body servant

General Pender’s body servant. Or not.

Daily Southerner (Tarboro, N.C.), 28 October 1921.

William Dorsey Pender, Confederate major general, was born near Pender’s Crossroads in what is now northwest Wilson County. He died after a shrapnel wound to the thigh at Gettysburg. Almost 60 years later, his nephew James Pender was anxious to set the record straight about who had been his body servant.

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  • Turner Pender — Turner Pender died 1 April 1924 in State Lunatic Asylum, Austin, Travis County, Texas. Per his death certificate, he was about 83 years old; and was born in an unknown parents in an unknown place.
  • Allen Pender
  • David Harris
  • Rose

The obituary of Lemon Taborn, a good barber and most exemplary man.

The_Wilson_Mirror_11_15_1893_Lemon_Tabron_obit

Wilson Mirror, 15 November 1893.

Died.

Lemon Tabon, the barber so well known to all our people as a good barber and most exemplary man — quiet and orderly in his conduct, was attacked with paralysis on Tuesday Oct. 31, and died at his home in Wilson on the night of the 12th of November leaving as good name as that of any one white or black who has lived amongst us. He began his career at Wilson several years before the war, went as servant to Capt. J[acob] S. Barnes and remained in the 4th regiment till the close of the war — returning resumed his business as barber.

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Lemon Taborn (later spelled Tabron) was born free about 1834 in Nash County, North Carolina, to Celia Taborn. He moved to the town of Wilson before 1860.

Wilson_Advance_9_24_1880_L_Tabourne

The Wilson Advance, 24 September 1880.