Saving Pamplin Historical Park: Its Story, My Story, How You Can Help

 

   On July 16, 2025, my friend Chris Mackowski hit the airwaves for Emerging Civil War News with a fantastic announcement: the American Battlefield Trust is purchasing Pamplin Historical Park. When Pamplin Park opened in 1994, it was hailed as a “major player in that conflict.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 22, 1994.)  The park, separate from the Petersburg National Battlefield, would “refocus attention on the dramatic events that led to the fall of the Confederacy.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 27, 1994) 

   So what was the battle of Pamplin? Well, there was not a battle by that name. The Pamplin part is the name of the family that preserved the property. Located just below Petersburg, the property was purchased in 1810 by William E. Boisseau. Boisseau built Tudor Hall, and the family lived in the structure until 1864. That fall, McGowan’s South Carolina brigade arrived. The Boisseau family went elsewhere (probably Petersburg) and Brig. Gen. Samuel McGowan used the home as his headquarters. McGowan’s brigade left the entrenchments that ran through the farm on March 29, 1865, replaced by Brig. Gen. James H. Lane’s North Carolina brigade. Lane was minus one regiment, but the other four spread themselves throughout the works. One Tar Heel wrote that they were about ten paces apart. In the early morning hours, the massed VI Corps struck the position, breaking through the thinly held lines. Robert E. Lee was forced to evacuate the Petersburg and Richmond lines, moving west. The Boisseaus were forced to sell the property after the war. It was purchased by Asahel Gerow of New York. In the mid-20^th century, the property was purchased by Robert Pamplin and his son, direct descendants of the Boisseaus. They are the ones who created Pamplin Historical Park, which not only includes the best preserved earthworks in the nation, but also the restored Tudor Hall, the Breakthrough Museum, and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier.

   My connection? In the late 1990s, I was working on my first book, a history of the 37^th North Carolina Troops. That regiment was stationed in those very works on the morning of April 2, 1865. Pamplin Park had just received the battleflag of the 37^th North Carolina on loan from the Museum of the Confederacy. I stood gazing at the flag for some time, counting the bullet holes that had been repaired during the war. Just a few dozen steps away were the breastworks where the 37th North Carolina was located, and where that very flag was captured.

   That history of the 37^th North Carolina was published in 2003. In 2005, I wrote an article about the breakthrough for America’s Civil War.  And in 2018, Savas Beatie published General Lee’s Immortals, my history of the Branch-Lane brigade. (You can order the books here)

   I’ve visited Pamplin Park many times over the years. Sometimes, I am a tourist, just walking among the trenches where the breakthrough took place so many years ago. Several times, I have been invited to speak about the events and the Branch-Lane Brigade (twice in 2024). In 2016, a monument to Lane’s Brigade was dedicated at the park. I was not the speaker – Edd Bearss was. But I had a chance to join with a great group of re-enactors, and spend a couple of days doing interpretive programs at the park.

   The American Battlefield Trust needs to raise $600,000 by November to finish the purchase of the Confederate defenses at Pamplin Historical Park (total cost is over $21,000,000). Like most other historic sites, not just those dedicated to the Civil War, Pamplin has struggled since 2020. This is a win-win situation for everyone. The American battlefield Trust already owns 200 acres of land adjacent to this 400+-acre tract. It is the location from which the VI Crops launched its attack. The American Battlefield Trust will continue the excellent stewardship of the Pamplin family and will allow this site to be preserved to teach the future about this important story of the past.

If you would like to help support this important effort to help preserve this unique site, you can find more information here

Roderick D. Davidson and the Confederate Air Force

   Disclaimer: yes, there was an organization called the Confederate Air Force, founded in Texas in 1961. They later changed their name to the Commemorative Air Force. This post has nothing to do with them, but instead covers R.D. Davidson’s plan to build a heavier-than-air craft in 1864. 

Possible 1840s illustration of the Artisavis. 

