Cherokee County Musters Recruits
Cherokee County Musters Recruits

by Sandra Nipper Ratledge

 
 
 
 
 
[Do not copy and upload this on other websites or blogs of any kind; do not attach any pages to online family trees; do not print in any publications of any kind. See copyright notice at the foot of each page. Visitors may read my articles here, but they are not for sale nor for thieves to upload or print elsewhere.]

From the war-torn ridges of the Unaka Mountains during the Civil War comes a particularly fascinating story of Appalachian response to civil strife. Especially interesting are accounts from the cliffs, coves, and creek bottom lands of Cherokee County, North Carolina from whence so many of my own, as well as my husband's ancestors and relatives, were mustered into service. Although Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi may be considered the Southern states with greatest losses and destruction during the Civil War, North Carolina also bore its devastations. Patriotism, ever characteristic of North Carolinians, became the state's hallmark during the War Between the States when she furnished one-fifth of the entire Confederate Army or 125,000 men from an eligible military population of 115,365.

To account for the additional 9,635 soldiers, it was not unusual for her male population in excess of fifty to serve side by side with boys sixteen and younger. For example, muster rolls of Company A, 29th NC Regiment list elderly Privates Rice Coffee, 59, William O. Cromwell 55, and John Pate, 75, beside teens William G. Payne and William "Fightin' Bill" Sutton, each only fifteen years of age and five others only sixteen years old. Scarred at a young and impressionable age, and thus forever warped by war, such boys as "Fightin' Bill" carried battlefield nicknames to their graves -- names whose mention caused listeners to quail.

Cherokee County furnished many privates for the rank and file as well as some officers for the 29th and 39th NC Regiments. Muster rolls are quite incomplete. However, extant military records of the 29th NC Regiment's Company A, include 25 males aged 15 - 19; 50 aged 20 - 25; 18 aged 25 - 29; 15 aged 30 - 39; 9 aged 40 - 49; 2 aged 50 -59; 1 aged 75; and 52 whose ages were unknown or unrecorded, all of whom were mustered in Cherokee County.

More than one-third of the state's military, or 40, 275 soldiers, died as a result of the war with 19,678 killed on battlefields. North Carolina sacrificed her highest potential, some of her greatest assets, her young men, in the Brothers' War.

Of the ten regiments on either side which sustained the heaviest losses in any one engagement during the war, North Carolina furnished three, and the greatest loss sustained by any regiment on either side was that of the 26th North Carolina Regiment at Gettysburg. North Carolina soldiers were found farthest up the blood-stained slopes of Gettysburg. It carried into action 800 men and came out with 80.
North Carolinians' strong adherence to the cause was quite obvious when more than half of the muskets stacked in the surrender of Appomattox belonged to soldiers from North Carolina. "The last charge of the Army of Northern Virginia under Lee was made by North Carolina troops, and the last gun fired was by Flanner's Battery from Wilmington, North Carolina."

Company A of the 29th NC Regiment was commonly known as the "Cherokee Guards" and originally organized for service as scouts and home guards. It was raised for duty in Cherokee County, and men enlisted June 17, 1861. Company C of the 39th NC Regiment was also composed mostly of men from Cherokee County. Nicknamed the "Tar Heels," this regiment originated and first drilled at Camp Hill in Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Some of these two companies' greatest losses and severest injuries were sustained in the battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee (Stones River). There they advanced on the Union line of heavy artillery stretching out just beyond the Nashville Turnpike. The two-day blood bath at Chickamauga, Georgia on September 19 - 20, 1863, is remembered as the other greatest death and injury toll suffered by these two regiments.

