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Following the Battle of Averasboro March 15th & 16th,
1865 eighteen year old Janie Smith (July 26, 1846 - August 15th, 1882)
penned on scraps of wallpaper a letter to her friend Janie Robeson in
Bladen County. (Janie Wright Robeson married Edwin T. MacKethan, of
 Fayetteville, NC.) Janie, a daughter of Farquhard and Sarah Slocumb Grady
Smith lived at the family plantation house named "Lebanon". She had nine
brothers and five sisters who lived to maturity.
One sister died a decade before Gettysburg and one brother died in Texas
in 1860.Eight of her brothers served with the Confederate forces. Janie
attended a female seminary at Charlotte, NC, for a period of time, and
later became the second wife of Dr. R. R. Robeson, already her
brother-in-law. They lived near what is now Godwin, NC,at a place called
Kyle's Landing. Both are buried in Old Bluff Cemetery. This letter, which
is featured here at the Averasboro Battlefield Museum provides a
remarkable glimpse into Janie Smith's chaotic world in March & April 1865.
The original letter is in the Mrs. Thomas H. Webb Collection at the North
Carolina State Department of Archives & History in Raleigh. The Farquhard
Smith's wartime home stands today still occupied by Smith
descendants. This house was a hospital during the battle, where mostly
Confederate wounded were treated. It is said that amputated arms and legs
were piled outside after being tossed out windows by surgeons, and blood
covered the floorboards. After the battle Union general Henry Slocum
made Lebanon his headquarters. The two other Smith plantation houses, "Oak
Grove" and "The William T. Smith House", also were used as field hospitals
and still stand on the battlefield. Chicora Civil War Cemetery located on
the battlefield is the gravesite of fifty-six Confederate casualties of
the battle
Janie
Smith's Letter, April 12, 1865 Opens in New Window |
