3.11 Rufus Clay Barringer of Cabarrus County served for more than half the war as captain of Company F (the "Cabarrus Rangers"), 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry, but rose rapidly thereafter to the rank of brigadier general.
3.2 Private Joseph W. Crunkleton was a member of Company K (the "Nantahala Rangers"), 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry.
3.3 Private Rufus Winfield Colvard of Company A, 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry. Colvard taught school in Ashe and Wilkes Counties and named his horse "Education."
3.9 Private Lewis M. Seagle, Company G (the "Buncombe Rangers"), 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry.
3.18 First Lieutenant Wiley Alexander Barrier of Company I, 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry.
3.19 Captain William M. Addington, Company K (the "Nantahala Rangers"), 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry
4.2.61 Private William B. Kennedy of Company I, 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry, and his fiancee, Miss Dora Davis [not pictured]. Kennedy was mortally wounded at the Battle of Boydton Plank Road, Virginia, October 27, 1864.
3.11 Rufus Clay Barringer (December 2, 1821-February 3, 1895) was a Cabarrus County lawyer and unionist politician before the war. Once secession became inevitable, he raised and became captain of the "Cabarrus Rangers," subsequently Company F, 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry. Barringer suffered a mouth wound at Brandy Station (June 9, 1863) and rose to major and lieutenant colonel in the autumn of 1863. He was wounded again at Bristoe Station (October 14, 1863).
After the death of Brigadier General James B. Gordon in May 1864, Barringer was elevated from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general and assumed command of the North Carolina Cavalry Brigade. He led the Tar Heels until his capture at Namozine Church on April 3, 1865. (Barringer claimed to have participated in seventy-six battles and skirmishes during the war.)
Following his capture, Barringer was taken to the Federal supply base at City Point, Virginia (near Petersburg), which was visited at that time by Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is alleged to have greeted Barringer warmly, stating: "You know I have never seen a real live rebel general in uniform." General Barringer was incarcerated at Fort Delaware until his release in August 1865. Through his first wife, Rufus Barringer was brother-in-law to Confederate generals Daniel Harvey Hill and Stonewall Jackson.
The photograph of Barringer dates from his tenure as captain. His single-breateed gray frock coat is identical to the one worn by First Lieutenant Jacob Fisher of the same company (see image No. 3.16). Barringer's high-crowned forage cap bears a crossed-saber device; the letters are indistinct but may be CR in mirror image.
Image: Kenneth W. Miller.
3.2 Private Joseph W. Crunkleton, a twenty-six-year-old Macon County resident, enlisted at Franklin in the "Nantahala Rangers" on June 23, 1861. In early July the "Rangers" rendezvoused at Camp Woodfin, near Asheville, with four other cavalry companies. About August 1 the five companies moved to the cavalry camp of instruction at Camp Beauregard, Ridgeway, Warren County. There, on August 12, the "Nantahala Rangers" became Company K, 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry.
According to a regimental historian, the 1st N.C. Cavalry fought in ninety-four named battles during its four years of service. Joseph W. Crunkleton probably took part in most of them; he was present or accounted for until December 1864, the date of Company K's last surviving muster roll. There are no military records of later date for him, but he survived the war.
Crunkleton is clad in a uniform coat identical in style to the one worn by Private Andrew Jackson Hardy in the previous image. Like Hardy, Crunkleton holds a cavalry saber and a single-shot percussion pistol, caliber .54. The apparent "crease" in Crunkleton's trousers indicates a reinforced (double thickness) seat, as was common in Civil War cavalry uniforms.
Image: Sixth-plate tintype in the possession of Walter J. Taylor, great-grandson.
3.3 Rufus Winfield Colvard (August 8, 1832-ca. July 15, 1891), a schoolteacher and the eldest of eleven siblings, resided in northern Wilkes County. On July 25, 1861, he volunteered in an Ashe County company that became Company A, 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry. (Six more Colvard brothers eventually joined the same command.) In early 1862 Rufus's excellent penmanship earned him an appointment as company clerk, a sinecure that relieved him of such onerous tasks as guard duty, but that did not exempt him from combat. Rufus wrote, rode, and fought until he was captured at Aberdeen Church, Virginia, on April 3, 1865. Confinement at Point Lookout followed until he took the Oath of Allegiance and was released on June 24, 1865.
A letter written by Rufus Colvard on October 9, 1862, gives a vivid glimpse of cavalry service in the aftermath of Second Manassas, a major victory. Although the 1st N.C. Cavalry did not arrive in time for the hardest of the fight, it "did a good share in pursuing the retreating party to Washington. . . ." It then returned to the battlefield:
It is an awful sight indeed to see a battle field as that of Manassas was; in one place for the space of three acres the enemy lay [so] that a person could easily [have] walked . . . and not stepped on land form one side of the space to the other[.] [I]n fact they made whole fields look bluish and in every house, barn, stable &c were filled with the wounded, poor mortal beings. I was sorry for them even if they were our enemies[.] [A]t one time our Co was sent to a large Barn lot after forage[.] [W]e were detained some 2 hours there[.] I suppose I saw a dozen at least breathe their last breath while I was there and the most pitiful groans that I ever heard the poor fellows made[.] [T]here were some 500 in the lot some with their arms off some with their face torn to pieces some with their head split with sabre &c[,] and in one instance I have seen a man's brains running out and he breathing. . . .
