Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/841

Rh educated at Cedar Grove, and prior to the war was engaged in farming. In May, 1862, he enlisted in Company D of the Fifty-sixth regiment, North Carolina troops, at that time organized and drilled with the regiment at Camp Mangum. He was identified with the career of the regiment during its service in eastern North Carolina, protecting the Confederate channels of communication and driving back the numerous parties of raiders sent out from the Federal posts on the coast. In the course of this service he took part in the actions at Gum Swamp, at Wellington on the Weldon railroad, at Suffolk, Va., and in the vicinity of New Bern, besides a great many other skirmishes, which have not been given an important place in history. In the battle of Plymouth he was severely wounded, and being carried to the rear during the action, was taken up in a wagon by a friend and conveyed to Tarboro, where he lay in hospital for eight months. Rejoining his command, he served under Beauregard at Drewry s bluff and on the Bermuda Hundred line, and was nine months with Bushrod Johnson’s division in the Petersburg trenches. In the spring of 1865 he was taken prisoner at Dinwiddie Court House, and was held at Johnson’s island for a period of two months and twenty days. Mr. Wilson entered the service in the rank of lieutenant and served in that capacity throughout the war. He was a gallant and capable officer. When the soldiers of the South resumed the vocations of peace, he returned to the farm and followed agriculture until 1885, when he made his home in Dur ham. He was married, in July, 1861, to Lucy M., daughter of George Nicholls.

Major James W. Wilson, of Morganton, N. C., was born in Granville county, the son of Rev. Alexander Wilson, D. D., a native of Belfast, Ireland, and a graduate of the university of Dublin, who died in 1871, after a celebrated career in this country as an educator. Major Wilson was educated at the Chapel Hill university, where he received a master’s degree in 1852. Subsequently he was connected with the engineering corps of the Western North Carolina railroad, under R. E. Rodes, afterward a major-general in the Confederate army. In April, 1861, he was married to Louise Erwin, of McDowell county, and almost immediately afterward he began