   The idea of slipping “the surly bonds of Earth and” dancing “the skies on laughter-silvered wings” has been a dream of many for centuries. The conversation could go all the way back to the Greeks and Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. When two French brothers developed a hot-air balloon and flew in it in 1783, the overactive mind of more than a few inventors and dreamers turned toward not only balloons, but heavier-than-air craft that could greatly enhance transportation, and war.[1]

   Roderick D. Davison had a plan. He was going to build an “Artisavis” or “Bird of Air.” The “Artisavis” was, as described by one Confederate soldier, “an artificial bird to go by steam through the air that can carry a man to guide it and a number of shells which can drop on the Yankees as he passes over them which will soon kill and scare them all away.”[2] By late 1863, the Federals knew of his plan. The Army and Navy Gazette, as reprinted in a Kentucky newspapers, described the operation even further. A fleet of a thousand of these machines would be stationed five miles from the enemy’s lines. They were launched, each carrying “a fifty-pound explosive shell, to be dropped from a safe elevation upon the enemy! The Birds are then to return for the purpose of re-loading.”[3] Davison, who worked in the Quartermaster General’s Office in Richmond, believed he could drop 150,000 shells in the course of twelve hours with his fleet of 1,000 “Artisavis.”[4]

   This was not Davidson’s first idea regarding flight. In 1840, he had published Disclosure of the Discovery and Invention, and a Description of the Plan of Construction and Mode of Operation of the Aerostat: Or, A New Mode of Aerostation. The contraption that Davidson proposed was a “Flapping-wing machine” that was patterned after the American eagle.[5]

   Davidson’s new proposal needed funding, and he approached the Confederate government. After being turned down, Davidson went to the officers and men of the Army of Northern Virginia. He began giving lectures and raising funds. An estimated $2,000 was needed to build the first “Artisavis.” By March-April 1865, he had raised $1,500.[6] One newspaper reported that the “Artisavis” was designed “to fly after the yankees and fire off something that is expected to demolish them in a most frightful manner.”[7] A non-flying prototype was constructed in a lumberyard in Petersburg, at the corner of 7^th and Main. A strong wind one night wrecked the model.[8]

   Some believed in Davidson’s invention. One soldier in Benning’s brigade wrote that “I was very anxious to see that man stampede the Yankee army.” Another Confederate wrote that there was an “intense excitement and joyous hopes pervading the army that the flying byrd would exterminate every Yankee in front of Petersburg.” Others were not so impressed. A member of DuBose’s brigade, after the brigade had contributed $127 to the project, considered the sum “pretty liberal patronage for a humbug.”[9]

   What became of Davidson? That is a great question. Sources cannot even agree on his first name. Some have Roderick, while others have Richard.[10] He possibly was born in Virginia in 1806 and died in the same place in an almshouse in December 1885 of Bright’s Disease.[11] Whatever became of him, it was certainly a humbling end compared to his lofty aspirations.

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[1] “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee.

[2] Power, Lee’s Miserables, 265.

[3] The Courier-Journal, January 27, 1864.

[4] The Macon Telegraph, February 6, 1864.

[5] Pizor, “The Great Steam Duck,” Technology and Culture, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 86-89.

[6] Powell, Lee’s Miserables, 265.

[7] The Daily Confederate, March 22, 1865.

[8] Hess, In the Trenches of Petersburg, 242.

[9] Hess, In the Trenches of Petersburg, 242.

[10] Hacker,  Astride Two Worlds.

[11] Virginia, U.S. Death Registers, 1853-1911.

Killing Confederate Prisoners at Fort Gregg

   Any time someone mentions the killing of prisoners during the war, names like Fort Pillow, Saltville, Plymouth, and Champ Ferguson come to mind. In these events, it is always the Confederates killing their prisoners. It is rare to hear about similar atrocities being committed by Federal forces. Yet it apparently happened at the battle of Fort Gregg on April 2, 1865.

"Shoot and be Damned!"

