LETTERS FROM JAMES

James Pierce was born in Hertford County in 1845, the youngest child of Jesse and Lucretia Eure Pierce. He had a brother, Isaac, about two years older; a sister, Abigail, about four years older; a brother, Job, 12 years older; and another brother, Cincinnatus (Cit), 14 years older. His father died around the time James was born. His mother, who inherited Jesse's acreage on the river, married Adolphus Askew, a much younger man, a friend of Cit, while James was a small child.

When the Civil War began, James and Abigail were living in the farm house of their mother and stepfather.

Isaac, who for some time had been at odds with the stepfather, had moved to the home of his older brother Job and his young wife Priscilla, who had no children. Job, a wagon mechanic with a bad ankle and a limp, had enrolled Isaac in a private school near his Harrellsville residence, only a few miles from their mother's farm, and later did the same for James.

Cincinnatus, the oldest, was also a wagon mechanic, but he spent most of his time farming his mother's acreage near the Chowan River. Cit had married when he was around 19, and at the start of the war he and his wife Milly had five children.

When North Carolina seceded from the Union, James Pierce was 15 years old.