A punchline worthy of Mark Twain

Famous Civil War photographer Mathew Brady is credited with this picture of Eng and Chang Bunker; Eng on the left with his wife Sarah Yates and son Albert; Chang on the right with his wife Adelaide Yates and son Patrick Henry. The photo is dated ca. 1865, which would be the same year as Stoneman's Raid, but I have not been able to pinpoint the exact date. Since Brady was a New Yorker and the Bunkers lived in North Carolina, the photo was probably post-war.

MOUNT AIRY, N.C.

 Four years after the Civil War, Mark Twain wrote an essay called Personal Habits of the Siamese Twins. He imagined Eng and Chang Bunker as the definitive example of the war that pitted brother against brother:

     During the War they were strong partisans, and both fought gallantly all through the great struggle—Eng on the Union side and Chang on the Confederate. They took each other prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly balanced in favor of each that a general army court had to be assembled to determine which one was properly the captor and which the captive. The jury was unable to agree for a long time; but the vexed question was finally decided by agreeing to consider them both prisoners, and then exchanging them.
     At one time Chang was convicted of disobedience of orders, and sentenced to ten days in the guard house; but Eng, in spite of all arguments, felt obliged to share his imprisonment, notwithstanding he himself was entirely innocent; and so, to save the blameless brother from suffering, they had to discharge both from custody—the just reward of faithfulness.

 Wonder if Twain got the idea from Stoneman's Raid? 
 It is almost certain that some of Stoneman's troops visited the Bunkers' farm 150 years ago, when they camped April 2, 1865, in Mount Airy, N.C., the night before they marched across the Blue Ridge into Virginia. Whether Gen. Stoneman personally met the Siamese Twins is debatable.
 The Bunkers were staunch Confederates and successful farmers who lived in Mount Airy a century before Andy Griffith made it famous as Mayberry. Together they owned 700 acres and about 30 slaves. They married sisters and fathered 21 children. Each had a son who was wounded in service with the Confederate cavalry. The Bunkers' large homes and farms were the kind of targets that attracted raiders as they foraged for food and horses. 
 But were the twins home when the Yankees raiders came through? Or did they hide out, like many Confederate men did? I haven't found documentation that Stoneman's troops actually met the twins themselves. The 1903 regimental history of the Thirteenth Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry describes the Bunkers in general but says nothing about meeting them. The 1906 book on the Fifteenth Pennsylvania describes Mount Airy and neighboring Dobson as "very ordinary villages" without any mention of the extraordinary twins.
 As the Tennessee history shows, the troops would have been aware of the twins even if they never met them. They raided the Mount Airy post office searching for enemy intelligence, and they read everybody's letters as they rode toward Virginia on April 3. Bored soldiers would have speculated wildly about the twins' private lives, just like Twain did. Inevitably, a story this good would have reached Stoneman.
 On the other hand, there may be a kernel of truth in a story published in a Philadelphia newspaper that was widely circulated and probably embellished.
 As the story goes, Stoneman's cavalry had captured some Confederate wagons at Mount Airy and needed drivers. Some mischievous troops decided to hold a draft and set up a lottery wheel with the names of local men. You can guess what happened: Eng was drafted, and Chang was not. You can almost hear Twain wryly joking about how Eng couldn't go because Chang was a conscientious objector.
 If the "draft" happened at all, it was all a sham. The newspaper account says Stoneman was quite amused. In all I've read on the general, this is the only time I've ever seen a hint of a sense of humor. 
 Whatever happened, we can be sure the Bunkers were were not amused. For all they knew, their lives and liberty were at risk. Back in Boone (where the Bunkers' wives were from), some of Stonemen's men had gained a reputation for killing the kin of rebel soldiers. Other Confederate sympathizers had been marched off toward a miserable stockade in Ohio that the Bunkers knew all too well—Chang's son Christopher was a prisoner there. One of the Yankees may have tried to take advantage of one of the Bunker girls. A family story tells how she defended herself by punching him.
 Beyond the immediate danger was the inevitable economic devastation. Stoneman spared their houses, but without slaves or horses, there would be no way the Bunkers could manage their farm.

 

The Bunkers with their family and Grace Gates, one of their slaves. 

