North Carolina's Mars Hill College and the War

   Mars Hill. That’s an interesting name for a place. In western North Carolina, in the rugged mountains of Southern Appalachia, is the small community of Mars Hill. It is home to Mars Hills University. Like so many other places across the nation, it has a deep and interesting war-time history.

   The area was a crossroads of sorts, with roads connecting Asheville to the south and Marshall, the county seat of Madison County, to the west. Local people wanted their children to have a better education. There was the Burnsville Academy to the west, but it was a several days’ walk, and was run by the Methodists. People in the area decided to form the French Broad Baptist Institute in 1858. They renamed the school Mars Hill College in 1859, choosing to remember a site in ancient Greece where the Apostle Paul debated the leading thinkers of Athens. The school had over 100 students in the 1860-1861 term.[1]

    In September 1862, the Rev. John Ammons, writing from Mars Hill College, implored fellow Baptists across the South to take up collections for missionaries and colporters for the Confederate army. “It is to you then, Pastors, that we appeal,” Ammons wrote. “Ask your congregations to give and they will do it. Let every pastor lay the matter before his congregation and take collections for Army Colportage for N. Carolina.[2]

    The College remained open the first two years of the war, under the tutelage of President Pinkney Rollins. Rollins was a closet Unionist, who after the war, made his views known. “[T]he rebels said he was a traitor, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and most of them refused to patronize him.”[3] Whether it was Rollins’s political views or due to the continuous draw of Confederate forces upon the male population, Mars Hill College closed its doors at the end of term in the spring of 1863.[4] Shortly thereafter, at least 100 Confederate soldiers arrived and took over the buildings. Colonel James Keith and Lt. Col. Lawrence Allen, often associated with the 64^th North Carolina, used the campus as a base for a short amount of time. The two are often connected with the Shelton Laurel war. Most of the 64^th North Carolina was captured when Cumberland Gap was surrendered in September 1864 (read more about that here.)[5]

   The college campus also became home to the headquarters of the home guard of Brig. Gen. John W. McElroy. One amusing incident occurred when a Confederate officer at home on leave conspired with the home guard commander to test the effectiveness of the home guard. That night, the two officers positioned themselves on a nearby hill and “began to fire. The company became frightened; the commander shouted to his men ‘Fall out’, ‘Attention!’ Whereupon one, Ned Waldrop, stated that he would fight if the captain would let him get where he wanted to be. ‘Where do you want to be?’ responded the captain. “Behind the College building, sir,’ was the reply. It was soon learned that the attack was just a joke, or “training.”[6] 

Missing marker at Mars Hill University 

    On another occasion, one member of the home guard who was working at Mars Hill bragged to another worker about his unit killing three brothers and almost killing the mother. A few days later, the mother’s brother, James Norton, arrived at the site and killed the man. Norton was tried for murder, but acquitted.[7]

    Often, the home guard was away chasing dissidents from the Shelton Laurel area. In late April or early May 1864, one group of dissidents from Shelton Laurel, composed of fourteen men and three women, raided across West Fork, possibly into Buncombe County. They killed one man and beat another to “nearly to death.” The group was caught by the home guard at Mars Hill, with only one man and one woman escaping. “The women were armed with revolvers and took a hand in the murder and robbery,” the newspaper reported.[8]

   In late March or early April 1865, portions of George W. Kirk’s command, the 2^nd and 3^rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry (US) visited the college, ransacking the buildings and burning two of them.[9]

    The college rebuilt after the war and continues, as Mars Hill University. There was a North Carolina Civil War Trail marker on campus denoting the war in the area until recently. Maybe once construction is finished, it will return.

  

[1] Carr, “Mars Hill College,” 6.

[2] The Biblical Reporter, October 1, 1862.

[3] McLeod, From These Stones, 65.

[4] Carr, “Mars Hill College,” 5.

[5] Gaston, Partisan Campaigns of Col. Lawrence M. Allen, 16.

[6] Carr, “Mars Hill College,” 2.

