Philip Fort did not live in Wilson County, but his daughter Hannah Forte Artis and her husband Walter S. Artis owned property in and around Stantonsburg, and that’s enough of a hook for me.
Stantonsburg Fort: Phillip Fort and the 135th Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops, a children’s book, is a fictionalized account of the life of Phillip Fort, an enslaved man who joined the Union Army during the Civil War. Fort was born in far northeast Wayne County, near Eureka. (An area that now has a Stantonsburg zip code.) It is not the book I would write (but, then, I haven’t written a book, have I?), but it is an appealing introduction for young people to the role of the U.S. Colored Troops and an intriguing example of what can be done to bring historical material to a broader audience.
Last week, Wilson County Genealogical Society presented a program on the 135th Regiment of the United States Colored Troops featuring local descendants of Jack Sherrod, whose farm lay just across the Wayne County line and whose family had close Wilson County ties.
Wilson Times, 5 March 2024.
Thank you, Leonard P. Sherrod Jr., for bringing this event to my attention.
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.
Did you know Wilson was the site of a Confederate hospital?
Its remnants stand at the corner of Lee and Goldsboro Streets.
In 1954, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources’ North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program installed a marker near the original site of the hospital, and the agency’s website features the startling essay below.
“The Confederacy organized its Medical Department late in 1861 and within months, in April of 1862, the North Carolina General Military Hospital No. 2 was established in Wilson in what had once been the Wilson Female Seminary. Dr. Solomon Sampson Satchwell, who had graduated from Wake Forest College and studied medicine at New York University before serving as a military surgeon with the Twenty-fifth North Carolina Infantry, was appointed Surgeon-in-Charge. In the 1864 Confederate States Medical and Surgical Journal the Wilson hospital was listed as one of twenty-one principal hospitals in North Carolina. It served those wounded in fighting along the coast.
“The hospital made Wilson known outside of the state of North Carolina. Employing thirty-five to forty people, it also boosted the local economy. Most nurses and orderlies were unskilled soldiers; however, at least seven local women were known to have worked at the hospital as matrons. Their duties included food preparation and cleaning. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad that ran through Wilson provided the military hospital with supplies, including ice and turpentine, used to treat fevers.
“Fighting never broke out in Wilson, but, on July 20, 1863, ‘an immense armament of negroes and Yankees’ advanced on Wilson. Reportedly, a group of invalids from the hospital and local militia defended Wilson by destroying the bridge over the Toisnot Swamp to halt the invaders. All of those who died at the hospital were buried in a mass grave. The hospital closed at the end of the war. When Wilson created a town cemetery, they were re-interred there with a Confederate monument erected over the site. Wilson Female Seminary reopened in the former hospital and received a charter as Wilson Collegiate Institute in 1872.”
The interpretive signboard in front of the building, erected by the North Carolina Civil War Trails program (and badly in need of a good wash), reads:
“This is the only known surviving portion of one of Wilson’s earliest school buildings, the Wilson Female Academy, which also served as a Confederate hospital during the war. Wilson’s location on the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad, the principal north-south line that was linked to Virginia in Weldon by the Petersburg Railroad, made the town a good site for a hospital after the war began. On April 1, 1862, Confederate authorities seized the building for use as a general military hospital.
“Dr. Solomon S. Satchwell, the surgeon in charge, turned the forty classrooms and other rooms into wards and treated hundreds of patients there. The frame, two-story building had a two-hundred-foot-long facade and a large one-story rear addition. It also had dozens of large windows, essential for summer ventilation.
“Soldiers who died there of wounds or disease were buried near the academy grounds. In 1894, they were reinterred under a burial mound in Maplewood Cemetery two blocks north of here. The Confederate monument on top of the mound was dedicated on May 10, 1902.
“Edmund G. Lind, a British architect who emigrated to New York in 1855 and subsequently practiced in Maryland, North Carolina, and Georgia, designed the Italianate-style school building. It was completed in 1859 about two blocks south of here. After the war, the former female academy and hospital served as Wilson Collegiate Institute from 1872 until it closed in 1898, when the building was separated into housing units. This section, part of the school’s rear addition, was moved here in 2005 and rehabilitated.”
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Typically, the historical marker essay makes no mention of the men and women performing the hospital’s essential grunt work. Enslaved men and women toiled as nurses, cooks, and laundresses, and the reports Dr. Satchwell was required to file regularly reveal their names.
Daniel, Samuel, Benjamin, Edy, Annie, Sarah, William, Francis, Flora, Eli, Jerry, Matilda, Harmon, Hoyt, Martha, Dorcas, Laura, Mary, Oliver, Alvana, Alfred, George, America, Isabella, Harriet, Rachel, Henry, Joseph, General, Ansley, Tilda, Minerva, Delphia, Maria, Mahala, Nicey, Chaney, Esther, Eliza, Tom, and Charles cooked, cleaned, and cared for wounded Confederate soldiers over the next two years. Pomeroy P. Clark, a Connecticut-born buggy manufacturer who arrived in Wilson in 1851, had a near-monopoly over the provision of enslaved people to the hospital, supplying almost all of the men and women named above.
