New book recalls Confederacy images

By Scott Nicholson

nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

New books bring the history of North Carolina to your favorite armchair.

Michael Hardy, who recently released “A Short History of Watauga County,” is back again with “Remembering North Carolina’s Confederates,” a photographic collection released by Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series.

The book collects over 200 vintage black-and-white photographs that not only capture the flavor of the post-war South but the effect of the war on the Tarheel State’s communities. The book is divided into six sections, mostly by region, with “The Mountains” heading the book. While the photos aren’t contemporaneous with the war, since photography was still in its infancy, the book marks significant places and people dating from the 1870’s.

Highlights include Jefferson Davis’s funeral procession, reunions between Union and Confederate troops, prominent veterans, historical monuments and text that describes each photograph and brings the past alive.

Hardy is an author and historian who lives in Newland, and is himself both a veteran writer and Civil War reenactor. He’s published a number of articles on the Civil War and three other books besides the Watauga County history. He began Civil War reenacting at the age of 10 and has been a history buff ever since, collecting memorabilia and researching the state’s role in the war. One of his books, “The Thirty-Seventh North Carolina Troops,” was released by McFarland Books in 2003 and contains a comprehensive record of Watauga’s soldiers. Hardy is also active in historical societies and as a lecturer.

For those with a taste for oddities, “Forgotten Tales of North Carolina” collects old newspaper clippings, journal records, and probable tall tales of sea monsters, drunken geese, hitch hiking alligators and, of course, alien visitors. Tales right out of “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” can trace their roots to the Tarheel State.

Take, for example, an 1850 account from Sampson County, where a red cloud suddenly developed and let loose precipitation on the house of Thomas M. Clark. The pieces were reported to be fresh livers, brains and bloody meat. Two scientists allegedly examined the offal and judged the blood to be real but couldn’t determine the source of the flesh.

In Currituck County, a man known fittingly enough as “Jerome Outlaw” traded his wife and two children for a pair of fishing nets. The brother making the trade avoided court charges because the fisherman disappeared and the children now had a form of support. No follow-ups were published on who eventually got the better end of the deal.

Then there was the case of the unlucky horseshoe in 1897. The horseshoe, once a totem for keeping ghosts and witches away, had evolved into a simple good luck charm. But a Greenville man who climbed a ladder to nail one above his door instead brought misery. First he dropped the hammer on the head of one of his children, and then busted his thumb trying to drive a nail. The man pitched a fit, knocking the ladder over onto his family. Then he threw the horseshoe into the neighbor’s yard, mortally wounding a pet dog.

Then there was Miss Emmiline Dixon of Southport, who did not go gently into that good night. A frail 70, she lapsed into a coma and was judged dead, with funeral arrangements made. She was laid in the casket and a minister was delivering last rites when the burial began. Just before the lid was nailed in place, Dixon said, “Please don’t put the cover on just now.”

And, of course, no collection is complete without a tale of mutant crops. In 1854 near Oxford, a family grew a sweet potato weighing nearly 11 pounds. The potato was put on the mantel for all to see, eventually sending out sprouts and vines that climbed the walls. After five years, news of the potato had spread and the family sent it to Raleigh to be placed in an agricultural museum. By that time it had withered, though, and weighed only a pound.