[7] Inscoe and McKinney, The Heart of Confederate Appalachia, 270.

[8] Weekly Progress, May 17, 1864.

[9] Carr, “Mars Hill College,” 5-6.

Taking care of Burke County’s Destitute after the War.

   Burke County, North Carolina, has come up several times over the years here on Looking for the Confederate War. You can learn more about the county here and about the Avery brothers here. Morganton, the county seat of Burke County, served as one of the sub- districts for the Freemen’s Bureau after the war. Usually when people think of the Freedman’s Bureau, people think of schools and taking care of former slaves, which was one function of the organization. But after March 1867, it also administered foodstuffs to destitute people, both Black and White.

   Many times, we reach the end of the war in April and May 1865, and we don’t really think about the condition of people for the next few years. Those years are boiled down to Southerners, both White and Black, suffering “untold horrors.” Untold is a large part of it. Destitution in the South became so acute in the spring of 1867 that a joint resolution was passed by the US Congress authorizing the use of unexpended Freedman Bureau funds to purchase food supplies to prevent starvation and extreme want. There were an estimated 53,945 people thought to be destitute in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and North Carolina.[1]

   It was the various Freedmen’s Bureau agents in the sub-districts who were responsible for distributing these rations. It is not clear just how word was spread, either by circular or word of mouth maybe, but in late June and early July 1867, people came into Morganton to apply for assistance. Many of the applicants were widows of Unionist men. Margaret Lail, supporting four children, applied. She told the agent that “My husband was a Union man, [and] was shot by one of Patterson’s home guard.” She was awarded twenty-four pounds of pork and 168 pounds of corn. Nancy York, taking care of an aged father and three children, told the agent that her husband William York, possibly of Company B, 11^th North Carolina State Troops, was a Union man, conscripted into Confederate service. He deserted and was “shot in Burke Co., by David Peter, a home guard, for deserting the Confederate army.” They had no land, no cow, no “creature.” She made her mark and received 28 pounds of pork and 196 pounds of corn. Myrah Cook had six children to take care of. Her husband, Edward Cook, was a Unionist, and was shot twice by the home guard. The second time, Cook “was shoot in the woods, where [Myrah] took care of him 8 days when he died.”[2]

   A couple of the destitute who came in had husbands that they claimed had served in the Union army and died during the war. Emeline Couch claimed that her husband, name unknown, was in the Union army when he was killed, “leaving me destitute” with one child. Likewise, Lucinda Summers, with one child, also lost a husband in Federal service.[3]

   The greatest number of applicants were rather tight-lipped about why they were destitute. Elizabeth Simpson, Mary Smith, and Louisa Petit were living with three dependent children. They told the agent that they were “landless and destitute, caused by the war.” They were given 30 pounds of pork and 252 pounds of corn. Likewise, Mary Clark, Rebecca Short, and Mary Brackett, with ten children, were all “widows and destitute, caused by the war.” Fanny Fraklin told the agent that her husband had been injured during the war in the head, and that they were destitute.[4]

   However, many of the destitute who came to Morganton to seek relief were connected to the Confederate army. Huldah Lewis told the agent that her husband was “crippled in the rebel service and [they were] destitute.” Elizabeth Sherill and Rebecca Matthews, trying to support two children, had lost their husbands “in the Rebel army.” Nancy Smith and Macey Bingham had husbands who had died in northern prison camps. Polly Chrisenburg was trying to take care of her aged father and five children. Her “husband had died in the war.” Williams Watts, with his wife, complained that he had “lost all my sons in the Confederate army.” Watts was over 60 years old “and destitute.”[5]

   Henry Goins was one of the few Confederate soldiers to come in. He enlisted at the age of 18 in Burke County on May 10,1861, and was mustered in as a private in what became Company E, 16^th North Carolina Troops. Goins was wounded in the left arm and right elbow and captured at Gettysburg in July 1863. He was paroled later in 1863 and rejoined his regiment in time to be paroled at Appomattox. Goins told the agent that he was “a volunteer in the Rebel army [and] lost an arm and the other [stiffened] at the battle of Gettysburg. Can’t feed myself and am entirely destitute.” Goins was given 16 pounds of pork and 112 pounds of corn.[6]

