Freeman Blount, born in what is now Wilson County about 1830, enlisted in the Union Army on 31 January 1864 in Washington, North Carolina. He mustered in not quite three weeks later in Norfolk, Virginia.

Blunt mustered out of Company D, 37th United States Colored Infantry, in Raleigh, N.C., on 11 February 1867.

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Probably, in the 1870 census of Federal Point, New Hanover County, N.C.: farm laborer Freeman Blount, 50; wife Maggie, 31; and children John, 15, and Charles, 13.

And in the 1880 census of Wilmington, New Hanover County: laborer Freeman Blunt, 55; wife Maggie, 36; and Henry Mumford, 35, butcher.

Freeman Blount has not been found in further North Carolina, and the 1890 veterans’ schedule for New Hanover County lists “Maggie J. Blount, widow of Freeman Blount.”

However:

Per this Civil War pension index file, Freeman Blunt applied for an invalid’s pension on 6 April 1895, four and a half years after Maggie applied for a widow’s pension. Blunt applied from Florida. Florida marriage records list the marriage of Freeman Blunt and Susan Howard on 23 December 1882 in Duval County, Florida.

Had Freeman Blunt disappeared from Wilmington, leaving his wife to assume his death? Only to marry again and settle near Jacksonville, Florida?

Only the pension files can straighten this out. Stay tuned.