Browse Items (39 total)

Lewis Bitting Banner was born in 1805 in Surry County, North Carolina. In 1856, Lewis B. Banner, his wife Nancy Meadow Flipping, and their seven children moved to Watauga County, North Carolina where their eighth child was born. He bought two…

General Ambrose E. Burnside was born on May 23, 1824. Burnside began his military career upon graduation from the United States Military in 1847. He would become a second lieutenant during the Mexican-American War and would be put on garrison duty in…

Perhaps the best represented, and most well documented secessionist under the occupation of eastern North Carolina, James Rumley, a Carteret country court clerk. Rumley was a diarist that kept intensive notes about life under Union control from the…

William Woods Holden, 24 Nov. 1818-2 Nov. 1892

William Woods Holden rose in power as a whig and a republican. He was a practicing lawyer, but also the ironic owner of a Democratic newspaper in North Carolina. He ran for the Governors seat a few…

Louis Leon was a Confederate soldier who served in the Charlotte Grays, Company C, First North Carolina Regiment. He served from April 1861 to April 1865. In that time, he recorded much of that time spent as a soldier in his diary. He served as part…

William Gaston was born to Dr. Alexander and Margaret Gaston (née Sharpe) in New Bern North Carolina in 1778. His father’s involvement in the Revolutionary War left Margaret a widow when Gaston was three. His mother, an incredibly devout Catholic…

Major Peter Mallett was placed in charge of organizing, training, and deploying the men conscripted in North Carolina soon after Jefferson Davis signed the conscription act in April 1862. He was born in 1825 to a prominent family in Fayetteville,…

Thomas C. Ruffin (1787-1870) was the elected judge of the Supreme Court of North Carolina from 1829 through 1852 and once again from 1858 through 1859. From 1833 until 1853, Thomas Ruffin served the Court as Chief Justice. Ruffin attended Princeton…

William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) was a major-general in the Union Army during the Civil War. Sherman gained success in the Western Theater and oversaw the Military Division of the Mississippi after Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to the head of…

Thomas Clingman is often overlooked in the history of the Civil War yet he played an extremely crucial role in the political realm in the years prior to 1861. Clingman was Southern through and through yet secession was not on his agenda. He…