   If there were any applicants turned away, those files have not been made available to the public online, or they were not kept. Reconstruction as a whole is little understood in many communities. History does not end in the spring of 1865. In local history, the times are viewed as “untold horrors.” Just how much of this history is lost, versus what has yet to be explored, is another one of those horrors. Does your county or community have a history of reconstruction? There are several volumes of Reconstruction as a whole on my shelves. Only one, James W. Hagy’s After the War Over: Reconstruction in Washington County, Virginia, 1865-1870, covers a county. Are there others? These were real people, and their ordeals were real. Remembering them is important.

  Many thanks to Laura Dunning Elliott for helping me find the Burke County records on FamilySearch. Now to just discover some additional western North Carolina counties.

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[1] Beth, “The Freedmen’s Bureau in Alabama,” The Journal of Southern History 91948) 1:79.

[2] North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

[3] North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

[4] North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

[5] North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

[6] Jordan and Manarin, North Carolina Troops, 6:51; North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

Complexities of the Home Guard

   One of the most popular posts I have written over the years is “Was the Home Guard Really That Bad?” It was published in September 2014 and has had several thousand hits. You can read it here. Since the home guard is little understood, I would like to expand on its involvement during the war, based upon some current research I am doing into the War in the Toe River Valley area of North Carolina (present-day Yancey, Mitchell, and Avery Counties).

Brig. Gen. John W. McElroy,
Home Guard commander.

   1870 was an exciting year in North Carolina history, for lack of a better word. U.S. Grant was in the midst of his first term. W. W. Holden was serving as governor of North Carolina. The state was in the midst of the Kirk-Holden War. Holden would be impeached by the end of the year, and the Democrats would gain control of the General Assembly. In the middle of the year, a local Mitchell County resident, Gutridge Garland, wrote a letter that appeared in The Daily Standard, outlining the murders committed by the Home Guard during the war. After praising the qualities of George W. Kirk and stating that he himself had been driven from his home during the war, Garland laid out the atrocities committed by the home guard:

   “I will commence with old Sam Baker, Esq., of this county, over fifty years old. When the war began he volunteered in the service of the Home Rogues [sic] of Mitchell County as Lieutenant, and wished to be promoted. He gathered a crowd and went to Joseph Byrd’s, a peaceable citizen of this county, and shot him down and went off and left him. The next morning he went back and enquired how he was, and his wife told him he was dying. He said it was his business to kill him. So he died. The next brave act he did was to order a young man by the name of Right Hutchins to shoot a prisoner by the name of William Pritchard. The order was promptly obeyed. He was shot dead in the road near Baker’s house. Some boys hauling wood rolled him off as they would have done a beast, and he lay there some days. The people were afraid to go there and bury him. The next brave act of the Baker command was his son Washington meeting a young man by the name of William Matthes in the road near Baver’s [Baker’s?], and shooting him dead. The next act done by the party, which would promote an officer in the rebel service, was to go to the farm of David Huse, a peaceable man, while he was hoeing a little corn in the field to try to make a little bread for his children, as starvation stared us all in the face in this country. He saw the brave fellow coming, and tried to make his escape, but was shot dead in the presence of his wife and nine little children. The same brave command went to William Hughes and shot him dead. They also came across Daniel Wright in the woods and killed him and cut off his head. One of the honest saints said they had left him for the buzzards. They also went to the house of Thomas Miller, as inoffensive a man as ever lived, and two brothers quarreled as to which should have the honor of killing him. A crowd of the same gang went to Jackson Tipton, a man over fifty years old, and marched him before them and shot him dead in the road. Another crowd of the same game [sic] took a boy thirteen years old, by the name of James Butler, and persuaded him to break and run, and as he did so shot and killed him.”[1]

   That is all pretty atrocious, I think we would all agree, and enough to turn local people, even to this day, against the home guard (although I can’t actually prove any of these events really took place). But what if the “Home Rogues” were actually serving as a haven for Unionists? Does that change the narrative?

