because he had his eye on 

 Nancy — no one is sure. 



At any rate, the years 

 passed. Charles married, had 

 two sons and became chief 

 justice of the Supreme Court in 

 Arizona, a territory at the time. 

 Nancy had suitors, but she 

 rejected them all, hoping that 

 Charles would return. She lived 

 alone for years before the 

 postmaster, wanting to clear his 

 conscience, confessed to her 

 what he had done. When 

 Charles was 67 and his wife had 

 died, he wrote to the new 

 Beaufort postmaster and asked 

 if Nancy was still in town and 

 whether she had married. The 

 postmaster wrote back, saying 

 that Nancy was there, had not 

 married and was dying of "the 

 gallopin' consumption" or 

 tuberculosis. Charles came, 

 found Nancy and married her. 

 Three weeks later, in 1886, she 

 died. 



Pierre (1812-1 887) and 

 Annie Henry (1816-1904) 

 were African-American leaders 

 in the education of emancipated 

 slaves and their children at the 

 Washburn Academy. Pierre was born 

 free during the period of slavery. The 

 school was one of many established in 

 the South by the Congregational 

 Churches of the North following the 

 Civil War. 



Jechonias Willis, a Confederate, is 

 one of two Beaufort men killed in 1862 

 when Fort Macon was captured by 

 federal troops. Beaufort members of the 

 garrison were brought home on a flat 

 and released on parole. The body of 

 Willis was brought at the same time. 

 Gen. Ambrose Burnside stood at the 

 wharf witnessing the reunion between 

 soldiers and family. Then, as the pine 

 box containing the body of Willis was 

 claimed by sorrowing loved ones, 

 sympathetic tears were said to have 

 rolled down the Union general's cheeks. 



Josiah Pender led a group of 50 

 men who seized Fort Macon more than a 



Otway Bums' s grave in Beaufort 



month before North Carolina seceded 

 from the Union in 1861. An improvised 

 Confederate flag was raised in place of 

 the national colors. Confederate forces 

 held the fort more than a year before it 

 was retaken by Gen. Burnside. Pender 

 led a secessionist militia group that he 

 outfitted at his own expense. He died of 

 yellow fever in 1864. 



George Davis was a doctor in 

 Beaufort until the 1930s. He and his 

 father Josiah Davis practiced medicine 

 in the apothecary shop now on the 

 Beaufort Historic Site. When the 

 younger Davis was just launching his 

 medical practice, his sister came to him 

 to deliver her baby. The birth went 

 badly, however, and mother and child 

 died. Davis was so traumatized that he 

 never again attempted a delivery, he 

 never married because he didn't want to 

 be responsible for putting a woman 

 through childbirth, and he wore black 



for the rest of his life. 



Jacob Shepard and Sarah 

 Gibbs are buried side-by-side, 

 but Sarah was married to 

 Nathaniel Gibbs when she died. 

 Shepard had been her first 

 husband, a seaman who sailed 

 away one day and didn't return. 

 Eventually, Sarah remarried and 

 was living happily with Gibbs 

 when Shepard unexpectedly 

 returned from being shipwrecked 

 on a remote island. The men got 

 together and decided that Sarah 

 would continue to live with 

 Gibbs. her second husband, but 

 she'd spend eternity with 

 Shepard. So. when she died in 

 1792 at age 52, Gibbs lived up to 

 the bargain and buried his wife 

 with Shepard. 



Col. William 1 homson, 

 Beaufort's highest ranking 

 officer in the Revolutionary War, 

 is buried in a grave marked by a 

 simple stone. Born in 1732, the 

 same year as George Washing- 

 ton, he lived until 1802. 

 Thomson was part of a militia 

 that fought the British in the 

 Charleston area, and he was 

 instrumental in getting state status for the 

 North Carolina colony. Declared "the 

 most influential merchant of his day," he 

 served the town, county and province in 

 many offices and was a delegate to the 

 Convention at Hillsborough and to the 

 Provisional Congress at Halifax. 



A.P. died in 1756, the oldest legible 

 date on a tombstone in the Old Burying 

 Ground. The grave, however, isn't the 

 oldest there. The earliest records were 

 kept by the Church of England. But 

 during the American Revolution, some 

 Anglicans loyal to King George III fled 

 to Canada and took the cemetery records. 

 A.P. is possibly Abigail Parker, child of 

 Reuben and Jane Parker. 



Lafayette Leecraft was a young 

 doctor who died in 1864. His broken 

 marker has two interesting stories. One 

 is that Leecraft belonged to a doctors' 

 fraternity that dictated its members' 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 9 