Muster Roll dated 1 April 1862 showing enslaved people, at bottom left, rented to the Confederate Hospital.
This is curious. P.P. Clark is listed in 1850 slave schedule of Nash County, North Carolina, as the owner of four enslaved people. In the 1860 census of Wilson, Wilson County, he is described as a lumber manufacturer with $2000 in personal property, but is not listed in the slave schedule. We know that in 1860 Clark bought four enslaved people from John P. Clark as trustee of Nancy B. Clark. The adult in this group of four, a woman named Peggy, is not named as a hospital laborer. Peggy had once belonged to Henry Flowers, whose daughter was Nancy B. Clark. Flowers’ estate also included enslaved women named America and Isabelle, and an enslaved man named Henry (known as Harry), who married a woman named Flora around 1859. These four match names of people put to work at the Confederate Hospital, but who were the others? If Clark (who himself worked at the hospital as steward were acting as a broker for other enslavers, would Dr. Satchwell have recorded the workers as “Negro slave hired of P.P. Clark”?
In addition to enslaved people, a few free people of color worked at Confederate Hospital No. 2. On 26 May 1864, Lemon Taborn and William Jones were hired to perform unspecified work at $11.00/month. Alexander Jones was hired five days later at the same rate and, on June 1, Mord. Hagans came aboard for $10/month. The Jones cousins appear in the 1860 census of Old Fields township, Wilson County, and Mordecai Hagans in the 1860 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County.
Muster Rolls, Hospital Department, Wilson, N.C., 1862-1864, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, National Archives and Records Administration; photos by Lisa Y. Henderson.
Farmer Charles A. Scott enlisted in the Confederate Army on 14 May 1862. He was hospitalized several times during his service and died 11 September 1863 in a Goldsboro, North Carolina, hospital.
Scott enslaved one person at the time of his death, a man named Lewis. David Ammons Scott, administrator of Charles Scott’s estate, hired Lewis out to Matthew V. Peele of Cross Roads township, Wilson County, for a period of just over a year.
Acount of the hire of Lewis be longing to estate of Charles A Scott Dec.d hired out from the 30th of November 1863 to the 2nd of January 1865 Said Lewis to be furnished with Provisions and the following clothing to wit, three Suits of clothes one of which is to be woolen one hat one Blanket one pair socks two pair of shoes by his hirer and to be returned to me at the court house in the Town of Wilson on the 2nd day of January 1865 the hirer will be Required to give Bond with approved security before the delivery of negro David A. Scott Admr.
“This description, or extract from the official records, is to be considered strictly confidential, and is furnished to the disbursing officer to enable him to detect frauds. He should question each claimant fully as to military history, and, in cases of deceased soldiers, the heirs should be questioned as to the military history of husband, father, brother, or son, as the case may be.
“Before making disbursements the disbursing officer should be fully satisfied that the parties claiming the money are the persons they represent themselves to be. In case of doubt as to the identity of the soldier, payment will be refused, and the disbursing officer will reduce to writing the questions and answers, and at once transmit the same to the Adjutant General of the Army, with a full report.”
Isaac Acot [Aycock]
Isaac Aycock named Wilson County natives Jerry Borden and Henry Borden as men who had enlisted at the same time and served in Company C of the 14th Regiment, United States Colored Heavy Artillery.
Henry Borden [Barden]
Wilson County native Henry Borden named Wilson County natives Edward Borden and Dennis Borden. The kinship relationships between Jerry, Edward, Henry and Dennis Borden is not known, but all likely had been enslaved by Arthur Bardin or his kin.
Confidential Lists for the Identification of Claimants, U.S. Freedmen’s Bureau Records of Field Offices 1863-1878, http://www.ancestry.com.
In addition to free people of color Wyatt and Caroline Lynch, letters transcribed in Hugh Buckner Johnston, Jr., ed., “The Confederate Letters of Ruffin Barnes of Wilson County,” North Carolina Historical Review, vol. XXI, no. 1 (January 1954), mention several enslaved people.
In a letter to wife Mary Bryant Barnes dated 21 October 1863, a reference to Cato:
In a letter to his wife dated 23 May 1864, a reference to Penny (and free man of color Wyatt Lynch):
In a letter to his wife dated 23 July 1864, a reference to Elias. Per Johnston’s annotation, “Elias is thought to have been a slave from the Black Creek community. Many trusted family retainers were sent to the scene of war to carry messages, food, or clothing to their young masters.”
