Four women meet in a small, nearly forgotten cemetery in northern Richmond County. Their lives span from a time when two of America’s original founders still lived, until the year that President Ronald Reagan won his re-election. Each of them was passionate, committed, and strong, making an impact not only upon her community, but on our history.

Four men — three husbands and a fiance — will join the women in this cemetery that overlooks acres of open farmland. While two of them met tragic ends, each of the men, remarkably, proved a match for his lady’s commitment and strength.

This is much more than a ghost story, and it’s all true.

You are invited to join Caroline McRae Patterson, and select members of her family, around the single grave that unites them. Relax — there’s nothing spooky here. You might spy a tractor off in the distance, or feel the breeze rustling through the trees that have grown over the site of Old Hebron Methodist Church adjacent to the cemetery.

Caroline will begin the story from her gravesite, as she should. You are seeing the youthful woman as she appeared in her daguerreotype from around 1860. Standing next to her husband, Dr. D.N. Patterson, the still-attractive Caroline begins a smile as she eyes her brother, Stokes McRae, and his fiancee, Emeline Pigott. Her smile widens as she turns her head toward her daughter, Carrie, and husband, Charles W. Tillett Sr. Caroline’s smile is radiant as she next turns to her grandson, Charles W. Tillett Jr., and his wife, Gladys Avery Tillett.

Although she may not have enjoyed similar achievements in her own young life, she is content to share in theirs, and have you join in hearing them. At first, we will focus upon Caroline, her second husband, Dr. Patterson, and what we know of them. We will also consider Caroline’s younger brother, Stokes McRae, his Civil War service, and the intriguing saga of his fiancee, a spy who operated on the state’s coast.

As a Smith, then as a Patterson, Caroline McRae became the matriarch of descendants who extend from the Civil War era until the present day. There are men and women of impressive achievements in the law, in science and medicine, and in public service.

With an amused twinkle, Caroline teases about one who underwent a “sex change” that was revealed only decades later.

After we learn of Caroline, then her brother, other installments will examine aspects of the interconnected lives of two married couples: Caroline’s daughter, Carrie, and her husband; and, Caroline’s grandson, Charles, and his wife.

Caroline McRae was born in Mangum on June 4, 1831, and died shortly before her 32nd birthday on April 30, 1863. Not much can be gleaned of her personal life, and as she was laid to rest in Old Hebron Methodist Church’s cemetery on an early May day, much of the talk among her mourners, surely, centered upon church and community doings.

Caroline married Dr. Wiley Smith in 1847 when she was just 16-years old. A son, William Alexander Smith, was born to them in 1854, and lived until 1927. Dr. Wiley Smith died in 1855.

Four years later, Caroline took Dr. Duncan Patterson, an associate of Dr. Smith, as her second husband. When Caroline died, she left their almost 4-year old daughter, Carrie, for Duncan to raise along with her son, William.

Born in 1825, Duncan Nathaniel Patterson graduated from Philadelphia’s Jefferson Medical College in 1854 before returning south. Dr. Patterson spent his career practicing locally, as well as in Anson, Stanley and Montgomery counties. He was noted for keeping abreast of the latest in medical science, and for being active in the Medical Society of North Carolina.

Dr. Patterson was a member of the Presbyterian Church of Mangum, where he served as an elder.

An edition of the North Carolina Argus newspaper of late June, 1856, highlights Duncan Patterson’s interest in politics. At a convention of delegates for the American Party in mid-June, Patterson chaired a committee for Richmond County that nominated party candidates for the state legislature. They endorsed John Gilmer for governor, and even endorsed former U.S. President Millard Fillmore as the American Party’s presidential candidate in 1856.

Four years after Caroline’s death, Duncan married 21-year old Mary Jane Christian of Montgomery County, and together they had four children. Only one of them would survive him. In fact, Mary Jane died just shy of her 29th birthday in 1875.

Interestingly, Dr. Patterson’s father-in-law, Samuel H. Christian, was appointed to the Confederate Congress, but died in early 1864 before he could take his seat.

After he had retired from the practice of medicine, Dr. Patterson traveled to Charlotte in 1904 for an extended visit with his daughter, Carrie, and son-in-law, Charles Tillett Sr. Patterson may have wanted to be present for the birth of his granddaughter, Laura, born that April when the Tilletts were both in their mid-40s. A few weeks into his visit, however, Patterson took ill, requiring him to spend time in Charlotte’s Presbyterian Hospital. As he worsened, Dr. Patterson was returned to the Tillett home on North Tryon Street where he died on June 22, 1904.

Of interest to local readers, Justice Platt D. Walker served as a pall bearer for Dr. Duncan Patterson. Likely a friend of the deceased, Walker practiced law in Rockingham with Walter Leak Steele. Platt Walker served a term in the state legislature in the 1870s, before his election to the state’s highest court in 1903. Justice Walker remained there until his death in 1923.

Stokes McRae and Emeline Pigott

News of the War Between the States would also have entered the conversations in the Old Hebron church cemetery as Caroline was laid to rest on that early May day in 1863. Indeed, at that very moment, Confederate and Union forces were clashing on the Chancellorsville battlefield in Virginia, about a week’s horseback ride from here. The Battle of Gettysburg, a crucible of the war, was eight weeks away.

Caroline’s brother, Stokes, was on duty with the 26th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, likely somewhere in Virginia. He had graduated from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) in 1856, but according to the 1860 census, Caroline may have harbored some concerns about her younger brother as he was still residing in the family home, unemployed, and well into his 20s, yet to take a wife.