 It would be interesting to know how the Bunkers rationalized slavery, since they had personally been sold into bondage and trafficked overseas. They didn't see eye-to-eye on the issue, either. In the years before the war, they divided their assets, with Chang getting most of the land and Eng most of the slaves.
 When Chang and Eng were 18, a Boston sea captain discovered them in Siam (modern Thailand) and paid their mother $500 to take them on a 30-month tour of America and Europe. Once the twins turned 21 and gained control of their own affairs, they became famous and prosperous.
 Seeking privacy and normalcy, the Bunkers retired from show business at age 28 and moved to the Traphill community of Wilkes County, North Carolina. At 31, they married the Yates sisters, and they soon moved to Mount Airy and built two homes where their children could go to school. (Their story was detailed recently in Our State magazine, which dismissed the draft episode on a technicality.) They turned 50 the day before Fort Sumter was attacked, so they were exempt from serving in the Confederate army. 
 The war in general and the raid in particular left the Bunkers destitute. At age 55, they had to swallow their pride and go back on tour. It was a hard life. Chang drank too much, had a stroke in 1870, and died in his sleep on January 11, 1874. When Eng realized what had happened, he said, "Then I am going," and within three hours he was gone.

Eng and Chang Bunker gave the land for White Plains Baptist Church west of Mount Airy

Keeping up with the Bunkers

 Eng and Chang Bunker have over 1,500 descendants, who meet each summer in Mount Airy for the Bunker Reunion. The family tree includes:

Haystack Farm

• Christopher Wren Bunker (1845-1932), Chang's oldest son, served in the Confederate army and built Haystack Farm, a house that is on the National Register of Historic Places. His parents must have had high ambitions when they named him after famed architect Christopher Wren, who built London's St. Paul's Cathedral in 1710. 
• George F. Ashby (1885-1950), Eng's grandson, became president of the Union Pacific Railroad. 
• Gen. Caleb V. Haynes (1895-1966), Chang's grandson, was a distinguished World War II airman, flying the "Burma Hump" to support allies in China.
• Alex Sink (1948-), Chang's great-granddaughter, was a 2010 candidate for governor in Florida. 
• Caroline Shaw (1982-), Chang's great-great granddaughter, won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2013.

Mark Twain gets dead-serious about warfare

 Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was 24 when the Civil War started, and he served two weeks in the Confederate Army in Missouri. One night he was involved in shooting an unarmed man, and he wrote hauntingly about it in an essay called The Private History of a Campaign that Failed. Here's an excerpt:

     When we got to him, the moon revealed him distinctly. He was laying on his back with his arms abroad, his mouth was open and his chest was heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt front was splashed with blood. The thought shot through me that I was a murderer, that I had killed a man, a man who had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow.

     I was down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead, and I would have given anything then, my own life freely, to make him again what he had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had forgotten all about the enemy, they thought only of this one forlorn unit of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of the shadow of his eyes, and it seemed to me that I could rather that he had stabbed me than he had done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep about his wife and his child, and, I thought with a new despair, "This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he."

     In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war, killed in fair and legitimate war, killed in battles as you may say, and yet he was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother. The boys stood there a half-hour sorrowing over him and recalling the details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be and if he was a spy, and saying if they had it to do over again, they would not hurt him unless he attacked them first. It soon turned out that mine was not the only shot fired; there were five others, a division of the guilt which was a great relief to me since it in some degree lightened and diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots fired at once but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.

     The man was not in uniform and was not armed. He was a stranger in the country, that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him got to preying on me every night, I could not get rid of it. I could not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war, that all war must just be the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity, strangers who in other circumstances you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.

      My campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped for this awful business, that war was intended for men and I for a child's nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham soldiership while I could retain some remanent of my self-respect. These morbid thoughts clung to me against reason, for at the bottom I did not believe I had touched this man. The law of probabilities decreed me guiltless of his blood for in all my small experiences with guns, I had not hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.

 Shortly afterwards, Clemens' 15-man company heard a rumor that a Union colonel was sweeping down on them with a whole regiment. "Our boys went apart and consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband," he wrote. 

 Clemens picked a good time to walk away from a fight, for the menacing Union colonel was none other than Ulysses S. Grant.
 They became friends after the war, and after Grant died in 1885, Mark Twain was responsible for publishing and marketing the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.

➤NEXT: Bloody welcome to Virginia

Sgt. Angelo Wiser's map shows the march April 2 from Jonesville and Elkin through Dobson to Mount Airy, which generally followed the route of Old Highway 601. Wiser occasionally includes the names of households along the march, but there is no indication on his maps that the 15th Pennsylvania visited the Bunker farm.