   Following the debacle at Five Forks, southwest of Peterburg, Virginia, on April 1, 1865, U.S. Grant ordered the Federal forces to launch an assault on Confederate lines. Grant believed that given the amount of Confederates his forces faced at Five Forks, Confederate lines had to be weak some place. That assault, early on the morning of April 2, resulted in the breakthrough, most notably along Arthur’s Swamp, held by four regiments of Brig. Gen. James H. Lane’s North Carolina brigade. (There were, of course, other breakthroughs of the line.) Many of Lane’s men not gobbled up in the ensuing early morning breakthrough, or the ensuing counterattack, drifted back towards Battery 45 and the inner Confederate lines. A portion of Lane’s men, along with some men from Harris’s Mississippi brigade and Thomas’s Georgia brigade, were assigned to the defense of Fort Gregg.

   Fort Gregg, and its sister fort, Fort Whitworth, were the idea of Wade Hampton. Hampton proposed the idea of a series of fortifications between the main Confederate line and the inner Confederate line in a letter to Lee in September 1864.[1] Fort Gregg was a crescent-shaped earthen fort. The fort had four cannon emplacements and a palisade fence across the back. Fort Whitworth was an enclosed earthen fortification. Fort Whitworth is sometimes referred to as Fort Baldwin. Both forts were named for local families and both situated in between the two Confederate lines, designed to slow down a Federal advance if the first line of fortifications were breached. As a permanent garrison Fort Gregg had a detachment of 100 artillerymen, mostly drivers, from several different batteries, along with two guns belonging to Chew’s 4^th Maryland Artillery. Fort Whitworth had a contingent of the Washington Artillery from Louisiana, along with the 18^th and 48^th Mississippi from Harris’s brigade. 

   Crowding into Fort Gregg were members of the 12^th and 16^th Mississippi, 18th, 28^th, 33^rd, and 37^th North Carolina, and the 14^th, 35^th, 45^th, and 49^th Georgia Infantry regiments, plus the artillerymen, and an estimated 334 Confederate soldiers.[2] The Federal attack commenced about noon, and there were at least three different waves of Federal attackers. The final wave was able to break through the back entrance to Fort Gregg, while at the same time, use the embankment created by an unfinished line of breastworks connecting the two forts. Confederates inside Fort Gregg were running low on ammunition, some resorting to hurling rocks and bricks at the attackers. On the third attempt, the Federals were able to break through. Some Confederates continued to fight on. Lawrence Barry, 3^rd Company, Washington Artillery, had the lanyard of his cannon in his hand as Federals came over the works. An officer told him to drop the lanyard or they would fire. “Shoot and be damned!” he told the Federal, pulling the lanyard and obliterating several Federal soldiers. Those remaining opened fire, killing Barry.[3]

   Many Confederates surrendered. Yet there were several stories that emerged that the surrender of some were not accepted. In 1867, Lt. Dallas Rigler, 37^th North Carolina, wrote to James H. Lane about the attack. He mentioned running low on ammunition, using “bats and rocks,” and then the Federals scaling the wall. They entered Fort Gregg’s “walls and after a short struggle they took the fort and some few did fire on after they got possession but their officers tried to stop them.”[4] Captain A. K. Jones, 12^th Mississippi, believed that the Federals “were under the influence of whiskey,” and because of the stiff resistance offered by the Confederate defenders, which had produced “a bloody massacre” on Federal attackers, were planning to kill everyone within the Fort. It was the Federal officers “who with cocked pistols made the men desist. . . We lost about forty men killed in the fort after its capture. . . It was ten minutes before the shooting could be suppressed.”[5] George W. Richards, a surgeon attached to Fort Gregg, wrote that as the Federals swarmed into the fort, they “showed us no quarter.” Richards disagreed with Rigler and Jones as to why the Federals stopped killing the Confederates who had surrendered. “It was not so much their officers who caused them to desist from shooting us,” he wrote. Instead, it was when General Lee ordered Poague’s artillery to open fire on the Fort. “one shot after another in rapid succession drove all the enemy on the opposite side of the fort for shelter. Had it not been for Colonel Poague’s guns I believe they would have killed every one of us.”[6]