   As mentioned in the earlier post, the Guard for Home Defense was created in July 1863. Instead of going into the long history of it, we will just look at the Toe River Valley. Yancey County’s home guard, the 72^nd Battalion, North Carolina Home Guard, was assigned to the 1^st Brigade North Carolina Home Guard on September 26, 1863. Samuel D. Byrd, a former lieutenant in the 16^th North Carolina State Troops, was assigned command at the rank of lieutenant colonel.[2] From the surviving records, the home guard company/battalion in Mitchell County was never organized. Records for the 72^nd Battalion are scarce and were probably burnt by Union raiders in the last days of the war.

   William Renfro, a middle-class 38-year-old farmer, was living in the Red Hill area of Mitchell County when the war began. How he avoided Conscription is unknown. He did, however, serve in the home guard. At some point, Union soldiers visited Renfro’s farm, taking livestock. After the war, Renfro attempted to claim compensation for what was taken, and had another local man testify via sworn affidavit as to his loyalties. S. B. Slagle testified that Renfro “was in the Home Guards a portion of the time, but a great many Union men were in this organization and it was not then considered a mark of disloyalty to the Union cause as we were forced to join this organization or be sent off to the Confederate army or leave our homes and try to get to the Union army…”  There is a lot to unpack in Slagle’s testimony. “a great many Union men were in this organization.” While Garland was praising Kirk and former Union soldiers who were fighting once again for Kirk, and decrying the “Home Rogues,” the “Home Rogues” were actually composed of these same “Union” men. However, instead of crossing over the mountain like so many others did and joining the Union army, Renfro and some of the others served in the Home Guard, whose purpose was to round up deserters and Unionists. And according to Renfro, they were accepting of their assignment, as long as they were not shipped off to join the Confederate army, or forced to take that dangerous trip over the mountains to join the actual Federal army. William Renfro never made that trip. And his claim for compensation was rejected.[3]

   Jonathan Tipton was a landless and almost penniless 35-year-old farmer living in the Ramsey Town area of Yancey County. Like Renfro, it is unclear how he avoided Conscription. Unlike Renfro, Tipton did cross over the mountain and, in June 1864, joined the Union army. Prior to that time, Tipton apparently joined Renfro in the 72^nd Battalion North Carolina Home Guard.  Tipton’s widow received a pension after the war, for Tipton died in a hospital in Knoxville in January 1865. There were several who testified against him as being a “Bush Whacker” and a “Notorious rebel.” One area resident, in his affidavit, testified that Tipton, “in the beginning of the late war he was a bitter rebel. That he belonged to the rebel home guards of Yancey County. That affidavit thinks he belonged to Capt. Peak’s Company of Yancey County Home Guards. That affidavit was arrested by the company that said Tipton was with and saw him at the time. That just before affidavit was captured he saw said Tipton shooting at Union men who had been hiding in the mountains and were at the house of Timothy Miller getting provisions at the time the Home Guard came upon them. That it has always been understood that he voted for the ordinance of secession and his only reputation up to the time of his going into the 3rd NC was that of a rebel.” Based upon this testimony, Jonathan Tipton’s widow lost her pension of $8 a month. Was Tipton truly a Unionist at heart? According to George Ragdale, who provided the above testimony, Tipton was not. Maybe Tipton had a change of heart, or, maybe he had fooled his neighbors all along regarding his Unionists sympathies.[4]  

