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Collection: NEY, PETER STUART [STEWART], PAPER[S] P.C..-Q-.:1
[Rowan County, N, C.]
1908, 1972, n.d.
Physical Description: 3 items; reminiscence, dictionary page, lecture.
Acquisition: Biennial Report, 1914-1916, reminiscence presented by the
Honorable 0. H. Allen, Kinston; xerox copy of lecture sent by P. Martin,
1 Impasse des Ecuries, 78 Versailles, France;
Description: Peter Stewart Ney, according to his declaration of intent
to become an American citizen in Bennettsville, S. C. in 1820, was born
in Scotland, 1787. He died in- Rowan County in 1846. From 1819 until
1846 he taught in schools, mainly in North Carolina, but also in South
Carolina and Virginia. The widely-held belief that he was actually
Marshal Michel Ney who served with Napoleon has been given extensive
treatment in print, expecially in the following books: James Weston,
Historic Doubts as to the Execution of Marshal Ney. 1895; J. Edward
Smoot, Marshal Ney; Before and After Execution, 1929; and Legette Blythe,
Marshal Ney, A Dual Life. 1937.
In this collection is a nine-page manuscript, "Reminiscences of
Peter Stewart Ney, the Great Marshal of France," written by one of Ney’s
pupils, James H. Foote, Roaring River, Wilkes County, 1908. Mr. Foote
records his schoolboy memories of Ney, quotes two poems, by Ney and the
text of a letter from the "son of your old school teacher who was the
great Marshal of France. s/E. M. C, Neyman," Saltillo, Indiana, March
18, 1908. .
Also included is a negative photostat of a page from a Latin dic¬
tionary with the signature "Peter S. Ney" on the margin "presumed to be
one of the books in a library bought by Dr. James Henning Lane, near
Bennettsville, S. C., date of purchase unknown"; and a photocopy of a
lecture delivered by Mrs. Dorothy MacKay Quynn at the l'Institut Napoleon
in 1950 and published in the Revue de l'Institut Napoleon, No. 125, Oct-
Dec, 1972. The title of the lecture, which was based on a manuscript
