Elijah Newsome did not long enjoy freedom. He was born about 1842 in Wilson County and enlisted at Washington, North Carolina, on 15 November 1863. He died “August 2 1865, on the passage from Brazos Santiago, Tx., to New Orleans on the steamer ‘Matagorda.'”

Following the end of the Civil War, the federal government ordered a massive deployment of troops to the Texas coast to secure the international border along the Rio Grande, re-establish federal authority, and enforce the emancipation of enslaved people. In June 1865, the steamship Matagorda was one of the primary naval transport vessels carrying Union troops from Virginia to Brazos Santiago.