   Maj. Gen. John Gibbon, commanding the attacking force – the XXIV Corps, agreed that the defenders of the fort held on to the very last, writing that the assault was “one of the most desperate of the war” and that fort was only taken “by the last of several determined dashes with the bayonet.”[7] Brig Gen. Robert S. Foster agreed with Gibbon: “The fighting on both sides at this point was the most desperate I ever witnessed, being a hand to hand struggle for twenty-five minutes” after the Federals gained the parapet.[8]

   Some of the rank-and-file Federals echoed the Confederates. In an 1889 history of the 39^th Illinois can be found a letter about the assault, a Federal officer wrote that he was one of the first over the walls, witnessing the carnage inside. It “was with the greatest difficulty that we could prevent our infuriated soldiers from shooting down and braining all who survived of the stubborn foe.”[9] A member of the 12^th West Virginia recalled that on the order to charge, “in they went, with an irresistible rush, maddened at the slaughter of their late comrades, and determined to avenge their deaths. That onslaught could not be checked…”[10]

   In the end, the assault cost the Federals, according to John Gibbon’s report, 122 men killed, and 592 wounded. Confederate losses are placed at 57 killed, 243 wounded and captured, with 33 more unwounded captured. All of this to capture two forts that would have abandoned overnight regardless of any other Federal advances. The killing of Confederate soldiers after they had surrendered was quietly chalked up to “maddened” or “infuriated soldiers,” and quietly forgotten. The war in Virginia would all be over in about a week’s time.[11]

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[1] Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 15.

[2] Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 234.

[3] Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 182.

[4] Dallas Rigler to James H. Lane, June 17, 1867, Lane Papers, AU.

[5] Jones, “The Battle of Fort Gregg,” SHSP, Vol. 31, 56-60.

[6] “Fort Gregg Again,” SHSP, Vol. 31, 370-372. More accounts can be found in Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 183-188.

[7] ORs., Vol. 46, 1:1174.

[8] ORs., Vol. 46, 1:1177.

[9] Clark, The History of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment Illinois Volunteer Veteran Infantry, 255.

[10] Egan, The Flying, Gray-haired Yank, 391.

[11] ORs, Vol. 46, 1:1174; Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 229.

Fighting on both sides: Richard K. Meade, Jr.

Maj. Richard K. Meade, Jr. 

   There are a handful of men who have the distinction of fighting on both sides during the war. One of those is Richard Kidder Meade, Jr.  Born in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1835, he was the son of Richard K. Meade, a U.S. Congressman and diplomat, appointed as US Minister to Brazil by President James Buchanan. Richard K. Meade, Jr., was a member of the West Point class of 1857, graduating third in his class. Among his classmates were E. Alexander Porter, Richard H. Anderson, Samuel W. Ferguson, and John S. Marmaduke. Assigned to the engineering corps in the US Army following graduation, he arrived in Charleston on December 10, 1860. Major Robert Anderson first sent him to Castle Pinckney, but Meade discovered that he did not have enough materials to finish the project assigned to him.[1]

   When Major Anderson chose to transfer his command to Fort Sumter, 2^nd Lt. Meade used one of the barges to help move the troops. Meade was back at Castle Pickney when James J. Pettigrew arrived on the following day. Meade had no soldiers, just himself and an ordnance sergeant, along with several workers. When Meade refused to open the gate, Pettigrew’s men procured ladders and scaled the walls. Pettigrew demanded Meade surrender on order of the governor of South Carolina, which Meade stated he could not do. The US flag was hauled down and a red flag with a white star was run up. Meade refused to watch the flag go up and retired to his room to write his report. Meade also refused a parole, believing that to do so acknowledged South Carolina as a foreign government. Meade then headed for Fort Sumter.[2]

   Major Anderson sought Meade’s opinion when the Star of the West was fired upon, and when Governor Pickens sent two men to demand the Fort’s surrender. At the later, it was Meade who suggested that the matter be referred to their superiors in Washington, telling Anderson that if they fired on the South Carolinians firing on the ship, “It will bring civil war on us.”[3] Meade was placed in charge of making bags for powder for the cannons prior to the battle. When the battle began on April 12, Meade found himself in command of a gun crew. He was also still in charge of making powder bags, which were soon running short.[4] 