Guess where NC's last rebel came from!

1949 portrait of Uncle Teen Blackburn, when he was 106.

HAMPTONVILLE, N.C.

 One of the last eyewitnesses* to Stoneman's Raid was Alfred "Uncle Teen" Blackburn, who was about 109 when he died in 1951. In an interview in 1938, Blackburn described the raiders coming through Yadkin County, "riding three abreast … on the narrow dirt road that runs a few feet in front of my house … burning everything along the way."
 As I have studied Stoneman's Raid, Uncle Teen may be the most fascinating character I've encountered. Try to reconcile these two claims:
 ►He was the last surviving Confederate veteran in North Carolina. 
 ►He was born a slave.
 Yes, the last rebel soldier in North Carolina owed his freedom to a war he lost.

 When talking about Uncle Teen, legend sometimes clouds the truth, and there are reasons to be suspicious of his birthdate, since his pension depended on it.

 Alfred Blackburn was born April 26, 1842, according to his obituary in the Statesville newspaper. Others say 1847 (according to research by Yadkin historians William Rutledge and Frances Casstevens) or maybe even as late as 1860 (per Adam Domby's 2020 book, False Cause). In that case, he wouldn't have qualified for a pension.

 One account describes him as the son of a white man and a Cherokee woman. Another historian describes him as a black man. He was a house servant at the Hampton and Cowles Plantation until his master (possibly his father or his half-brother) joined the 21st North Carolina Regiment in 1862. Teen accompanied him as a “body servant,” serving two years in the Confederate army as a cook and helper.
 Uncle Teen's strength and courage were legendary. He did not carry a gun, saying “a knife is handier,” and he liked to tell how he used a saber at the Second Battle of Bull Run to fight off a Yankee and save the life of Capt. Augustin Blackburn.
 When Capt. Blackburn was furloughed because of injuries, they both returned home to Yadkin County. 
 The raiders Uncle Teen witnessed at the first of April 1865 most likely would have been 100 mounted troops from the 11th Kentucky Cavalry, dispatched by Stoneman from Jonesville to burn Buck Shoals Mill, Troy Mill, and Eagle Mills.
 Uncle Teen exaggerated when he said they burned everything along the way, because the nearby plantation where he was born still stands. In fact, Stoneman's raiders rarely burned private homes, though they plundered at will.
 After the war, Uncle Teen tried his hand at farming, mining, and law enforcement before taking a contract job as a mail carrier. He walked the 25-mile round trip from Jonesville to Hamptonville three times a week for 40 years, which would be over 150,000 miles afoot—the equivalent of walking around the world six times. Then he got a mule, and finally a horse and buggy, and he didn't retire until he was 100. At 108, he was still walking a mile a day to visit a country store.
 In 1880, he married a teenager, Lucy Carson. They were proud parents of five well-educated children. His oldest daughter was 101 when she died in 1984.
 Uncle Teen died December 16, 1951. If we can trust his 1842 birthdate, that would be 109 years, seven months, and 20 days. For the last nine months of his life, he was recognized as North Carolina's last Confederate veteran, drawing a monthly pension of $26.26.
 Though the Yankees delivered him from slavery, he was always a rebel at heart. Historian Lewis Brumfield found a copy of Blackburn's 1941 taxes, and at age 99 he listed his occupation as "Confederate Soldier (Retired)."

Footnote about Alfred Teen Blackburn from
 "The Civil War and Yadkin County, North Carolina"
by historian Frances Casstevens.

 

*Last eyewitnesses to Stoneman's Raid

 I've found three eyewitnesses to Stoneman's Raid who outlived Alfred Blackburn.
 The last was John H. Pearson (1852-1954), who was not quite 13 years old when the raiders swept into Morganton, N.C., in 1865. Gen. Simeon Brown made his headquarters in the Pearson home across the street from the Burke County courthouse, while his troops searched for John's father, who was accused of killing a Yankee. Meanwhile, young John watched from a second-floor window of a neighbor's house. He died June 2, 1954, just 11 weeks short of his 102nd birthday. 

 Rev. William Lander Sherrill (1860-1953) was five when Stoneman's Raiders invaded his hometown of Lincolnton, N.C., and 70 years later he described it a newspaper column that he compiled into Sherrill's History of Lincoln County. Rev. Sherrill married the orphaned daughter of Capt. Charles Connor, who was probably the last Confederate officer killed in action. Rev. Sherrill was 93 when he died July 14, 1953. 

