This Irish-born soldier signed his name at the Warren House, caught up in the decisive Battle of Jonesboro. What became of John W. Dunlava of the 34th Illinois?

Sgt. John Dunlava (regimental history, his signature inside and the exterior of Jonesboro's Warren House (Picket photos)

John William Dunlava was here (Ireland), here (Lynville, Ill.) here (Calcasieu Parish, La.) and, later in life, here (Arthur, N.D.).

For purposes of this blog post, Union Sgt. John Dunlava most importantly was here – the Warren House in Jonesboro, Ga. And he wanted those who came later to know it. Employing large, loopy letters, Dunlava signed his name on an interior wall.

The Warren House, built in 1840, has since then been a wedding and events venue and, currently, an office for psychological therapy. On Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 1864 -- 162 years ago this week -- the residence was at the center of the Battle of Jonesboro, a stunning Confederate loss that resulted in the capitulation of Atlanta.

The Warren House was used as a field hospital and headquarters by Rebel troops until taken by the Union on Sept. 2, 1864, for the same use.

“Captured by the 52nd Illinois Infantry, signatures of convalescing Union soldiers still appear on the walls of the downstairs parlor,” the facility website says. (Picket photo, above). It's possible some of the names are not of soldiers. Some other signatures, including that of Dunlava, are in an upstairs room.

Dunlava (pronounced Dunlavey) served in Company E, of the 34^th Illinois, which was in the thick of things at the decisive battle at Jonesboro.

“Looks like they were in the 4 p.m. attack that overran (Daniel) Govan’s brigade and two artillery batteries. Govan was captured and later exchanged for (George) Stoneman,” said Charlie Crawford, president emeritus of the Georgia Battlefields Association.

The exchange in October would include most of Govan's captured men.

I could not tell from a search of online records whether Dunlava was wounded at Jonesboro. And it’s hard to tell whether he left his signature in 1864 or came back to visit the site. Some of the writing on the wall dates to the 1870s, suggesting veterans traveled back to visit battlefields.

Why point out Dunlava?

Good question, and here is my answer. It’s the one name that was legible and I could connect with a service record and biographical details.

So I went down a rabbit hole, scouring the internet for anything I could find about the man, who emigrated to the United States after the Irish potato famine and farmed in the Midwest and the Northern Plains.

A regimental history published in 1902, three years before Dunlava died at age 64, provides some details on his Civil War service. (Photo, findagrave.com)

For whatever reason, he did not much keep up with old pards and is not listed in a list of 34^th veterans attending an 1897 reunion.

“He says he has not met a 34^th man for thirty years, except Capt. J.M. Myers, of Company H, whom he met on a train, between Chicago and Polo, Ill.,” the history says.

As for the house where he left his name? It's currently for sale with a $1.2 million asking price. 

"The Warren House is more than real estate-it's an opportunity to steward a living piece of history while unlocking its commercial potential," says an eXp Realty listing on Georgia MLS.

He sailed from Ireland to start a new life

John Dunlava was born in County Mayo, Ireland, in June 1840. He moved to the United States in 1858 and, like more than 170,000 fellow Irishmen, joined the Federal army.

Signatures of several individuals are encased behind a covering on the back wall (Georgia MLS)

At the time Fort Sumpter was fired on in April 1861, he was attending school in St. Louis, Mo., and "saw the ‘Elephant’ before he appeared to the general public,” said the regimental history.

“Seeing the elephant” was a 19^th-century metaphor for obtaining hard-earned experience, such as in combat.

Known as the “Rock River Rifles,” the 34^th Illinois was organized at Camp Butler in September 1861. Dunlava was right there from the start; he reenlisted at some point.

The regiment fought throughout the Western Theater, from Stones River to Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign, including Kennesaw Mountain, the March to the Sea and the Carolinas Campaign.

By late August 1864, Atlanta was not yet subdued and a few supply lines were still available to Confederate troops.

Map of battlefield that appeared in 1902 volume about the 34th Illinois

“Sherman determined that if he could destroy the Macon & Western and Atlanta & West Point Railroads to the south the Rebel army would be forced to evacuate the city,” says the American BattlefieldTrust. To counter Sherman, Hood sent Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee with two corps to halt the Union movement.

“On August 31, Hardee attacked west of Jonesborough but was easily repulsed. Fearing a direct attack on Atlanta, Hood withdrew one corps from Hardee’s force that night. The next day, a Union attack broke through Hardee’ s troops, which retreated south.

The 34th was among those to break Rebel line

The author of the regimental history details the Federal assault by the 14th Corps against worn-down Rebels at Jonesboro. The attackers achieved a rare success for those going against heavily fortified defenses..

"By several accounts, the attacking Confederates on 31 August lost any enthusiasm for the attack before getting close to the U.S. Army lines. Both C.S. and U.S. generals remarked that the usual Southern élan for the offensive was lacking, and the soldiers seemed to forego further advances well before being ordered to retreat," said Crawford.