The capture of Castle Pinckney

   At one point, prior to the battle, Meade received a note that one member of his family, his mother, or maybe a sister, was ill. Meade received a furlough to visit the sick relative. Abner Doubleday later wrote that Meade’s absence to Virginia, was a “strategic move to force poor Meade into the ranks of the Confederacy. . . He had previously been overwhelmed with letters on the subject. He was already much troubled in mind; and some months after the bombardment of Fort Sumter the pressure of family ties induced him (very reluctantly as I heard) to join the Disunionists.”[5] However, Doubleday would later praise Meade, writing that while he had never been under fire, Meade “proved [himself] to be [a true] son of [his] Alma Mater at West Point.”[6]

   Meade accompanied Anderson and the others to New York following the surrender of Fort Sumter. When Virginia left the Union, Meade resigned his commission on May 1, 1861. He soon pitched his fate with the Confederate forces and was appointed major of artillery in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States. Meade was assigned as engineering officer to Magruder, then worked on the defenses in the Cape Fear area, with General Branch at New Bern, and served as engineer officer on the staff of James Longstreet about the time of the Seven Days campaign. Major Meade died of disease, probably typhoid, on July 31, 1862, and is buried at Blandford Church Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia.[7]

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[1] Detzer, Allegiance, 63.

[2] Detzer, Allegiance, 114, 134, 135.

[3] Swanberg, First Blood, 148.

[4] Detzer, Allegiance, 167; Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 48.

[5] Doubleday quoted in Hendrickson, Sumter, 138.

[6] Swanberg, First Blood, 305.

[7] Krick, Staff Officer in Gray, 218.

Robert E. Lee’s Christmas Letters Home

   Confederate general Robert E. Lee spent all four of the war-year Christmases away from his wife Mary. Three of his Christmas Day letters home survive.

   Lee’s first letter was written while the general was stationed South Carolina. Writing from his headquarters on the Coosawhatchie, Lee told Mary that he could not let the day pass without writing to her. He was “thankful for the many among the past that I have passed with you. . . For those on which we have been separated we must not repine.” Lee mentioned about where Mary needed to go. She had been forced to flee from Arlington early in the war and had become a refugee. Lee mentioned Fayetteville, Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah. Mary obviously wanted to come to Coosawhatchie, but Lee did not approve of the idea. They were in a somewhat exposed area and, if attacked, it would be too hard to move her. Lee then mourned the loss of Arlington, and wished he could purchase Stratford, the place he had been born. Lee also counselled Mary not to put too much stock in rumors of a war between the United States and Great Britain. “We must make up our minds to fight our battles & win our independence alone. No one will help us.” We require no extraneous aid, if true to our selves. But we must be patient. It is not a light achievement & cannot be accomplished at once.”[1]

   The second Christmas of the War Lee spent in camp near Fredericksburg.  The battle was fought just twelve days before. He spent part of the day at a dinner with Jackson, Stuart, and Pendleton at Moss Neck.[2] Lee considered the day a “holy day” and his heart was “filled with gratitude to Almighty God. . . What should have become of us without His crowning & protection?” Lee believed that “if our people would only recognize it & cease from their vain self boasting & adulation, how strong would be my belief in final success & happiness to our country.” Lee regretted that his position at the top of the Army of Northern Virginia prevented him from seeing Mary and those of his children still at home. He also regretted how cruel war was and prayed for peace. He wrote a little of the battle of Fredericksburg, and regretted that his recent victory was not more complete. But then he turned to his losses. “My heart bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men,” Lee wrote.[3]

   Lee spent Christmas Day 1863 at St. Thomas’s in Orange Court House. He then penned a letter home dated “Xmas night, 1863”.[4] It was a short letter. “I am filled with sadness dear Mary at the intelligence conveyed in your letter of last evening.” Lee’s daughter-in-law, Charlotte, was gravely ill, dying the next day. “The blow is so grievous to us’” he wrote. The only personal note not reflecting on Charlotte came at the end of the letter: “I received today two boxes you sent. Distributed the socks & am much obliged for the turkey.”[5]

   The last Christmas of the war for Lee was spent in camp Near Petersburg. Lee attended church that morning, and then went to the Bannister home for dinner.[6] Lee apparently did not write Mary until December 30. Lee thanks Mary for a previous note and for the fur robe from the Lyons and talks of food and clothes. Concerning Christmas Day, Lee wrote that he was “grateful to be able to attend church on that day & offer my feeble praise to our Merciful Father for the precious gift of his Holy Son,” Lee then describes his dinner and a writes couple more personal notes.[7]

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[1] Dowdey and Manarin, The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee, 95-96.

