A Surprise At Monument Ceremony Honoring 51 Confederates
Boyette had traveled from his home in LaGrange, N.C., to Fredericksburg to attend an event sponsored by the local Sons of Confederate Veterans group, Matthew Fontaine Maury Camp 1722. He belongs to Goldsboro Rifles Camp 760 in Goldsboro, N.C. The event was the unveiling of a monument honoring 51 Confederate soldiers buried in an unmarked cemetery in downtown Fredericksburg, on Barton Street, at the edge of what used to be a potter’s field. The four big battles fought in the area, starting with the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, had not yet occurred when the 51 men were buried. They were among Confederate troops on garrison duty nearby since the start of the war. Sickness claimed the lives of a number of those men, and they had to be buried somewhere. The city had purchased the land along Barton Street in the fall of 1861 and designated it for the burial of Confederate soldiers. No record has been found indicating the bodies buried there were ever moved. The unmarked graves now presumably lie several feet beneath the parking lot in front of a luxury condominium. Built in the 1920s as Maury School, the renovated facility is known today as Maury Commons. SCV Virginia Division Commander John N. Sawyer had contacted the respective division commanders for the six states besides Virginia that had soldiers buried there. One of them, North Carolina Division Commander Thomas Smith Jr., informed Sawyer that upcoming surgery would prevent him from attending and said his chief of staff [Boyette] would be there in his place. When Sawyer contacted Boyette, he sent him the list of 11 North Carolina soldiers buried in the Barton Street cemetery. Boyette noticed the first soldier in the list shared his surname. After a little research, he found that Pvt. William S. Boyette was from Duplin County, where all his Boyette ancestors lived. However, he had never heard of a William in that generation of his family. Boyette could not find any information linking him to this soldier from an online genealogy service. On a lark, however, he tried some alternate spellings of his surname. By checking the 1850 and 1860 censuses for Duplin County he came up with some families where the given names of the members matched the ones he knew to look for, and included a boy named William. Before believing that he was related to William Sherwood Boyette, Boyette took his information to professional genealogist Charlotte Carrere. She confirmed that the “Boytto” family in the 1850 census and the “Boyt” family in the 1860 census were in fact his Boyette ancestors. Late in the morning of April 18 as members of the Matthew Fontaine Maury camp prepared for the afternoon ceremony, word began to circulate that a descendant of one of the 51 buried men would be present. Boyette, with his wife Wendy and granddaughter Haleigh Mooring, arrived early and decided to share his big surprise with Roy B. Perry Jr., the camp’s first lieutenant commander and leader of the Barton Street cemetery monument project. Perry told camp adjutant Dale Hundley and both of them told camp commander John D. Martin Jr. and me, the chief of staff. The SCV camp has been involved in this project for more than two years and o living descendants of the 51 soldiers had been found. Boyette’s news generated a lot of excitement, to say the least. As master-of-ceremonies, I didn’t want to give away Boyette’s big surprise. I left it up to him to mention when he made a few remarks on behalf of the SCV North Carolina Division regarding the 11 North Carolinians buried there. “The first name on the roll is my great-great-uncle, Pvt. William S. Boyette, 18 years of age, North Carolina 1st Cavalry, Co. I, from Duplin County, N.C. Born in 1843, died of disease in November 1861. “His parents,” Boyette continued, “were my great-great-grandparents, Hardy and Mary Boyette. They were turpentine farmers that owned no slaves…. The Boyette family were plain and simple people that bore no malice to anyone and were defending their right to remain so.” Before introducing the next speaker, I told the audience that Boyette was the first living descendant of the 51 soldiers that we’d ever met and how special it was to have him at the ceremony. Camp 1722 member Thomas E. Hughes, a 21st-century Episcopal minister, portrayed 19th-century Episcopal minister the Rev. Alfred M. Randolph at the ceremony. The Rev. Randolph, of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Fredericksburg, officiated at the burials of the 51 soldiers from October 1861 to March 1862. His records were crucial in documenting who the 51 men were. Boyette assisted Sawyer in uncovering the new monument. Then Hughes read the names inscribed on the bronze plaque affixed to the granite base of the monument. It was the climax of the ceremony. There weren’t many dry eyes in Camp 1722 at that moment. “It was a perfect day,” Boyette said later. “I was just in awe all day long. They treated us like kings that day.” |
