THE POOR TOWN NEWS
Pictures and Short Stories from the PoorTown eBook
© 2002 James D. Pearce and Rebecca P. Pearce

Number 35
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This Week's Picture

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Men freed from bondage assemble on deck of river freighter
prior to enlistment in newly formed regiments
of the Union Army (1863)

Library of Congress photo

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This Week's Story

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Petty Shore
September 30, 1863

To: Isaac Pierce, Co. G, 31st Infty:

Dear Isaac:

Well, I'll have to tell you that I think I have seen it all now. I haven't been long back from the longest trip I ever took in my life and from seeing the most amazing sights that I ever have seen. Lord, I wish you could have been with me so we could talk about it, but to tell the truth if you had you might not have fared so well unless you took off and burned your CS suit. I went to Plymouth for a week with Sgt. Brown and the Union lieutenant, and I still can't get over it.

I kind of think Sgt. Brown and the lieutenant might have been thinking about getting me to go over for good, but they didn't push me either before we left or after we were there. To tell you the truth, instead of me going over there for good, I'd rather wish they would come on over here for good, so I could live out my life where the good God put me to start with. Anyway, they had come over to do some trading around Harrellsville and when they finished there they brought their boat on up to Petty Shore and stopped in to see Abigail and mama. I was in from the fields and that's when Sgt. Brown proposed that I go back with them to look around Plymouth for a week.

I don't think mama was too pleased at the thought of it, but Abigail sure thought it was a good idea, and I tell you my curiosity sure was quick to get the best of me. The cotton isn't ready and the peanuts are too wet, so I'm dinged if I didn't grab me an extra pair of trousers and shirt and a bedroll and follow them. We hiked down to the water where they had their oar boat – four oars, two on each side – and they oared me out to the biggest boat I've ever been on. I have seen a lot of them going up and down the river, but I'd never been on the water close to one before.

I'd guess it was about a 40-footer, with one smokestack and one sail-mast, and it had about a six-man crew, one of which I have to tell you was a colored boy that Sgt. Brown said was from a farm near Plymouth and had enlisted in the United States Navy. Ain't that another peck of peas, a Plymouth colored boy in the United States Navy getting paid in gold US dollars?

The crew didn't bother with a sail. They just fired up the boiler with some old cypress limbs they scavenged on shore and that little old 40-footer puffed off so smooth down the middle of the river that you wouldn't believe it. We rode right down the middle of the channel and in no time at all we chugged right on by Swain's Mill and Bennetts Creek, right on past the big island they said was Holliday that nobody lives on because of the snakes, and then we were on the docks at the fishery at Colerain. We didn't bother with the docks there, though, and I stood on the deck like in a dream while we went right on down about a mile from either shore, past Rocky Hock and Mount Gould.

Sgt. Brown and the lieutenant were with me on the deck when we were looking back on the bluffs between Colerain docks and Mount Gould, and they remarked how passing strange it was that the CSA didn't seem even a little bit interested in putting some big guns up there that would make them have to do all their boating way over on the east side of the river. They said that in the whole time they had been going up and down the river, they never had seen anything bigger than a rifle pointed at them from the bluffs, and not very many of them.

After Mount Gould we stayed close to the west shore and passed Salmon Creek out by what they called Black Walnut Point, and here was where the big sights-to-see really started.

Isaac, I tell you when you looked over to the east – and over toward the north where Edenton would be – I never in all my days dreamed there could be so many boats in the world. Oar-boats, little boats with one sail, boats with one sail and one stack, boats with two sails and one stack, boats with two sail-masts and two stacks, and even one boat that had a side-wheel, two sail-masts and three stacks. I guess that one was the one that you could use to sail like Columbus did if you were looking for a new world. And every boat I saw out there, in what they called the Albemarle, was flying a big old flag. I have to tell you that the flag was USA, not the CS. And that feeds my idea. Maybe before I go through that 18-year-old door with the CS, I think I might just have to think about getting on one of these big boats, and going to look for me a whole new world. The good Lord knows there's bound to be a better one somewhere.

