Category Archives: Civil War

Civil War, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents, Rights

The first registration.

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Rowan County, North Carolina, 1866. The war is over. The 14th and 15th Amendments have not yet passed, but the county’s hopeful freedmen have come out en masse to register to vote, perhaps under the auspices of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Among them, my great-great-grandfather Henry W. McNeely, his half-brother Julius McNeely, and his future in-laws Ransom, George and Green Miller. Henry’s father John W. McNeely, Confederate allegiance renounced and U.S. citizenship restored, was also there — his world upside down.

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Civil War, Enslaved People, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Other Documents

Total value: $7,600.

1863

Rowan County, North Carolina, 1863. The Civil War is dragging on, and the Rebs need money. In 1861, the Congress of the Confederate States of America had passed a statute authorizing a tax (at 50 cents per $100 valuation) to help finance the war effort. Taxable property included real estate, slaves, merchandise, stocks, securities, and money, and later agricultural products and anything else they could think of. In the 1863 assessment, for the first time, the North Carolina General Assembly required taxpayers to list their slaves by name. Assessments for only eight counties survive. Rowan is one of them.

Look in the bottom left corner. J.W. McNeely identified his seven slaves for the tax assessor, who duly recorded: Lucinda, age 47, value $750. Julius, 25, $1500. Henry, 22, $1500. Archy, 14, $1200. Mary, 13, $1000. Stanhope, 11, $900. And Sandy, 12, $950. Total valuation of Lucinda, her sons, and grandchildren: $7600. Remember Alice, the 3 year-old that Sam and J.W. McNeely bought with Lucinda? She was Archy’s mother, and Mary, Stanhope and Sandy were probably her children, too. Alice herself is gone — dead or sold — and John is not listed, though that seems to be oversight. Julius was born a few years after the McNeelys purchased his mother. His father is unknown, but was probably an enslaved man on a neighboring farm. Henry, though, was John Wilson McNeely’s boy. His only child, in fact. And worth exactly $1500.

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Civil War, Free People of Color, North Carolina, Other Documents, Paternal Kin

Hillary Herring, Union man.

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#563,970. Claim of Kizza Harring, widow of Hillary Harring, Co. A, 37 U.S.C.T., for Widow’s Pension.

Hillary Herring enlisted in the Union Army in 1864.  At his enlistment, he reported that he was 23 years old, 6 feet 1/2 inches tall, light-complexioned, with black eyes and dark hair, was born in Onslow County NC, and worked as a farmer. (Census records reveal that he grew up in Wayne County.) Documents in Herring’s widow’s pension application file show that he was discharged from the army on 11 February 1867, making it likely that he fought in the 37th in battles across southern Virginia and eastern NC. (See a history of the 37th U.S.C.T. here.)  He married Kizzy Dudley on 18 December 1869 in Burgaw, Pender County NC. Rev. Elisha Boon performed the ceremony. It was Hillary’s first marriage, but Kizzy was the widow of a John Herring that she’d married in 1863. (Hillary’s kin?) Hillery Herring died 30 June 1876 in Bentonsville, Johnston County, of “disease of lungs.” Dr. Martin Harper attended him during his final illness.  Lewis Hood furnished his coffin and served as undertaker, and Rev. John James Harper, a white man, preached the funeral sermon.

On 21 November 1872, Hillery and Keziah Herring and my great-great-great-grandparents Lewis and Margaret Henderson sold two tracts in Wayne County totalling about 80 acres to John P. Cobb and Jesse Hollowell. The four had purchased the tracts from William R. Davis, but the deed was not recorded. Both Lewis and Hillery were born in Onslow County.  Were they related?  If not, why did they buy land together?

 

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