Murphy, North Carolina (2019)

From FB:

“First stop the Cherokee County Historical Museum to ask them if they knew anything about my Great Great Grandfather, Captain Campbell H. Taylor, who fought for the Confederacy in William Holland Thomas’ Cherokee Legion. The book “Cold Mountain” is all about the bushwhacking that went on along the border of Confederate North Carolina and Union Tennessee during the Civil War. It was an ugly, brutal affair and Campbell H. Taylor was in the thick of it.

(They knew nothing about the history, including a lot of stuff they definitely should have known about…)”

Murphy, North Carolina (2019)

From FB:

“The Cherokee County Courthouse, where Campbell Taylor hung a Union cavalry soldier named John Ledford from a tree after capturing him. It is also where there was an arrest warrant for Taylor for over 50 years after he and Baker Welch killed 20 year old Columbus Moss, allegedly for a pair of brass toed shoes. To escape justice, Taylor and Welch fled to “Indian Territory” (Oklahoma) to live among the Cherokees there and that is why my Dad was born in Oklahoma and why we root for the Sooners.”

Murphy, North Carolina (2019)

From FB:

“The original marker. He went to Washington, DC to petition the federal government for the seizure of his land during the Cherokee removal and stayed there for years. He made such a nuisance of himself they finally gave him a large sum of money just to shut up and go away. He never returned to his family.”

Murphy, North Carolina (2019)

From FB:

“A list of the people who supported the erection of this monument (including my Dad – whose name is at the bottom of the left hand column), which sits on a horribly ugly overgrown lot next to a decrepit auto shop.”

Murphy, North Carolina (2019)

Murphy, North Carolina (2019)

From FB:

“A recent marker for patriarch David Taylor, Sr., Campbell Taylor’s father and my Great Great Great Grandfather. A bit of a scoundrel and ne’er do well…”

Valleytown, North Carolina (2019)

Valleytown, North Carolina (2019)

From FB:

“After almost 30 minutes of searching I finally found him. The grave of Columbus Moss. The inscription reads:

“First person buried in this cemetery. He was bushwhacked by Baker Welch and Campbell Taylor who fled to Indian Territory.”

I paid my respects and apologized for what happened. I was happy to see someone left flowers there. I left mementos for my family as well.”

Valleytown, North Carolina (2019)

“Taylor tracked them until he saw where two horses had left the main lines in the direction of where Bryson lived. He followed the tracks until he found Bryson and a man by the name of Ledford at or near Bryson’s own house. Taylor halted Bryson but he would not stop and Captain Taylor shot him and Bryson still ran and was shot several times while running. Citizens were amused to see Indians wearing Bryson’s bloody uniform on the streets of Murphy the next day. “I found in his possession,” reported Taylor, “Bryson’s orders from General Burnside and his muster roll and other papers. My men all acted nobly. Marched two days without anything to eat.”

Valleytown, North Carolina (2019)

From FB:

“I went to the Moss Family Cemetery in Marble, NC to find the grave of Columbus Moss, whom Campbell H. Taylor and Baker Welch allegedly bushwhacked and killed in 1866. What spooked me was the fact there were tons of Moss family members buried here, as well as a slew of Brysons. John Ledford, whom Taylor hung at the Murphy Courthouse, was a member of Union cavalry commander Goldman Bryson’s troops. Taylor also killed Bryson during the same raid into Murphy, where members of his Cherokee unit were observed on horseback with the scalps of the Union dead…”