 William Allen Magee (1846-1953) was a bugler with the 12th Ohio Cavalry and was 18 years old when he rode in Stoneman's Raid. He was the next-to-last combat veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic when he died Jan. 23, 1953, at age 106. 

 A 14-year-old slave named Martin Luther Bost (1851-1939) witnessed the raid in Newton, N.C. At age 86, Bost shared his memories in a 1937 interview with the WPA Writers Project. 

 "I don't remember much about the war," he said. "There was no fightin' done in Newton—just a skirmish or two. Most of the people got everything jes ready to run when the Yankee sojers come through the town. This was toward the las' of the war. Cose the niggers knew what all the fightin' was about, but they didn't dare say anything. 

 "The man who owned the slaves was too mad as it was, and if the niggers say anything they get shot right then and there. The sojers tell us after the war that we get food, clothes, and wages from our Massas else we leave. But they was very few that ever got anything. Our ole Massa say he not gwine pay us anything, corse his money was no good, but he wouldn't pay if it had been."

Last veterans of the Civil War

 The last Union combat veteran was James Hard (1843-1953), a New Yorker who died 48 days after Magee at age 109. He once met President Abraham Lincoln in a White House reception and voted for Lincoln and Eisenhower in elections 88 years apart.
 In terms of lifespan, Hard (40,052 days) lived one week longer than Blackburn (40,045).
 When Blackburn died, there were a handful of other centenarians who claimed to Confederate veterans, but almost all of them have been discredited by census records. In hindsight, it appears that Uncle Teen was the next-to-last Confederate veteran, dying 15 days before an Alabama man named Pleasant Crump (1847-1951). Crump served in Lee's army until the surrender at Appomattox, and as he returned home to Alabama it is quite possible that he was among hundreds of rebels paroled by Stoneman's troops.

§§§§§

MOVING TARGETS: We're not absolutely sure when and where Teen Blackburn encountered the raiders. The way he describes them so close to his house, I think April 1 at Hamptonville is most likely. Two other possibilities:

• Windsors Crossroads, about four miles southwest of Hamptonville, where Blackburn is quoted on a Civil War Trails marker. 

• One historian suggests the mills may have been burned April 10 or 11 when the raiders passed through Huntsville. The proximity makes sense, but not the timing—by then Stoneman was concentrating his forces to attack Salisbury April 12.

 I'm satisfied that the raid Blackburn witnessed originated April 1 in Jonesville, where Gen. Stoneman and two brigades were waiting for floods to subside on the Yadkin River. Side raids like this were common during Stoneman's Raid, and some have not been well-documented. Buck Shoals Mill was on the South Yadkin River between Hamptonville and Windsors Crossroads, and the mill pond and ruins are still visible. Troy Mill and Eagle Mills were on Hunting Creek about six miles southeast of Windsors Crossroads and between the modern routes of I-77 and US21.

 The Hampton plantation still stands and is said to be the oldest house in Yadkin County. From US421, take US21 south and turn right on Hamptonville Road. Just before that turn-off is an unpaved dead-end where he lived: Teen Blackburn Road. His home burned in 2003.

NEXT➤ A punchline worthy of Mark Twain

Where Stoneman might have been stopped

WILKESBORO, N.C.

 If there was ever a moment the Confederacy had a chance to stop Stoneman's Raid, it was March 30 through April 1, when his cavalry was bogged down in Wilkes County by flooding and moonshine.
 Rebel forces concentrated in Salisbury, 60 miles southeast, were awaiting Stoneman's attack. If they had come out to meet him, who knows what might have happened. They could have delayed or prevented his invasion of Virginia, which closed the back door on Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.
 Given Stoneman's orders "to destroy and not to fight battles," he might not have put up much of a fight. Over half his forces were on the south side of the flooded Yadkin River, so at the very least he would have had to retreat significantly upstream to cross the river and head north to his primary targets in Virginia. Hundreds of his soldiers were in no condition to fight, after discovering some of the home brew that made Wilkes County famous. 
 Howard Buzby of Germantown, Pennsylvania, described the scene:

The very heavens had opened their floodgates, and the water was coming down in sheets, which accounted somewhat for the appearance of the troops on the outside, and several whisky stills, which had been struck back of the Ridge, accounted for their appearance on all sides. The number of the "wounded" was startling, and a good many were "dead," for corn whisky is fearful stuff. With the rain coming down in torrents and mud knee-deep, and the stuff warm in the stills, our brave allies were driven to drink.

