At a time before and during the Civil War, Alexander Graham (1800-1865)
and his wife, Elizabeth Purcell Graham (1806-1888), lived in a Greek
Revival cottage on the east side of the Cheraw to Fayetteville road,
now Highway 401, two miles above Gilchrist Bridge on the Lumber River,
in what was then the upper reaches of Robeson County. That part of
Robeson County where the home was located was to become a part of Hoke
County upon the formation of Hoke in 1911.

Many of the Graham neighbors were related; Mrs. Graham’s sister lived
across the road in a two story house (still standing), two of her
brothers not more than two miles distant and an uncle at Mill Prong,
three miles distant. All had large families.

The Grahams, like their other neighbors, related and unrelated, were
Presbyterian descendants of Highland Scots. Deep tragedy was unknown to
them and while the Grahams had lost two children in infancy, six others
had survived to reach their majority. Two sons served in the
Confederate army. Their lives were tranquil until the arrival of
General W.T. Sherman and his army.

Sherman arrives in state

On March 8, 1865, Gen. Sherman crossed over the North Carolina line,
having left a path of destruction in South Carolina, and camped near
Laurel Hill Presbyterian Church, ten miles south of the Graham home.
The Yankee soldiers thought the area looked "real northern like. Small
farms and nice white tidy dwellings." Torrential rains had set in and "
the roads became a sea of mud and water." Sherman remarked, "It was the
damnest marching I ever saw." "The Civil War in North Carolina" by John
G. Barrett, University of North Carolina Press, 1963, p. 301.

March 8, 1865, the day the Federals crossed into North Carolina, was
also a busy day for the Confederates. At 10:30, a dispatch from General
Beauregard in Charlotte to General Johnston in Fayetteville was as
follows: "I respectfully suggest that Governor Vance and yourself call
on the people residing along Sherman’s supposed line of march to remove
temporarily all their supplies and animals at least twenty miles to the
right or left of his flank routes."

At 12:15, Major General Wheeler sent a dispatch to Major McClellan
giving his opinion that "the main column of the enemy will move on the
road from Cheraw to Fayetteville or on roads near to and parallel to
that road as it passes through a fruitful country." Gen. Wheeler
continued that the Confederates should take possession of the Gilchrist
Bridge over Lumber River and the two bridges above it. A dispatch from
Lt. Col. Montgomery to Major Taylor recited that all three bridges had
been lost and the Confederates had retired to Antioch Church.

At 4, a dispatch from Asst.Adjutant General Anderson in Fayetteville
to General Wade Hampton stated that the detachment at Antioch Church
was " the only force known to us between this place and the enemy." "
The War of the Rebellion," a Compilation of the Official Records of the
Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1 - Volume XLVII, in three parts,
Part II Correspondence, Washington:Government Printing Office, 1895.

Antioch Presbyterian Church stands today between Red Springs and
Raeford on Highway 211, some nine miles east of Gilchrist Bridge and
the Graham home. The present church building was constructed after the
Civil War but replaced an existing building on the same site.

Enters Robeson County

On March 9, 1865, the Federals crossed the Lumber River at Gilchrist
Bridge and entered Robeson County. Gen. Sherman took refuge for the
night in Bethel Presbyterian Church, also located in Robeson County,
five miles north of Gilchrist Bridge and three miles above the Graham
home, in a "terrible storm of rain." Sherman "stretched himself out on
one of the wooden pews for the night." Someone left a pencilled memo in
the church Bible, "Mr. McNeil will please pray for old Abe - By Order
-W. T. Sherman - Major General Commanding U.S. Forces." "The Civil War
in North Carolina," pages 301 - 302.

In a typed narrative dated May 24, 1932, A.D. Currie recites his
fateful connection to the last hours of the life of Alexander Graham.
Currie, writing 67 years after the event, was likely a boy too young
for Confederate service but not too young to have the event impressed
on his psyche for the remainder of his life. Currie, from Laurinburg,
served in the North Carolina legislature as a member of the 1925 House
of Representatives.

Graham moves to "safety"

Graham, several days prior to the date of the correspondence between
Beauregard and Hampton, had acted, according to Currie, in accordance
with the spirit of the directive, Graham’s home being directly on the
Cheraw to Fayetteville road. Graham had removed, stored and arranged
his corn, wheat and meat in the barns and cribs at the residence of
John C. Currie, the father of A.D. Currie, a distance of some nine
miles from the Graham home, as it was judged to be a place of safety.

Graham used two wagons and eight mules. The mules belonged to Graham’s
daughter who had returned as a widow from her home in Mississippi. Her
servant Wash Wall accompanied her to the Graham home. According to
Currie, Wash had been "raced and chased" by the Yankees and the
daughter, while agreeing to help her father, admonished Wash to take
particular care of the mules.