   We can not say that all home guard members in the Toe River Valley were Unionists at heart. There is not even a roster of home guard members from Yancey and Mitchell Counties to analyze, only a scattering of names from pension applications, affidavits, and family histories. What we cannot do is believe that the home guard members were all pro-Confederate zealots, hell-bent on advancing Confederate ideology. Some might have been. However, history is not that simple (it never is). William Renfro, according to the testimony of his neighbor, was trying to avoid service in both armies. His neighbor believed that many in the home guard were “Union men” like Renfro. Jonathan Tipton might have been one of those zealots, but he decided to cross over the lines and actually join the Union army. It cost him his life, and his Home Guard involvement cost his widow her pension. There are probably more cases like this out there to examine. One might be the nearby Cranberry iron mines. There were several self-proclaimed Unionists (or later family-proclaimed Unionists) who spent the war mining iron ore for the Confederacy to use to produce weapons for killing Union soldiers. They seemed to be agreeable with that, as long as they did not have to leave home and serve in either army. Probably the only untapped resource in learning more about the men who were home guard members and Unionists are Federal pension applications. Maybe in time, more of this will come to light.  

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[1] The Daily Standard, July 20, 1870.

[2] Brown and Coffey, NC Troops, Vol. 21, 657/

[3] William Renfro, Southern Claims Commission, Disallowed and Barred Claims, M1407, RG233, National Archives.

[4] Jonathan Tipton, Case Files of Approved Pension Applications of Widows and Other Dependents of Civil War Veterans, ca.1861-1910, RollWC76865-WC76882, National Archives.

Leventhorpe biography

My march through the literature concerning North Carolina and the War continues. Over the past weekend, I finished D. H. Hill, Jr.’s Confederate Military History of North Carolina. Since it is an older book, and since many of you have probably already read it, I don’t have much in the way of comments. The book is largely a history of North Carolina’s regiment in the Army of Northern Virginia, with token mentions of the Tar Heel regiments in the Army of Tennessee and the War within the Old North State itself.

I next picked up J. Timothy Cole and Bradley R. Foley’s biography of Collette Leventhorpe. I have written a fair amount about Leventhorpe as well, with biographical articles that have appeared in North and South and Gettysburg Magazine.

Leventhorpe was a British-born, British army-trained Confederate officer. He migrated to the state in the 1840s, and settled in western North Carolina. Leventhorpe was first colonel of the 34th North Carolina Troops, and then later colonel of the 11th North Carolina Troops – the Bethel Regiment. Leventhorpe was wounded at the battle of Gettysburg and then captured on his return after the battle. He resigned from the 11th North Carolina and become a brigade-general of Home Guard forces in the eastern portions of North Carolina. In the last weeks of the war, Leventhorpe was appointed a Confederate brigadier general and assigned command of Clingman’s brigade. Leventhorpe declined the promotion. After the war, he moved frequently between Rutherford, Caldwell, and Watauga Counties, New York, and Great Britain. Leventhorpe passed in 1889 and is buried in Caldwell County.

Cole and Bradley have done a really good job of combing through numerous sources, both on this side of the Atlantic, and on the British side. Their work should be commended. They have produced a well-documented biographical piece that will be a benefit for future generations. I do not much care for the way they introduce new characters by telling you what happened to them later on. Take for instance when Henry King Burgwyn is introduced in the story: “Col.Burgwyn, the commander of the 26th NC, would later fall at the head of his regiment on the first day of Gettysburg.” (92) Well, Burgwyn first appears in the story in December 1862. Why not let the story evolve instead of having to jump back and forth? Maybe this is just a pet peeve.

A little more serious is the treatment of the Home Guard. Yes, Leventhopre was appointed by Governor Vance a brigadier general in August 1863 and assigned to command home guard forces in the central and then eastern portions of North Carolina. However, in no place in the text is it mentioned that Leventhorpe was actually the second home guard brigadier general. The first was John W. McElroy, who was appointed in July 1863, and assigned command of the 1st Brigade of North Carolina Home Guard. The 1st Brigade was made of up battalions from the western portions of the state. Not acknowledging that there was another home guard brigade, and another Home Guard brigadier general, leads to a few moments of confusion later on in the text. For example, in February 1865, Leventhorpe and the home guard were ordered to report to Raleigh and to Governor Vance. Was this both brigades of Home Guard, or just Leventhorpe’s brigade? (page 158)

Overall, this is a great book and I encourage you to get a copy and check it out.

So, what’s next? Hmm, maybe McKinney’s biography on Vance?