 Fortunately for Stoneman, there was almost no local resistance. Wilkes County was known as the "little United States," and he couldn't have picked a friendlier place to be bogged down. In the 1861 secession referendum, 97 percent of Wilkes voters were loyal to the Union. 
 It's unlikely the Confederacy knew his exact whereabouts, much less that his forces were divided and sauced. But they had every reason to believe he was following the Yadkin to attack Salisbury, so it would not have been hard for them to find him.
 At this point in the war, the rebels were more interested in defending their towns than looking for a fight. If they had counter-attacked and driven Stoneman back, they might have preserved Robert E. Lee's escape route into the Virginia mountains, saved all the supplies stockpiled at Salisbury, and given the South a much-needed moral victory. They wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war, but they probably would have extended it. 
 Stoneman's biographer, Ben Fuller Fordney, wrote that the general had a great fear of finding himself with his command divided by a river, subject to piecemeal attacks by the Confederates. Similar circumstances had been his undoing at Chancellorsville in 1863 and in Georgia in 1864. "He seemed to think that if the enemy came down on his side, he was a goner," Buzby said.

 For two days, Stoneman's divided forces inched down the Yadkin on opposite sides until they reached the twin towns of Elkin and Jonesville. Rather than waste another day, the impatient general dispatched a Kentucky regiment to burn three mills in the Hamptonville area. We'll have a remarkable eyewitness report on that raid tomorrow.
 On April 1 or 2, the flooding finally subsided, and the south-side troops were able to cross the Yadkin. They headed north by multiple routes, and some were involved in a skirmish at Siloam on the way to Mount Airy. By April 3, they would be in southwestern Virginia, where they would be unstoppable.


Guns vs. butter, Chapter 2: 'You'll pay the devil'

 A historical marker in the well-preserved antebellum village of Rockford, N.C., tells an interesting footnote, which reminds me of the story we posted back on March 26 of Gen. Stoneman taking Mrs. Councill's last firkin of butter.

York's Tavern, Rockford NC (circa 1830)

Union Gen. George Stoneman's raiders passed through this area along the north bank of the Yadkin River on April 1-2, 1865. As they rode through Rockford, they stopped here at Mark York's tavern, a Federal-style building constructed about 1830. According to local tradition, York's wife was churning butter in the front yard with her young son, Jasper, at her side. The troopers demanded that she reveal where local residents had hidden animals and valuables when they learned of the raiders' approach. She refused to answer, even after the Federals threatened to take her son away with them, but finally retorted, "And you'll pay the devil." The soldiers gave up and left, and she returned to her churning.

 Another account of this incident explains that Jasper York "was not quite normal." According to an online genealogy, Jasper was the youngest in a family of 18 children. At the time of the raid, he would have been 4 or 5 years old, his mother Nancy was 55, and his father Marcus (who also had nine children by a previous marriage) was about 85.
 

NEXT➤ Guess where North Carolina's last rebel came from?

Sgt. Angelo Wiser's map shows Stoneman's march from Wilkesboro to Jonesville via the south bank of the Yadkin River.

Twin fiddling: Tom Dooley and Gilliam Grayson

Is this Tom Dula?
 This is the photo you'll find if you Google him,
 but this is probably someone else.

HAPPY VALLEY, N.C.

 In the Kingston Trio's 1958 classic Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley, poor Tom sits on death row and laments, "Hadn't-a-been for Grayson, I'd-a-been in Tennessee."
 James Grayson was a former Union colonel who caught the rebel Tom Dula (pronounced Dooley) and turned him in for the murder of Laura Foster. Neither Grayson nor Dula was directly involved in Stoneman's Raid, but they are entangled in our story nevertheless. 

 Dula was in a Yankee prison on Wednesday, March 29, 1865, when Gen. Alvan Gillem led two of Stoneman's three cavalry brigades down Happy Valley through the Wilkes County settlements where Dula and Foster were raised. Dula had been captured 19 days earlier, fighting against Sherman in the Battle of Wyse's Creek, near Kinston, N.C. 

 Grayson might-a-been riding in Stoneman's Raid alongside his friend Gillem, except that he had resigned from the Thirteenth Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry for health reasons.

 The drama that tied them all together was a promiscuous relationship involving Tom, Laura, her cousins Perline Foster and Anne Foster Melton, and who knows whom else. Anne was married, In fact, Tom had been in the same Yankee prison with Anne's husband, James Melton. But that didn’t stop Tom from sleeping with her or the others as soon as he was released from prison and returned home to Happy Valley. 