We turned south and west after the point and were near what looked like some big marshy islands, but when we got closer you could tell there were three pretty good-size rivers opening up there. We took the one far south, actually what looked like the narrow one. But Sgt. Brown said this was the Roanoak, and it was the long one that would take us to Plymouth, and if you kept going, all the way up by Williamston and then on to the CS Fort Branch, by Scotland Neck, Halifax and Weldon. They said that river goes all the way up to the Virginia mountain country. But what I really liked was they said that if you went east, you could go past Elizabeth City and right on out to sea, and from there the whole world would be waiting if you and your boat were tough enough. I have really got to think about that.

I have to think about a lot of things, like living where old Mathew Pardue gets shot by a CS conscript squad, right in his front yard in front of his wife and younguns, or living somewhere that they even pay colored boys to work on boats that can go practically around the whole world. Brother, I'm not so sure now that I even want to be a farmer any more. There's something about standing up front on that boat with the wind blowing in your face while it slaps the waves apart. I know now there really are two worlds – a dirt world and a water world. I'm thinking now there may be a better class of people in the water world.

After we left the Albemarle – I really like the sound of that name – it was only about five or six miles upriver to Plymouth. The Roanoak might be as long as they say, but it sure is narrow, not broad like the Chowan. But then I guess God made his rivers just like he made his people; some short and chunky and some long and lean, some good and weak and some strong and mean. Plymouth is a little town on the south bank of the river. The north bank so far as I could see couldn't hold a town, or anything else for that matter. It looks like it's just miles and miles of marsh that I'm not sure you could walk on. The ground at Plymouth isn't high – not like Petty Shore – but it is high enough above the river that you can have a little town and a great big army camp.

Lord, do I mean big. Back from the docks, the army camp goes on both ways and as far back as you can see. Tents, wood buildings, wood walkways, timber wagon roads all over the place. Isaac, I don't know what you CS boys have around Raleigh so I don't know what you're accustomed to in an army, but at Plymouth the USA is really fixed. They must have over a thousand wagons and carts and mules and horses going to waste. They've got tents full of all kinds of provisions and fields full of everything from goats to big guns on wheels. I hope you don't ever have to be in a battle to take this place, but I don't guess the CSA ever will because I don't think there's any way you could get here unless you built a better boat and floated it down the river. And then I don't think there's any way you could get by all those floaters out there flying the USA flag. It just adds to what I learned back at Petty Shore. If you don't have the boats, you ain't going to go anywhere. And I never thought I'd live to ever see the big camp at Plymouth.

I stayed there four days. Sgt. Brown and the lieutenant let me eat with the soldiers and we had a lot of conversation. Most of them are from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and sadly enough, most of them I talked to really are not too happy being down here. But they all say they are here to stay, happy or not, until the Union is preserved. I kind of feel like they are going to do it, of course I don't know what's to become of us. I'm having to think about that. They've got one separate part of the camp where they are organizing what they call the 2nd NC Infantry, US; and they've got another part where I heard they were organizing colored regiments. I'm not too sure how far along I want to go with that idea – giving loaded guns to colored people is something else to be thought over.

Enough on that. They treated me real well, and fed me real good. The boat trip back was every bit as good as going down. Maybe I ought to be a mariner.

When I got home there was more news, and big crowds of coloreds all along the river from Swain's Mill to Petty Shore, and folks said it was the same all the way up beyond Winton. Folks said that every last slave on the Hinnant Edwards place had grabbed everything they could pick up and took off for the river, camping, singing, and praising Jesus and Mr. Lincoln all the way. They're all up and down the bank, and you see their little fires twinkling all through the night. It must not be just Hinnant's place. There are too many here. Poor Cornelius. Maybe he'll have to stay home now and plow his own corn.

Hope I don't sound too excited and fired up, but if I do it's because I am. But I do wish there was some way we both could be on the same side again.

Your brother, James

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This Week's Verse

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Our Jimmy has gone for to live in a tent,
They have grafted him into the Army,
He finally puckered up courage and went,
When they grafted him into the Army.
I told them the child was too young, alas!
At the captain's forequarters, they said he would pass,
They'd train him up well in the Infantry class,
So they grafted him into the Army.

