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B\ Billv Arthur
Angel Of Rebel Mercy
Morehead City’s Emeline Pigott brought compassion and
useful information to the Confederate cause.
You wouldn’t
believe what
Emeline Pigott
had tinder her skirt!
Kineline was a cool,
courageous and savvy
Confederate angel of
mercy and spy in the
Morehead City, New
Bern. Kinston areas,
sometimes roaming as
tar away as Concord.
She didn’t always see
the men she aided,
because day and night,
in all weather, she col¬
lected food, clothing,
medicine and mail and
left it in predetermined
hollow trees and logs
for rebels to find. She
also snooped, gathered
and passed plans of
Federal troop move¬
ments to defense
authorities in her three-
county area.
Born in Marlowe
Township of Carteret
County on December
15. 1836. Pigott was 25
yeats old when her parents. Levi and
Eliza Dennis Pigott. moved to a farm at
Crab Point on Calico Creek, now locat¬
ed inside the city limits ol Morehead
City. Just across the creek on what i'
today the Morehead City cemetery was
a garrison of troops of the ill-fated
Twenty-Sixth Regiment of North
Carolina, defending the coast against
Federal invasion.
Immediately, the compassionate
Emeline sought opportunities to care
lor the ill. homesick and wounded sol¬
diers in camp, and even in her own
home. Naturally, the comely young lady
captured the troops* attention, espe¬
cially tile officers. But she fell in love
Emeline Pigott helped the Confederate cause in many ways.
with a rank-and-filer. one Stokes
McRae. Often invited to officers’
dances, she declined because they were
oil-limits to privates. When McRae and
the* troops were* transferred to the Army
of Northern Virginia, Emeline
dreamed of his returning and their
marriage. But that day never came.
McRae was among the many Tar Heels
killed in the July 1863 Battle of
Gettysburg. She declared she would
never wed and resolved to step up her
zeal lor the Southern cause.
As a nurse she was in New Bern when
it was captured in 1862. and left on the
last train of Hat cars carrying wounded
to Kinston. From there.
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14
among the last to lice, going to
Concord. There, Pigott met a Mrs.
Brett, the widow of a Union chaplain
who was trying to return to the North.
They became friends, and Brett was
able to secure their passage through
Federal lines along the route Emeline
laid out to gel back to the Pigott farm.
The new friend settled on the coast and
married a Pigott relative.
As a spy, Emeline organized loyal fish¬
ermen to find out the cargo and desti¬
nations of manned Yankee boats while
they sold fish to them in Beaufort Inlet
and Bogue Sound. She kept this infor¬
mation. plus mail and other necessities,
hidden in large pockets tinder her
hoop skirt, even when the enemy occu¬
pied her home and farm.
She also enlisted the help of her
brother-in-law. Rufus Bell. It was said
that when she entertained Federal sol¬
diers in her home almost nightly. Rufus
took food from the pantry to
Confederates and needy sympathizers
hiding nearby.
With the Union Hag Hying over the
Beaufort customhouse at the time. |K*r-
sons entering or leaving the area had to
have clearance papers. And Emcline’s
moving alHiut both within and beyond
home base aroused suspicions of the
Federal provost marshal, a Major
Graves, hi early 1865. Graves planted
some intelligence which would be
incriminating if she were caught with it.
"With this information hid next to
her heart and her hoop skirt loaded,
she started with Ruliis Bell on her regu¬
lar rounds. This day. however, they did¬
n't pass the lines so easily. The two were
arrested and sent to jail."
So wrote the late Mildred Wallace in
a paper now held in the Southern
Historical Collection at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
No evidence was found on Bell, and
he was released. “While the officers
were* looking for someone to do the
searching (of a woman), Miss Emeline
chewed the memorandum of informa¬
tion and swallowed it." Wallace contin¬
ued. “She also tore the mail she had
gathered for distribution into small
hits."
Otherwise, Miss Emeline was indeed
and undisputably “loaded." The
February 18, 1865, issue of The Old
North State, a Federal propaganda news-