Armed Graham moves again

On March 9, feeling insecure even at the Currie residence, Graham had
Wash and another servant load the two wagons with meat, proceeded
another two and a half miles from the Currie house and stationed
himself between " two little hills." Graham was armed with a pistol and
shotgun and rode a black mare to accompany the two wagons. Currie
loaned Graham his pistol and the sheepskin holder for the pistol, which
he had made himself. According to Currie, Graham stated "Let them find
(me) if they can; and if they do, I will mount my black mare and make
for Drowning Creek (Lumber River), jump off and swim across." The
Curries did not have a horse and "shanked it off" to hide at the "head
of a branch."

In the days immediately following, those in hiding returned one by one
to the Currie home, now an "ash bed," except for Graham. A servant
reported that, while in hiding, she had seen Graham chased by a "
number of Yanks and two negro men (who) were right on him."

Search party finds Graham

There was a lapse of four days from the time Graham was seen by the
Curries and the formation of a search party consisting of Dr. Colin
Bethune, A.D. Currie, his twin brother Calvin and another. They located
the starting point of the two mile "race for life." "The tracks of the
victor(y) and the victim were so well pressed in the soft ground that
the rains for quite a while made no signs of blotting out their tracks.
They showed just where the race ended and death began - the animal
circled around a big pine tree and Mr. Graham’s feet were against the
big tree, his head pointing the way they way they came from."

Calvin was the first to sight "Mr. Graham’s white hair glistening in
the distance." The pistol and shotgun were gone, along with the wagons
of meat, only Currie’s homemade pistol holder remaining. By then, it
was late in the evening and without means to carry the body, it was
left on an improvised "cooling board" after "placing his stylish top
hat on his face."

The next day, A.D Currie was deputized by his father to measure the
body for a coffin. Though his hair "stood on end," Currie managed this
assignment and, afterwards, as he had been instructed, he contacted the
community coffin maker. The coffin maker performed his function and
even provided two oxen for transportation for the 12 mile trek to the
Purcell graveyard at a speed, according to Currie, of two miles an
hour. This was his "job for anyone who might die. He made and furnished
everything. If he ever charged one cent for anyone for such work, I
would like to see (the) family who says he did."

It was a time of great devastation and disorganization. The coffin
maker dug the grave. According to Currie, the coffin maker and Graham’s
widow were the only attendants. Wash "changing his camping quarters
here and there" managed to save the eight mules belonging to the Graham
daughter and, according to Currie, had his revenge on certain
individual Yankee soldiers, which is another story.

Another tragedy

Within ten days of her husband’s death, Elizabeth Purcell Graham was to
face another tragedy. Her son, Thomas Scott Graham, was mortally
wounded on March 19, at the Battle of Bentonville and died in a
hospital in Raleigh on March 23, 1865. The graves of the father and son
rest in the Robeson County Purcell graveyard, now Hoke County.

Graham home moved

Shift forward to 1973. Ella Alderman McLean, the grandniece of
Elizabeth Purcell Graham, and her son, Alderman McLean, contacted the
author and urged a purchase of the old Graham house which had to be
moved from its original site or face demolition. The house was
purchased, moved four miles to the vicinity of the Riverton community
in Scotland County, where it stands today, after renovation. A kitchen
annex was constructed using materials from another antebellum structure
and today is a separate apartment. The house has several interesting
features: an eight foot wide center hall paneled with heart pine,
ceilings ten and a half feet tall, doors and windows of the same
height, four chimneys, one for each of the four rooms. It sits on brick
piers four feet off the ground. .

The Graham family of two parents and eight children made do with this
four room residence with a separate kitchen which probably contained a
dining room.. The house was located on a 430 acre tract belonging to
the Grahams resulting from the 1851 division of the lands of John
Purcell, the deceased father of Mrs. Graham. In the 1860 census, Graham
was listed as a farmer with 800 acres of land.

Mystery solved

Strangely enough, the story of Alexander Graham was not widely known.
The Lumber River Scots, the family history for the Grahams,
meticulously recites the birth and death dates for Mrs. Graham and all
the children, yet it does not mention the birth and death dates for
Alexander Graham nor the circumstances of his death. In addition to
Currie’s narrative, correspondence is available including a letter
dated July 12, 1937, from Dr. William A. McLeod, Presbyterian minister
in Texas, to Dr. A.C. Bethune in Raeford, referring to Alexander Graham
as having been "killed in 1865 by Sherman’s bums."

The author through the years had noticed only the co-incidence of the
date of death on the tombstone of Alexander Graham, March 9, 1865, as
being the same date that General Sherman spent the night at Bethel
Church. Since Graham was 65 years of age then, the author assumed that
the stress of the arrival of Sherman’s army had resulted in a natural
death for a man of his age at that time. The research and information
from John C. Kelly of Rockville, Maryland, descendant of local families
and native of Hoke County, and Dickson McLean, Jr. uncovered the answer
to this mystery for which the author is much indebted.