In this image Colvard is wearing the same shortened verion of the regulation uniform coat as those worn by A.J. Hardy and J.W. Crunkleton, the subjects of the previous two images. Like them, he holds a cavalry saber and, like Crunkleton, wears reinforced cavalry trousers. The buff leather belt with US buckle is the M1840 dragoon saber belt, used by the dragoon regiments in the U.S. Army until 1856. That item may have been among the equipage captured by North Carolina forces at the U.S. Arsenal at Fayetteville in April 1861.
Image: Mrs. Virginia Colvard McMillan, granddaughter.
3.9 Lewis M. Seagle (October 26, 1844-October 24, 1924) enlisted as a private in Company G (the "Buncombe Rangers"), 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry, on June 25, 1861. During the second cavalry battle at Brandy Station (August 1, 1863), a minie ball pierced Seagle's right shoulder. A lengthy hospitalization and convalescence following, during which Seagle was married. He returned to duty on June 14, 1864, and served through December 1864, the date of the last surviving muster roll of the "Rangers." Seagle survived the war by more than fifty-nine years, but the wound in his shoulder never healed properly.
Seagle's uniform consists of a five-button dark-colored frock coat and white trousers. The object in his left hand is a small book, probably a pocket Bible or testament.
Image: Ambrotype in the possession of R. Eugene Seagle, grandson.
3.18 Wiley Alexander Barrier, a twenty-four-year-old Cabarrus County resident, was chosen second lieutenant of the the "Cabarrus Rangers" in June 1861. The "Rangers" joined the 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry as Company F; on the following September 28 Barrier was promoted to first lieutenant and transferred to Company I. Barrier was the first man to cross the Potomac River during Stuart's raid on Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and subsequent ride around the Army of the Potomac in October 1862. Following the death of Captain William J. Houston (see previous image) at Middleburg, Virginia, Barrier became captain. He served in that position until he resigned on January 28, 1865. The reason for his resignation is unknown.
Barrier is wearing a double-breasted gray frock coat, common among North Carolina officers, and sports an officer's sash around his waist. The kep in the table beside his right arm is yellow.
Image: Quarter-plate ambrotype in the possession of Mrs. Rebekah S. Morrow, descendant.
3.19 William Marcus (or Montreville) Addington (October 7, 1827-June 10, 1894) enlisted as a private in Company H (the "Jefferson Davis Macon County Guards"), 16th Regiment N.C. Troops (6th Regiment N.C. Volunteers), on May 14, 1861. In June he transferred to the 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry as "acting quartermaster" with the rank of first lieutenant. Promotion to assistant quartermaster (captain) followed in October 1861, but Addington resigned on April 15, 1862. On the same date, he received another appointment as first lieutenant and transferred to Company K (the "Nantahaha Rangers," a Macon County company), 1st N.C. Cavalry. Addington became a captain again in March or April 1863 and served through December 1864, the date of his company's last surviving muster roll. (He returned home in 1864 long enough to get married, however.)
Addington holds a cocked Colt M1849 pocket revolver, caliber .31, in his left hand. A Sheffield bowie knife and another revolver are tucked into his belt. The tongue-in-wreath buckle is of an unknown pattern.
Image: Ninth-plate tintype in the possession of John Addington, descendant.
4.2.61 The eruption of war in the spring of 1861 must inevitably have postponed the marriage plans of many young North Carolinians. Doubtless a frequent occurrence among betrothed couples was the exchange of photographs, and family tradition indeed recounts that William P. Kennedy and his fiancee, Miss Dora Davis, each carried images of the other during the war years. Kennedy, a twenty-four-year-old Duplin County resident, enlisted as a private in Company I, 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry, on June 22, 1861. He was present or accounted for on all surviving muster rolls of his company until he suffered a leg wound at the Battle of Boydton Plank Road, near Richmond, on October 27, 1864. The leg was amputated and Kennedy was evacuated to the Confederate hospital at Kittrell in Granville County (present-day Vance County). He failed to recover and died at the hospital on December 29, 1864. The image of Miss Davis [not pictured here, but image # 4.2.62 in volume one of State Troops and Volunteers] is believed to have been among his effects and was returned to the family. She returned Kennedy's image to the family at a later date. (Both photographs were preserved in the Kennedy family, and no further details about Miss Davis are known.)
Kennedy is holding an M1833 dragoon saber and is accoutered with an M1840 dragoon saber belt with buff leather and US buckle. Remarkably, he appears to be wearing exactly the same coat as the subject of another photograph in this book, Private John William Mercer, also of Company I, 1st Regiment N.C. Cavalry (see image No. 3.5). The garment is a single-breasted frock coat with North Carolina state seal buttons and yellow sergeant's chevrons. Neither Kennedy nor Mercer was a sergeant, however. Possibly the two privates, who may have been photographed the same day, borrowed the coat of a noncommissioned comrade in order to impress their friends and relations back in Duplin County.
Image: Sixth-plate ambrotype in the possession of a North Carolina collector who prefers to remain anonymous.