.”
G.R.
Nye remembered as a boy when the Yankees were rumored to be coming. He
said the family hid valuables in the walls, the silver over the porch,
and the meat was placed in a niche over the top of the stairs. Diarist
Robeson inscribed, “March 12, 1865 . . . the Yankees paid me a visit.
They searched to house for arms and ammunitions took all my hams and
bushel and half and left.”
(Blood
and War at My Doorstep, North Carolina Civilians in the War Between the
States, Volume II, Brenda Chambers McKean, Xlibris, 2011, pp. 995-996)