 In addition to the inherent jealousies, they soon were dealing with the fact that all four had syphilis, which they called "the pock." Then on May 25, 1866, Laura disappeared.

Col. James Grayson

 People suspected Tom, of course, and he fled into the mountains. In July, calling himself Tom Hall, he sought work at Col. Grayson's farm in the Trade community near the North Carolina-Tennessee border, 15 miles northwest of Boone. Tom needed money to replace his worn-out boots. (Wonder if he regretted how he had treated the local cobbler, Anne Melton's husband James?)
 Not long after Tom resumed his westward flight into Tennessee, a posse from Wilkes County arrived in Trade seeking Dula. When Grayson realized that Hall was actually Dula, he hunted him down, finding Dula with blistered feet from his new boots. Grayson tied up Tom, brought him back to the Wilkes County jail, and collected $62 for bounty or expenses. 

Mural in Mountain City, Tenn., portraying the capture of Tom Dula (lead artist Christy Dunn).

 After Laura's body was found in a shallow grave Sept. 1, Tom was tried twice for murder. He was convicted and hanged May 1, 1868 in Statesville. His execution was national news. Click here to read the story in the New York Herald. 

 The courthouse records are filled with lurid details that can lead to a number of conclusions. 

 The Kingston Trio called it "the eternal triangle," implying a rivalry between Grayson, 33, and Dula, 21, for the charms of Miss Foster, 22. (That seems unlikely for several reasons, including the fact that Grayson lived 50 mountainous miles away from Happy Valley.) 

 The Wilkes County Playmakers portray Laura, Anne, and Perline all vying for Tom.
 Was Tom covering for Anne? Were Anne and/or Perline involved in the murder? Did Anne manipulate or betray Tom? Was Laura pregnant when she died? Were Tom and Laura planning to elope? Was Tom trying to "do in" whoever gave him the pock (as witnesses testified in court)? For that matter, could it have been one of Stoneman's raiders who brought the pock into Happy Valley? The Foster cousins already had quite a reputation, and one of Gillem's soldiers commented in his journal about the flirtatious young ladies of Happy Valley.

Gillam Grayson (right) and Henry Whittier (rear)
 with the Greer sisters of Boone NC in 1927.

 Even if Grayson never laid eyes on Anne or Laura, there is a good reason he is named in the song.
 Col. Grayson and Gen. Gillem were both members of the Tennessee legislature, and Grayson had such admiration for Gillem that he named his son Alvan Gillem "A.G." Grayson. So did the colonel's brother, Benjamin, a Union private who named his boy Gilliam Banmon "G.B." Grayson. The cousins grew up hearing the legend of Tom Dula.

 G.B. Grayson (1887-1930) was blinded as a child (perhaps by staring at the sun glaring off the snow). He discovered a gift for music and became an accomplished fiddler, much like Dula.

 In 1927, Grayson teamed up with guitarist Henry Whittier, and in 1929 they went to Memphis to make the very first recording of Tom Dooley. According to music historian Peter Curry, this was one of the most important recordings of the 20th century. 

 Grayson and Whittier sang it with a different melody and several stanzas you didn't hear from the Kingston Trio. But they did record the signature line that honors the fiddler's uncle: "Hadn't-a-been for Grayson, I'd-a-been in Tennessee." Click here to listen to Grayson and Whittier's song.

Doc Watson, 1964

Doc Watson's version of the story

 When Doc Watson recorded Tom Dooley on his debut album in 1964, he included the following insights on the album liner notes. Doc said that his great-grandmother was with Anne Melton when she died at age 31, haunted by visions of the flames of hell.
 Much of Doc's story sounds like folklore rather than history. In particular, Grayson was not the sheriff and was never married to Anne Melton.
 On the other hand, Doc is always worth listening to:

     In the 1860s, when this story takes place, my great-grandparents were neighbors of Tom Dooley's family, and my grandparents, when they were just children, knew Tom's parents. As the story goes, Tom Dooley was not guilty of the murder of Laura Foster, although he was an accomplice in covering up the crime. Instead of the "eternal triangle" mentioned in the Kingston Trio's version, it was a quadrangle sort of thing. There were two men and two women involved in the whole affair. Mr. Grayson, the sheriff, had courted both Miss Laura Foster and Miss Annie Melton, as had Tom Dooley. Almost everyone around affirmed that Annie Melton had stuck the knife in Miss Laura's ribs and then hit her over the head. Tom Dooley, however, actually buried the girl, making himself an accomplice. Annie Melton was with Tom at Laura's burial, so she, too, was strongly suspected and was jailed. While in jail she bragged and told everyone that her neck was too pretty to put a rope around and that they'd never hang her. Of course, they never did.
     Sheriff Grayson had quite a crush on Annie Melton, and he later married her. Near the end of her life Annie became very ill, and on her deathbed she called her husband in and told him something that seemed to really crush his spirit and reason for living. What Miss Annie told her husband was what she had told the neighborhood women—that she had actually murdered Laura Foster and had let Tom Dooley go to the gallows without saying one word on his behalf. Grayson was so upset that he took his remaining family and moved completely out of this part of North Carolina and went over the edge of Tennessee, which was just being settled.
     The murder of Laura Foster happened just at the end of the Civil War, and Tom Dooley, I believe, had been a hero during the war. Dooley was the kind of guy who grows up very quickly; at the age of fourteen, he was the size of a grown man. He went into the Civil War lying about his age and came back a hero. He was an unthinkably good old-time fiddler, and many people think that the original version, which I learned from my grandmother, has such a lilting, happy-sounding tune because the composer had tried his or her best to get into the song a little of Tom Dooley's personality as a fiddler.

 Gilliam Grayson (1887-1930) was born in Ashe County, North Carolina, lived in Laurel Bleachery, north of Mountain City, Tenn., and died in an automobile accident in Damascus, Va. His musical legacy is celebrated in a series of murals in Mountain City.

Tom Dooley fidding on the way to his hanging (mural by Karen Rose and Leanna Garrett, 100 West Main Street, Mountain City, Tenn.)

 Doc Watson's lyrics were closer to the 1929 Grayson and Whittier version than to the 1958 Kingston Trio hit.

 Here are the lyrics for the three versions: 

 Yet another source of the Tom Dooley song is traced to Frank Proffitt of Watauga County and Frank Warner of Philadelphia. Warner learned it from Proffitt and recorded it in 1952. Proffitt made his own record in 1962. Proffitt's family may have been connected to the Fosters. Click here to read Lisa O'Donnell's account in the Winston-Salem Journal.

 Lee Knight, a renowned folk musician who knew Proffitt, pointed out that Dula is presumed guilty in the Proffitt version, though he claims innocence in the other versions. 

 Proffitt (1913-1965) lived in the Reese community of western Watauga County, which was on Stoneman's midnight route into Boone. 

 

NEXT➤ Where Stoneman could have been stopped

'Stoneman has just swept through the country'

Fort Defiance was built in 1788 by Gen. William Lenoir and was spared by Stoneman's Raid in 1865

PATTERSON, N.C.

    When Walter Waightstill Lenoir opened this letter from Joseph Caldwell "J.C." Norwood, it may have been the first details he had heard about Yankees invading Happy Valley, the land settled by his grandfather. Read it through his eyes, and then we'll sort it out.

Lenoir 2nd Apl 1865

Dear Walter,

We are just through with a scene of alarm & very great danger. Stoneman has just swept through the country with 10,000 cavalry towards Wilkesboro, Salem, Salisbury, Greensboro, Hillsboro & Raleigh — & we fear there will be no adequate preparation made to meet him. 

About dark on Tuesday evening last the heart of the column reached the Factory & in a few minutes the people around were under guard & the command in camp! They were equipped in the very best manner, & under the severest discipline & were not allowed to plunder to any great extent or commit any acts of violence. They left about 3 O’clock next day Wednesday (29th) except 2 companies that were left to burn the Factory — which they did with great coolness and method. They also set fire to the storehouse & grainery &c. Most of the store-house the cotton house Tanery & oil escaped. The little office joining the store was burned — the last of them left by sundown.

They reached Wilkesboro next evening about dark taking it by surprise also — we hear that Just. Findley’s house was burned — but hope it is a mistake — many of them said that a large body of infantry was behind — we suppose has gone towards Virginia. 

So complete was their guard that they were all taken by surprise down the river & lost all of their horses and mules except Genl Patterson’s one little pony which they couldn’t catch & Rufus’ one which happens to be out of the way. I have not seen Rufus being afraid to leave home — A soldier who was there upon their arrival & made his escape gave us the facts about 2 O’clock that night — And went on to the station. 