[2] Knight, From Arlington to Appomattox, 230.

[3] Dowdey and Manarin, The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee, 379-380.

[4] Knight, From Arlington to Appomattox, 346.

[5] Dowdey and Manarin, The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee, 644-45.

[6] Knight, From Arlington to Appomattox, 460.

[7] Dowdey and Manarin, The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee, 879-880.

Confederate Wayside Hospitals

   There are many different types of Confederate hospitals. A regiment in camp early on in the war would set up a hospital in a tent or local building. (Later in the war, at least in the ANV, these regimental/brigade hospitals were combined into a division hospital, at least in the ANV). Going into a battle, a brigade would establish a hospital for wounded well behind the lines. Like a camp hospital, a series of tents or structures, or both, would be utilized. Once the wounded were well enough to be moved, they were transferred to a large city-wide hospital complex. After these were organized, the wounded would pass through a receiving hospital before being transferred to a general hospital. Any large city (and probably quite a few towns) connected to a railroad could have a general hospital. If a sick or wounded soldier could go home, he was given a furlough and sent in that direction. Hospitals sprang up across the South to serve these soldiers. They would give the men food, possibly a change of bandages, and a place to wait while waiting for a connecting or refueling train.

   To date, there has not been much published on Confederate Wayside Hospitals. In Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein’s The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine, we find a brief entry. Schroeder-Lein tells us that “Wayside hospitals were often initially developed and at least partially staffed by local women’s relief organizations…” In May 1863, the Confederate Congress passed a law directing the surgeon general to establish “way side” hospitals. Schroeder-Lein concludes that there were seventeen such hospitals in Virginia, with others in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. (159) She probably dug that list out of an appendix in Cunningham’s Doctors in Gray. Cunningham does not say much about wayside hospitals. He does provide a list of hospitals, but surely that list is incomplete. There had to be more than two hospitals in Tennessee during the war, for example.

Marker for the Wayside Hospital in Columbia, SC. 

   My first real encounter with a Wayside Hospital came while I was working on Civil War Charlotte. There were three different railroads that converged in Charlotte. Two of those, the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad, which connected Charlotte to Columbia, and the North Carolina Railroad, which connected Charlotte to Salisbury, was a major route connecting the Deep South with the Upper South, especially after the loss of the line through East Tennessee in September 1863.

   It is not clear when the ladies in Charlotte formed their wayside hospital. There is mention of the Hospital Association of Mecklenburg County in July 1861, but this looks to largely be concerned with a group of ladies who went to the Peninsula of Virginia to minister to the sick of the First North Carolina Volunteers. The first real mention comes in July 1862, following the Seven Days campaign, when Dr. R. K. Gregory was appointed “as surgeon of the Hospital at Charlotte, established by the citizens for the benefit of sick and wounded soldiers passing through or detained at this point.” (Charlotte Democrat July 15, 1862). In 1896, Miss Lily W. Long wrote an article published in the Charlotte Observer about this first hospital: “The first Hospital in Charlotte was established by the ladies in a large building used as the washhouse for the military institute, now the graded school. This building has since been removed. Here all arrangements were made for the care of passing soldiers. Every day two members of the hospital association went there with supplies of all necessary articles and gave their time and strengths to nursing and caring for our men. After a while the Confederate government took charge of the Wayside hospital, placed it under the care of the Medical department and used buildings of the Carolina Fair Association on what is now Middle Street, between Morehead and the railroad crossing, south….”

Part of the NC Military Institute in Charlotte served as a
Wayside Hospital.