Israel Hardy enrolled in Company C, 14th United Stated Colored Heavy Artillery, on 18 May 1864 in New Bern, North Carolina. He reported that he was born in Wilson County, N.C., about 1842 and worked as a laborer. After less than five months of service, Hardy contracted yellow fever, but recovered and returned to duty in November 1864. He was discharged in December 1865.
Israel Hardy returned to New Bern after the war. Within a few years, he moved east into Pamlico County, where he remained the rest of his life.
United States Freedmen’s Bureau records show that Israel Hardy received a $200 bounty for his military service in February 1868.
In the 1870 census of Township #4, Craven County, North Carolina: farm laborer Israel Hardy, 27; wife Mahala, 23; children William, 2, and Henry, 5; and Edward Hardy, 18, farm laborer. Israel Hardy reported that he owned $300 worth of real property and $160 in personal property.
In the 1880 census of Township #2, Pamlico County, North Carolina: farmer Iserel Hardy, 40; wife Mabelle, 29; children Henry, 16, Mabelle, 8, Josie, 10, Susan, 6, Caroline, 3, and Jessy, 2; and boarders Annie, 24, and Henrietta, 10.
On 24 April 1889, Henry Hardy, 24, married Sidney Oden, 21, in Pamlico County.
On 11 August 1892, Samuel Roberts, 21, of #3 Township, Pamlico County, son of John and Tempy Roberts, married Caroline Hardy, 18, of Vandemere, daughter of Israel and Mahala Hardy, at Mahala Hardy’s residence in Pamlico County.
On 29 August 1892, Henry Jones, 24, of Vandemere, son of Simbo Jones and Margaret Washington, married Susan Hardy, 18, of Vandemere, daughter of Isreal and Mahala Hardy.
On 17 October 1894, Edward McCotter, 33, of Pamlico County, son of Barney and Joana McCotter, married Sarah F. Hardy, 22, of Vandemere, daughter of Isral and Mahala Hardy, in Pamlico County.
On 19 March 1898, Israel Hardy, 50, of Pamlico County, son of Peter and Venis Beckton, married Zenia Gibson [or Gibbs], 29, of Pamlico County, daughter of Adam and Rachel Gibson [or Gibbs].
Jessie Hardy died 27 December 1946 in New Bern, Craven County. Per his death certificate, he was born 10 February 1885 in Vandemere, Pamlico County, to Israel Hardy and Mahaliah Hardy, both of Hyde County, N.C.; was married; resided in Vandemere; and worked as a “fishman.” He was buried in Marabelle [Maribel] Cemetery, Pamlico County.
Carrie Roberts died 5 October 1948 in Collier, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Per her death certificate, she was born 13 September 1873 in Bay River, N.C., to Israel Hardy and Mahalia (last name unknown); was the widow of Samuel Roberts; and resided at 4533 Webster Avenue, Pittsburgh.
File #1,071,351, Application of Israel Hardy for Invalid’s Pension, National Archives and Records Administration.
“Birthplace, Wilson, N.C.; age, 66 years; height 5 ft. 11 in; weight 175 pounds; complexion, dark; color of eyes, Black; color of hair, Black; occupation, farmer.”
Relationships forged during slavery complicated the pension claims of Lewis Bass and his widow Frances Hassell Wiggins Bass.
Lewis Bass was born enslaved in Wilson County around 1835. Prior to the Civil War, he married a woman (who is not named in his pension file) and had a daughter named Benzona (whom I have not been able to identify in records). Bass never returned to Wilson County after the war, settling instead in Pamlico County, North Carolina. As Frances Bass told it in her pension application: “Lewis Bass told me that he had a woman in slave days. He did not tell me her name but told me he had a child by her; said his child’s name was Benzona. Lewis Bass said he never saw his slave wife after he left for the army as he never went back to that locality; said as soon as he was discharged he came right down here ….”
About 1866, Lewis Bass married Martin County, N.C., native Frances Hassel Wiggins, who had been married to Isaac Wiggins during slavery. Like Bass, Wiggins enlisted in the United States Colored Troops — Company F, 1st U.S.C.T., in his case — and never returned home. (“We were married so long before the war that we had a son who was large enough to go in the army. His name was Daniel Wiggins and he was a flag bearer in his father’s company so I heard. I have never laid eyes on either my husband or son since they left me to join the army.”) Frances assumed he was dead and went on with her life. She initially applied for Wiggins’ widow’s pension and swore — per lawyers’ advice, she said — that she had never remarried. applied for Bass’ widow’s pension, however, the question had to be settled — was she Bass’ widow or Wiggins’?
File #728893, Application of Lewis Bass for Pension, File #766477, Application of Frances Wiggins for Widow’s Pension, National Archives and Records Administration.