We did all we could in the way of hiding necessaries & running off negroes & stock but none of them came home. While at the Factory they made cousin Rufus’ room their head quarters & treated him courteously — behaved very seedily at Cousin Ed’s, the Fort & other places — but committed no violence. They told cousin Rufus that the secessionists down the river would fare badly. We suppose that their next stop would be Elkin or Janesboro. 

The force which passed the Factory — six thousand was commanded by Guilam. Stoneman joined him at Holoman’s Ford with 4 thousand. It is said a third column passed through Jefferson & camped over the river from Wilkesboro. I hope that is not so. 

About two days before a considerable number of negro men left for Tennessee — & have not been heard from since including 4 from the Fort. 1 Genl. Patterson’s 12 E. Jones & 5 from here. Elias John Turner Jones and Wash — from the fort-Larkin Erin Jerry & Joe — I have not heard too many went with the cavalry. Some of the officers cursed the negroes & wished them all in Hell.

We had been for some time before under constant apprehension about tory or robber raids & I have been serving on guard at town every third night & have been as much as two weeks with out taking off my clothes. We are always in danger except when a portion of Avery’s command is here which is not very often — Home guard no account.

A few days before these troubles commenced. I rec. your War Song & other piece we were all very much pleased with them especially the song of which I had the girls to make a good many copies & distribute it pretty generally — & I was about to send it to 3 of the papers — but will wait now until the Storm is passed.

Yours affect'y

JC Norwood

     Norwood was trying to make sense of the scene on Tuesday evening, March 28, 1865, when 1,400 Union cavalry came pouring over the Blue Ridge and flooded into the tranquil and seemingly secure Yadkin River valley. Another 600 arrived the next morning.

     The people who lived and worked around Patterson Cotton Mill had no reason to fear the Civil War would come to their doorsteps. Grant and Sherman were hundreds of miles away, and the impenetrable Blue Ridge guarded their back. 
     Where had all these Yankees suddenly come from? 
     It turns out they had fought that same morning in Boone, 20 miles north. As soon as Boone was subdued, Gen. George Stoneman divided his forces and dispatched two of his three brigades under Gen. Alvan Gillem (Guilam in the letter) to head south, cross the Blue Ridge at Blowing Rock, and raid Patterson Mill.  
     The 2nd Brigade arrived about nightfall, helped themselves to a community storehouse of corn and bacon, and left orders for the 3rd Brigade to burn the mill to keep it from being used to support the Confederate war effort. (Rufus Patterson may have been selling cloth to both sides, so it's possible that some of the Union raiders were wearing his products.)
     More than half of the Federal troops at Patterson Mill, including Gillem, were "Home Yankees" from Kentucky or Tennessee. It's interesting that Norwood describes them as being so well-disciplined, because the Tennesseeans under Gillem soon earned a reputation for looting and worse.

Walter Lenoir

     The recipient of the letter, Walter Lenoir, was a lawyer from an influential family—two of North Carolina's counties were named for his grandfathers, William Lenoir and Waightstill Avery. Fort Defiance ("the Fort" in the letter) is the homestead built in 1788 by William Lenoir. It was spared by the raiders and has been turned into a museum that is open for tours. 
     Walter Lenoir opposed slavery and supported Gov. Zebulon Vance in his efforts to avoid secession. After war broke out, Lenoir volunteered as a Confederate private. Within months he rose to captain under Stonewall Jackson, only to lose a leg after being wounded Sept. 1, 1862, in the Battle of Chantilly, Va. 
     The fact that Norwood overestimated the troop numbers tells us how intimidating the cavalry could be. It's intriguing that Norwood anticipated Stoneman's move into Virginia, which is more than the Confederate leaders did. On the other hand, there was nothing to his rumor of a "third column" coming through Jefferson.
     The raid on Patterson Mill raised great alarm in the town of Lenoir, only six miles away. Norwood and his neighbors must have felt like they had dodged a bullet when Gen. Gillem turned east and followed the Yadkin River toward Wilkesboro. But it was only a brief reprieve. By Easter Sunday, April 16, Stoneman's Raid would be back, occupying the town of Lenoir and turning the St. James Episcopal churchyard into a prison camp.

NEXT➤ Twin fiddling: Tom Dooley and Gilliam Grayson

This Civil War Trails historical marker says the raiders burned Patterson Mill on March 30, but most sources, including Norwood's letter, date it March 29.