Oh, Jimmy, farewell,
Your brothers fell
A long way from their mammy.
I thought they would spare
A pore widder's heir,
But they've grafted you into the Army.

Dressed up in his uniform, dear little chap,
They have grafted him into the Army,
It seems but a day since he sot in my lap,
But they grafted him into the Army.
And these are the trousies he used to wear,
Them very same buttons, the patch and the tear,
But Uncle Sam gave him a brand new pair
When they grafted him into the Army.

Now in my provisions I see him revealed,
They have grafted him into the Army;
A picket beside a contended field,
They have grafted him into the Army.
He looks kinder sickish ~ begins to cry,
A big volunteer standing right in his eye,
Oh, what if the ducky should up and die,
Now they've grafted him into the Army.

Oh, Jimmy, farewell,
Your brothers fell
A long way from their mammy.
I thought they would spare
A pore widder's heir,
But they've grafted you into the Army.

(1862. Author unknown.)

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This Week's Mailbox

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To the Poor Town News ~ When we went to the Outer Banks last week I thought of ya'll as we passed through those Eastern NC towns. Some of the names were familiar just because of some of your stories I had read. Thanks! ~ Ann Medley, Raleigh NC.

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To the Poor Town News ~ Hi, Jim. The stories get better all the time. Keep up the good work. Becky taught you well ...... I have gotten a lot from your writing ...... learning a lot of history. ~ Joe Dickerson, Murfreesboro NC.

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To the Poor Town News ~ Such a terrible story about the young man screaming in pain. My heart went out to the whole situation. ~ Aggie Green, Michigan.

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To the Poor Town News ~ Greetings from the Man Will Never Fly Memorial Society! ...... The average citizen can't even imagine the terrible sights and sounds of those fine young men who were severely wounded in battle ...... Keep those stories coming, I enjoy reading each of them. All the best. ~ Jim (alias "Hoodoo 1") ~ Click here to wing your way through the cyberskies of denial with the "Man Will Never Fly Society"

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To the Poor Town News ~ Please change my website address. I have my own web server now and I have been rebuilding my web pages again. I had it with Homestead.com but they jumped the price ...... Many thanks. ~ Donnie Shores, Northeast NC. ~ ~ Click here to read the poetry and inspiring stories of Aulander/Millennium natives Donald Shores and Katherine Shores

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To the Poor Town News ~ Just wanted to say 'hi' and let you know how much I enjoy getting your eMailed Poor Town News. I have read most of the stories before, but what I find particularly interesting now is the feedback you get from readers all over the country. You may remember that I have talked about 'Little League Web Sites,' and your ...... 'mailbox' feature is a beautiful illustration of that dimension of the internet. I have passed some of your messages on to friends who are interested in genealogy to show them how information generates more information ...... A funny story along those lines ...... It happened a couple of months ago at 'tennisbiz.' Now, you ask "what the heck is tennisbiz?" Well, it is a (WWW) communication vehicle for people who, in one way or another, are involved in tennis as a profession. We are not talking about the touring pros, but people working at clubs or people developing and marketing tennis equipment, etc. They post questions and comments, and anyone among the some 400 readers worldwide can jump in and offer their comments or advice. A guy by the name of "Krister Larsson" posted a comment regarding the teaching of some specific tennis stroke. A few years ago, there was a Swedish tennis pro working ...... in Raleigh ...... and I chatted with him a few times. He later went on to work somewhere else. When I saw his name in that 'tennisbiz' message, I sent him a brief message in Swedish, asking him if he was back in North Carolina. He responded that he had never been in North Carolina in his life, and that he was working in Hong Kong. (In Scandinavia) "Krister Larsson" is not a very unusual name, and the internet is enormous! All the best. ~ Kjell Petterson, Southeast NC. ~ Click here for access to the intriguing home site of Kjell Petterson of Carteret County. Kjell is an avid promoter of what he calls "Little League" web sites, those set up to link people locally in specific interests such as tennis, gardening etc.

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