Confederate POWs under guard after capture (Harpers Pictorial History of the Civil War)

The 34th Illinois and other regiments in the Sept. 1 attack knew they were in for a fight.

“Kenesaw (sic) was now two months old, and quite forgotten," says its history. "There was a saucy foe in front and a sure chance for a fight, with a fairly good chance of giving him a threshing (sic).”

The attack netted about 600 prisoners and eight artillery pieces. Total Confederate casualties for Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 numbered between 1,400 and 2,200. Those captured were close to 900.

The 34th Illinois, which assisted the 78^th Illinois, had five killed and 14 wounded at Jonesboro. From May to Sept. 20, 1864, it suffered about 125 casualties.

The writer of the history, Sgt, Edwin Payne of Company A, described rudimentary field hospitals. Regarding one, “There were forty-nine cases of amputation at the hospital, this writer contributing a right arm to the general assortment of such discovered appendages.”

The loss of the Macon & Western Railroad near Jonesoboro left Atlanta isolated and largely unsupplied. On the evening of Sept. 1, Hood finally evacuated Atlanta, which surrendered to Federal troops on Sept. 2.  

The Warren House (above, Picket photo) was just one of many hospital sites trying to save lives on both sides.

“For many years, a bullet lodged in the wall and cannonballs in the yard were evidence of the proximity of heavy fighting,” says an historical marker outside the home, which is located at 102 W. Mimosa Drive, off busy Jonesboro Road.

I visited the house several years ago and took photographs of the signatures, which are preserved under a clear covering. I couldn’t make out enough words to connect them with a specific soldier, as I did with Dunlava.

“Willi Wood” may be a reference to 34^th officer William S. Wood. The “am” in William likely faded away with time.

Two more names at the end of the long panel in house; click to enlarge (Picket photo)

Veteran, wife endured ups and downs of life on the Plains

Dunlava stayed with the army until October 1864, when he received a 20-day furlough and went home.

“Upon his return, the Army had started on the ‘March to the Sea,’ and he remained in Chattanooga, with Lieutenant Hall, of his Company, until March 1865, and then went, by way of New York, to Morehead City and Goldsboro, and joined his Regiment, 17 miles beyond Raleigh, N.C., and was mustered out as a Sergeant, at Louisville, Ky.,” says the regimental history. His service ended July 12, 1865.

Dunlava is listed in most census forms as a farmer. By 1870, he was living, apparently unmarried, near Lake Charles, La.

The lure of the Great Plains, specifically North Dakota, drew Dunlava and other settlers bent on obtaining land and making their mark on the agricultural expanse.

He met a divorced Clara Seager, seven years his junior, on the Amenia Sharon Land Company's farm at Amenia in spring 1880 (photo, above). The company built a depot and, later, a grain elevator at the nearby Northern Pacific tracks.

“John was one of the farm hands on this farm of 30,000 acres. Clara cooked for the crew of 30 men,” says a page on Digital Horizons, a consortium of institutions celebrating life on the Northern Plains. The account comes from a 1962 history of Arthur, N.D.

“They were married in 1880 and went to live on John's homestead; the NW1 h of Section 30 of Arthur Township. Here they lived through many vicissitudes the next twenty-five years; drought, grasshoppers, hail, chinch bugs, rust and blizzards.”

The couple had several children; Clara had two from her first marriage.

John died May 3, 1905, and is buried in Erie, N.D. Clara moved with family the next year and died in 1920 in Roscoe, S.D. She was 72.

These names speak of lives long gone

Soldiers have long left their mark at places associated with battles and campaigns. There are several other sites in the South bearing scrawled names and graffiti.

This appears to be by a soldier with the 69th Ohio, which was at Jonesboro. This is downstairs (Picket photo)

The Warren House features several names, dates and poems. A history on its website said they were discovered during repairs made in the mid-1930s. The names include Robert Sullivan, James B. Washington and George W. Harding.

“During the Battle of Jonesboro bodies of the dead and wounded were reputedly piled three deep in the grounds behind the Warren House,” according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Crawford, of the GBA, said when he leads tours of Jonesboro or speaks about the Atlanta Campaign, he mentions that of all the engagements during the campaign, there was only one in which the attacking force was largely successful, and that would be Jonesboro

"When the 1993 Civil War Sites Advisory Commission report evaluated the 384 battles it considered, only two battles in Georgia were ranked as Class A -- i.e., having a decisive influence on a campaign and a direct impact on the course of the war," he added. "Those two battles were Chickamauga and Jonesboro. How great it is that Chickamauga was the first battlefield created as a national military park, and how sad it is that Jonesboro is totally unprotected."

Dr. Jack Farrar, who operates Mind Synch, a neuroscience center, bought the house in 1994. He provided mental health services there before revamping it as an event venue in 2012. Those services were largely curtailed after Covid-19 and the house is home to the therapy practice, says Farrar's daughter Sarah (Photo of exterior, Civil War Picket)

Rear of the Warren House can be seen just off Jonesboro Road (Georgia MLS)

Sarah Farrar told the Picket the house, zoned commercial, could be used for a business, residence or bed and breakfast. The family prefers that it be preserved and keep most of its character.

