James Stokes Taylor, aged 17....

[Bruce Vail]

James Stokes Taylor was the 17-year-old son of Lt. Jacob Wells Taylor of the 1st North Carolina Heavy Artillery when the Battle of Bentonville took place in early 1865.

Young Taylor is recorded as having held a lamp for the surgeons working on Confederate casualties at the Harper House on the evening of the battle. It's not recorded whether the surgeons were Confederate or Union doctors. The father would be wounded and captured at the battle, and then sent to a POW camp. They sent the boy home.

 

[Bruce Vail]

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This is from the Johnston County Visitors Center and is a re-enactment meant to portray what the field hospital would looked like at the time.

 

[Bruce Vail]

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