We have met Cpl. Willie Gay, whose simple marble headstone in Odd Fellows Cemetery commemorates his service in the Spanish-American War. We’ve also read about Turner H. Utley, James Ellis and Robert Thomas. Yesterday, Terry Mosley, a metal detectorist in Durham, N.C., reached out with this stunning find:

It’s a badge or “dog tag” for William Killebrew, another African-American Wilson County man who enlisted in Company I, 3rd North Carolina Infantry.

Killibrew enlisted in Wilson on 23 June 1898 and mustered into service July 14. He mustered out with the company on 8 February 1899 in Macon, Georgia. And he is frustratingly elusive in the record.

Was he the 18 year-old Willie Killebrew listed as nephew in the household of farmer Willie Hart, 57; wife Chany, 43; and children Susan, 24, James, 23, Willie, 15, Ben, 13, Epsy, 8, and Tildy, 6, in the 1880 census of Toisnot township, Wilson County? If so, he likely was among the older soldiers in the regiment.

Or was he the William Killebrew, born about 1869, son of George and Rebecca Thomas Killebrew, who is found in Edgecombe County census records in 1870 and 1880? This William Killebrew married Lena Bryant in Edgecombe County in 1893, and the couple is found in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1900 census. Their four year-old son James Killebrew died in Philadelphia in 1902. (James’ death certificate reports his birth year and place as 1898 in Philadelphia. How does this mesh with his conjectured father’s enlistment in Wilson in 1898?) In the 1910 census, a North Carolina-born William Killebrew was listed as a widower living in Baltimore, Maryland, but a William Killebrue is listed as a laborer living at 1935 Federal Street in the 1918 Philadelphia city directory. (And Lena Killebrew did not die until 1936, at which time her death certificate described her as a widow.)

And what is Killebrew’s link to Durham? Had he been a patient at the Veterans Administration hospital there?

I’ll continue to search.

Thank you, Terry Mosley, for sharing this amazing find.