All of that would change after Stokes enlisted in the Confederate Army early in July, 1861, and headed to North Carolina’s coast with the 26th Regiment. He began making rank, eventually attaining promotion to sergeant major. Stokes also met the love of his life near Morehead City.

A storied infantry regiment, the 26th North Carolina was comprised of young Tar Heel soldiers from places as far-flung as Ashe, Caldwell and Wilkes counties in the west, to Anson, Moore and Richmond counties further east. Stokes McRae enlisted in Company K of the 26th in 1861, and traveled with them to the North Carolina coast that fall.

The 26th established a camp near the Levi and Eliza Pigott farm on Calico Creek at Morehead City. In time, Levi and Eliza’s daughter, 25-year old Emeline, met and fell in love with Stokes. The two longed to marry, but decided to wait until the war was over. As a mark of her devotion to Stokes, according to one source, Emeline would refuse invitations to local social events for the regiment that did not include enlisted men.

When Stokes went into battle at New Bern on March 14, 1862, he carried a Confederate flag made for him by Emeline. Indications are that the flag was lost amidst the fight.

The 26th North Carolina participated in the siege of Fort Macon, near Beaufort Harbor, between March 23 and April 26, 1862, before heading north into Virginia. The regiment would return for more action at the North Carolina coast, and around New Bern, before being ordered north again, to be attached to General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. There is no indication that Stokes and Emeline saw each other then.

Sgt. Maj. Stokes McRae was among the regiment’s enlisted leadership by late June 1863. On July 1, the three-day Battle of Gettysburg opened with the 26th North Carolina entering the fighting northwest of the town.

That day’s action was important in laying the groundwork that would eventually decide the battle. The 26th clashed throughout the day with the Union’s vaunted “Iron Brigade,” mostly mid-westerners from Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. Both the Iron Brigade and the 26th North Carolina would sustain more than 60% casualties.

Among the 26th’s severely wounded was Emeline Pigott’s fiance. Stokes would not live to take her hand in marriage. Sgt. Maj. McRae was shot in his left thigh, fracturing his femur. He was captured and taken to the Union’s Camp Letterman Hospital at Gettysburg where he lingered for weeks until dying on Aug. 2. Stokes was buried in the camp’s cemetery for the Confederate dead.

We can only speculate, but given the nature of Civil War wounds, one can imagine an amputation that worsened, or perhaps, a compromised femoral artery that bled out.

Stokes McRae, incidentally, joined the line of about a thousand students and alumni of the University of North Carolina who performed military service during the Civil War. He was among the more than one-quarter of them who died then.

A Sons of Confederate Veterans source provides further insight into the disposal of McRae’s remains. In the early 1870s, a number of Confederate dead were exhumed and returned to the South, many of them to a cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. There was no record of McRae’s remains among them, and he may still be among the Gettysburg dead in a privately-owned 10-acre open field off the Lincoln Highway there. Negative publicity prevented the Target chain from building a store on the site some years ago. 

However she learned of her fiance’s fate, Emeline Pigott re-dedicated herself to actively serving the Southern war effort. In a November 1948, Raleigh News and Observer article, writer Lou Rogers describes Emeline as “a brave and loyal Tar Heel heroine of the Confederacy.” Rogers noted that she was rendering aid to Southern soldiers from the beginning of the war.

After McRae’s death, Emeline requested “secret service” work. Confederate officials agreed, sending her on dangerous journeys carrying dispatches inside her skirt to coastal communities. Her missions sent her into Union-occupied New Bern.

In his “Southern Greens” blog in October 2012, writer Mark Green intimates that Emeline Pigott may very well have attracted attention at the top of Union leadership. General Ulysses Grant arrived to inspect Union forces in Beaufort and Morehead City on Jan. 29, 1865. “Grant must have given orders to clean up things,” Green asserts, as Pigott was thereafter placed under surveillance and arrested 10 days later on Feb. 8.

Green also describes some 30 pounds of contraband hidden inside Emeline’s voluminous skirt, including army clothing, a pair of boots, pocket knives, razors, combs, toothbrushes and other items. 

Given the genteel treatment of even suspected enemy women at that time, Emeline refused to be searched not only by male authorities, but even by females she considered to be unacceptable. While awaiting a more thorough search in a makeshift jail — a house on Eden Street in New Bern — Emeline was able to swallow, or otherwise dispose of key documents.

Described as troublesome to her captors, Emeline appeared destined for trial and possible execution for spying and blockade running. Writer Rogers points to an unsuccessful instance where one of her captors tried to kill Pigott by administration of chloroform.

Without explanation, Emeline was released from custody, though she remained under the scrutiny of Union authorities. There are indications she knew of some local men who harbored Union sympathies, and threatened to publicly reveal them unless they prevailed upon authorities to spare her.

As the war neared its end, according to a SCV source, Emeline learned of a severely wounded soldier from Stokes’ old outfit, the 26th North Carolina. She had him brought to the Pigott farm where she tried to nurse him back to health. Emeline never learned his name, and after he died, had him buried in the family plot. She tended the grave until her own death.

In the years following the war, Emeline Pigott remained in the Morehead City area, although she never married. She founded a chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which eventually bore her name. The loyal fiancee who never donned her wedding dress, and rendered espionage service to her home state, lived for a half-century after the war, and is buried in the Pigott family cemetery.

Next:  The Richmond County couple who would change the Queen City over a half-century.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in The Richmond Observer.