   Richard Gregory, a Greensboro, North Carolina native and former US army doctor, was assigned as post doctor for both the General Hospital and Wayside Hospital in Charlotte. Gregory asked the ladies of Charlotte and the surrounding area to supply old sheets, pillow slips, counterpanes, and lint, along with "any delicacies, such as would gratify and be suitable for the sick and wounded" to be left in his office. It appears that women were active in the Wayside Hospital. At times, the Charlotte Daily Bulletin ran work assignments for the next few days. On November 26, Mrs. Sinclair and Mrs. Carson; Thursday, Mrs. C. C. Lee and Mrs. Capt. Lowe, and on Friday, Mrs. Overman and Miss Patsy Watson. On Monday, November 3, the duty fell to Mrs. Lucas and Mrs. Wilkes; Tuesday Mrs. C. Elma and Mrs. E. Britton; Thursday, Mrs. Coldiron and Mrs. John Howie; and, on Friday, Mrs. N. Johnston and Mrs. R. Surwell.

   Jumping across the state, we have the Wayside Hospital in Weldon. Walter Clark, in volume four of North Carolina Troops, tells us the Wayside Hospitals were established in Weldon, Goldsboro, Tarboro, Raleigh, Salisbury, and Charlotte in the summer of 1862, and replaced by General Hospitals in September 1862. I don’t believe this is accurate, as Wayside and General hospitals are still listed as separate entities through 1864. (624) I don’t see, in Cunningham’s list, evidence of Weldon ever having a General Hospital. Regardless, there are some interesting tidbits about the hospital in Weldon found in Cornelia Spencer Edmondston’s diary   (I will confess here that I am extracting these from Toalson’s No Soap, No Pay, Diarrhea, Dysentery, & Desertion.). In February 1864, Edmondston writes of purchasing 38 dozen eggs from another local lady for the hospital. She is paying $1.00 a dozen. Twenty-five dollars has been donated, while her family covers the remining $13. (29) On March 20, Edmondston wrote: “Mr Wilkinson, the Agent of the Hospital, has been here for supplies. His trip was almost unsuccessful, for besides some Potatoes which Mr E had bought for him, some Lard which we could ill spare from the plantation but felt forced to sell him, & some Peas which Mr E gave him squeezed from the seed peas & the few household things I could contribute (very few indeed) & some eggs, 27 doz, which we bought from the negroes, he went back as he came. No one else had anything to spare, so swept is our country by Gov. Agents and Commissaries.” (71)

   There is a lot to unpack in those two diary entries. People contributed money to support the Wayside Hospital in Weldon; items were purchased locally for the hospital; the hospital had a person who traveled around the area looking for supplies; and, government officers impressed a lot of the food in areas, making the local support of these hospitals difficult.

   This post is just an introduction. Was there a Confederate Wayside Hospital in your community? Please feel free to share and maybe we can compile a more complete history of this piece of Confederate history.

Wayside Hospitals, per Cunningham

Alabama

Demopolis          Surg. H. Hinckley

Eufaula                 Surg. P. D. L. Baker

Selma                    Surg. W. Curry

Talladega             Surg. G. S. Bryant

Florida

Madison              Asst. Surg. J. Cohen

Georgia

Fort Gaines         Surg. E. W. McCreery

Mississippi

Guntown             Surg. J. M. Hoyle

Liberty                  Surg. R. M. Luckett

North Carolina

Charlotte (No. 6)               Surg. J. W. Ashby

Goldsboro                           Dr. L. A. Stith

Greensboro (No. 2)         Surg. E.B. Holland

Salisbury (No. 3)               Surg. J. W. Hall

Tarboro (No. 7)                 Dr. J. H. Baker

Weldon (No. 1)                  Surg. H. H. Hunter           

Wilmington (No. 5)          Surg. J. C. Walker

South Carolina

Florence              Surg. T. A. Dargan

Greenville           Surg. G. S. Trezevant

Kingsville             Surg. J. A. Pleasants

Virginia

Burkesville          Dr. T. R. Blandy

Lynchburg           Surg. A. C. Smith

Petersburg         Surg. M. P. Scott