Fortunate, indeed, was he who saw battle and managed to survive. Even far away from bloody battlefields, survival was no simple task. If not dodging snipers and avoiding raiders, soldiers were often fighting diseases. Dysentery, erysipelas, influenza, measles, pneumonia, smallpox, tetanus, typhoid, and consumption were all rampant. Losses in the 39th Regiment were reported not so much a result of injury in battle as from disease and hardship. "Measles, pneumonia, camp fevers, and rheumatism raged so that 75 - 100 men died before the disorders were somewhat controlled. Large numbers of soldiers were sent home on furlough. Others were sent to hospitals in Knoxville, Tennessee. Diseases were often as fatal as battles."

The few hospitals, overflowing their maximum capacity, depleted of staff and short of supplies, could not care for the growing influx. Boarded-up churches, whose fearful members now worshipped in their own homes, were turned into "pest" houses for the diseased and the terminal. Adjoining cemeteries provided a convenient place to dispose of the deceased. The luxury of a wooden coffin was never even considered.

From the 29th Regiment, only four soldiers from Company A were recorded as dying of wounds, i.e., Pvts. Noah Coffee, William M. Jones, Simon H. Reynolds, and Cpl. William L. Davis (died ca. March 1863). This did not include Capt.William C. Walker, Pvt. Benjamin Franklin Davis (died October 21, 1864), brother of aforementioned Cpl. Davis, and three other brothers, i.e., Pvts. Jesse Williams (died December 4, 1864), George Williams and Barclay M. Williams (both died January 10, 1865), all known to have been bushwhacked during the war.

The majority of recorded deaths in the 29th Regiment, however, were attributed to disease, chiefly "fever" which may have referred to typhoid or pneumonia. Those succumbing to these killers included Pvts. Benton C. Allen, John R. Sneed, Elisha A. Standridge, and Sgt. Xenophen L. Walker. Those perishing of other infections were Pvts. William D. King, and Daniel A. Pegram of "chronic diarrhea," Joseph H. Morrison of bronchitis, Cpl. Hiram C. Reynolds of erysipelas, and Pvt. Jephthah "Jep" Marion McDonald (died December 13, 1864) of smallpox, the latter having been contracted at prison camp after his capture at the Battle of Chickamauga. Six of these soldiers, Pvts. Allen, King, McDonald, Morrison, Pegram, and Reynolds, and possibly others from this company all died at the dreaded Camp Douglas, a prisoner of war camp in Chicago, Illinois. Here and at other camps, "Johnny Rebs" were humiliated by being on public display in the commons area like animals in a zoo but without the proper care accorded animals. Sanitation was nonexistant; latrine trenches, abominable.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Arthur, John Preston. Western North Carolina a History 1730-1913. Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1973-4.

Civil War Centennial Commission. Tennesseans in the Civil War. Part I. Nashville, Tennessee: 1964.

Civil War Centennial Commission. Tennesseans in the Civil War. Part II. Nashville, Tennessee: 1965.

Clark, Walter, editor. North Carolina Regiments 1861 - 1865. Goldsboro, North Carolina: State of North Carolina.

God's Country. Murphy, North Carolina: Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce, 1982.

Hurlburt, J. S. History of the Rebellion in Bradley County, East Tennessee. Indianapolis: 1866.

Jordan, Weymouth T., Jr., compiler. North Carolina Troops 1861 - 1865. Raleigh, North Carolina: Division of Archives and History, 1981.

Long, Paul J. "Bushwhacking Is a Part of Our History," Monroe County Democrat, November 12, 1969.

Long, Paul J. Our Hill Country Heritage, Williams and Related Families. Volume 1. Oak Ridge, Tennessee: 1970.

McKinney, R. Frank. Torment in the Knobs. Athens, Tennessee: 1976.

Wright, Gen. Marcus J., compiler. Tennessee in the War 1861 - 1865. New York, New York: Ambrose Lee Publishing Company, 1908.

This site is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Tommy and Beulah (Cline) Nipper.

Public Domain, but please include this site in your sources Do not print in publications or for displays of any kind.

Homespun
Graphics
by
Sandra Ratledge

All you kinfolks, put some mail in that old box!