Month CatoLLna State. ktahiveb
Raietgh, Month Catalina
1858
Collection: James HARWELL Papers
1773-1907
Catawba County, N.C.
Physical Description: 133 items (including letters, bills and receipts, crop
liens, and miscellaneous manuscript and printed matter)
Acquisition: Gift, Robert William Harwell, Cary, N.C,, 1997
Description: James Harwell (1826-1886) , a Catawba County farmer, was the son
of Mason Harwell and his first wife, Peggy Lineberger. In 1847 he married
Jane Harriet Fisher by whom he had two sons born prior to the Civil War,
Henderson Hayes Harwell and William R. Harwell. His family papers include
a total of 70 letters, 46 of them written during the Civil War.
By his father's second marriage, James Harwell had a half
т
Cama Harwell, who enlisted at age 21 in Co. A, 12th North Carolina Infantry
Regiment ("the Catawba Rifles") on April 27, 1861. There are five letters
written by him to his brother James, ranging in date from June 9 to Dec. 31,
1861, and August 6, 1862. There is a sixth letter to James and Jane Harwell
written by Sgt. James Little of Company K, 23d North Carolina Infantry
Regiment, dated September 5, 1861, in which he addresses them as brother
and sister. The burden of these six letters is news of kinsmen and neigh¬
bors in the army.
The remaining Civil War letters in the collection are those of James
Harwell, his wife, and their children during the period Harwell was away
from home in military service. There is no service record for James Harwell
in surviving official records of the Confederate Army, but these letters
show that he served from at least as early as June 2, 1863, to as late as
May 3, 1864, in Company C, Mallette *s Battalion (Camp Guard). During this
period Harwell's principal duty was the rounding up of deserters from the
Confederate Army, and the last half year was spent on deserters from the
area of Bethel Church in southern Alamance County. His letters mention
specific forays against deserters, treatment of deserter's families by
the men in Mallette’s Battalion, and, earlier, the guarding of a body of
Yankee prisoners in Raleigh en route to Richmond.
