J.A. Bolton | Thompson Family Reunion Part II

After we had dinner on the grounds of Stoney Fork Baptist Church, our family would wander down the hill to where the cemetery was. There would be stories told about our ancestors. A lot of these stories would be about Sidney Washington Thompson, my great-grandpa, like how at age 19 he volunteered to serve in the Confederate Army. He was in Co. F, 44th Regiment North Carolina Troops. There he was trained as a sharpshooter and was sent to Northern Virginia to serve under General Lee.

In Virginia, Sidney fought at places like Tranter’s Creek, South Anna, Bristo Station and the Battle of the Wilderness. It was at the Wilderness battle that Sidney was wounded in his leg but it wasn’t long before he returned to duty.

Finally, during the battle at Burgess Mill, Oct. 27, 1864, at some point during the battle Sidney and his entire regiment were cut off from their main division. The entire regiment was captured and soon transported to Maryland and confined at Point Lookout as prisoners of war. There he remained until the end of the war.

Few of us can even imagine what conditions might have been like at Point Lookout or even for that matter in our southern prisons like Andersonville. Prison conditions were nothing but deplorable. Bad water, rations that were minimal, disease, and just being shot if you crossed a certain line; were a common day in the prison yard. Records show that as many as 14,000 Confederate soldiers died while at Point Lookout, but the Lord was with Sidney and he made it through.

When the war was over Sidney was released and somehow made his way back to Montgomery County, N.C.

The very next year old Sidney met and married a young girl by the name of Mary. As the years went by that union produced 10 children, one of which was my grandmother Lily.

After the cemetery tour, and hearing all the stories, my family would all load up and ride the two miles over to Sidney’s old homeplace. The old house was still standing with its wooden shingles and wide lightered boards as siding. The house was held up with large rocks and wasn’t underpinned. Why you could be inside and see chickens walking under the house. The house was still being lived in by a great uncle of mine by marriage. His name was Henry Randles. Henry was an old-time character with a bushy mustache. He wore suspenders and was always chewing and spitting “tobacee,” as he called it. Old Henry was a decent sort of fellow but folks said he was so tight he could give you change back out of a penny.

In the yard there was an old, old grapevine, you know the type that grew on a cedar arbor. The grapes should have been good and ripe about the time of the reunion but most of the time there was nary a ripe grape on the vines. It so happened that Henry was picking all the ripe ones off on Sat. before the reunion. He was placing them in a number ten wash tub and putting the tub in his root cellar which always stayed locked.

The week after he would start making himself some homemade wine, don’t you know. Well, everything was going good for old Henry until one day he got to nipping a little too much of his own brew. It seems somehow he managed to wobble down the dirt road to his neighbors. That’s when he got to bragging about how he’d been hiding them grapes in his sellar of his’en for years. Y’all know it didn’t take long for folks to start asking more about the wine, old Henry was making, instead of how his grapes were doing.

Next week we’ll be going across the hollow to visit Uncle L.D.’s and Rilla’s house and slowly wind this here story of the Thompson Reunion down.