A 2014 article in the Clayton News Daily quoted Jack Farrar as saying soldiers were moved to a dying room when nothing else could be done for them after the battle.

"The surrounding land was once marked by visible breastworks, and relics such as Minie balls were commonly found on the grounds," says the real estate listing.

Was Dunlava wounded at Jonesboro? Visiting a comrade who was? Or just stopped by out of curiosity?

If only his signature could tell.

If you fuze, you may not lose. Tiny artillery components exhibited at the National Civil Naval Museum provide proof of ingenuity in small packages

Many Civil War artillery shells featured fuzes that were inserted into the top of the round. They increased reliability and reduced failures to detonate.

The National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Ga, provides examples in an exhibit case filled with gun tools and devices. (Picket photos)

One of the artifacts came from the wreckage of the CSS Jackson (Muscogee) ironclad, which was manufactured in Columbus and set afire by Union troops when they took the city in April 1865.

A member of a salvage team that raised the wreck from the Chattahoochee River in the early 1960s kept a few items, including a fuze for one of the six Brooke rifles employed by the Jackson. The man’s daughter donated the artifact a few years ago, says museum director Brandon Gilland.

“I started working on this piece right away,” Gilland told me. The fuze was encrusted in grime.

Former curator Jeff Seymour dropped by one day and told Gilland the fuze may still be live.

“You can’t put a live fuze on display,” said Gilland who used brushes and toothpicks to disassemble the fuze and remove the black powder and paper wadding (Note: only those trained in ordnance should attempt to do this.)

The fuze would have been used for a 6.4-inch or 7-inch shell on the ironclad. Gilland says the top says “10 SEC” to describe the time of desired detonation for the shell.

Gilland said he does not know who manufactured this fuze.

Next to it is a Confederate fuze igniter, or friction primer, made by C.A. McEvoy of Richmond , Va. McEvoy invented the igniter and it went into service in 1863.

The Horse Soldier store, which sells Civil War equipment and uniforms, provided thisdescription when it sold one of the McEvoy friction primers. The item included a wood cylinder, lead weight and a wire pin.

“Instead of relying on the discharge of the artillery piece to ignite the paper time fuses, McEvoy adapted the principle of the friction primer.”

“The lead weight … had a small hole running its length and was filled with a fulminate compound. A serrated wire ran through the lead and was suspended by a cross pin through the wood cylinder. Upon firing, the set-back force cause the lead piece to be pulled free, igniting the fulminate and in turn the paper time fuse underneath.”

READ MORE ABOUT THE MUSEUM:

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/04/quick-hits-national-civil-war-naval.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/03/if-youre-fan-of-craftsmanship.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2025/04/its-bid-to-build-two-effective.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2025/03/holly-wait-led-national-civil-war-naval.html

At Vicksburg, woven gabions were used to build trenches and protect soldiers. A new retaining wall there features a modern version to prevent further road washouts

Grant Circle retaining wall, detail of mesh and stone gabions (NPS); old ones at Battery Hickenlooper (Library of Congress)

A giant new retaining wall at Vicksburg National Military Park – part of a $7.4 million project to restore a tour road damaged by heavy rain in 2020 -- features a modern use of gabions, a common feature in fortifications at the Civil War battlefield.

While the 50-foot gabion basket at Grant Circle is made of heavy wire mesh and stone and is meant to improve road stability and drainage, those erected 160 years ago were open-ended and made of woven baskets filled with whatever material soldiers could muster. They were built to protect men.

The National Park Service found the comparison worthy of note in its recent announcement the project at Grant Circle and North Union Avenue had been completed.

Gabions bookend recreated section of Fort Garrott (Vicksburg National Military Park)

“During the (1863) siege, both armies used gabion baskets woven with cane reeds and filled with earth and stone to strengthen trenches and ramparts. While the materials have changed, the core engineering remains the same to reinforce an 1863 fortification or a present-day road,” the agency said.

A large portion of the Vicksburg project included the retaining wall, intended to improve road slope stability and allow water to pass through, reducing the risk of drainage pipe failures.

The historic gabions were a cylindrical basket, open at both ends. When filled with dirt, they could be used as a revetment to form parapets on trenches, according to the park. Both sides would have used gabions in the construction of their fortifications.

Trench line with gabions and tree trunks at Coonskin's Tower at Vicksburg

The Federal army used them to help construct trenches they dug across the Vicksburg landscape as part of the successful siege. Battery Hickenlooper was a prime example.

It was hot work.

In order to dig those trenches, soldiers would have to construct gabions and sap rollers, which were used to dig approach trenches and enabled troops to have cover as they advanced on the Confederate position, the park said in an old Facebook post about fortifications.

Troops turned to giant cane (Arundinaria gigantea), a fast-growing bamboo found across the Deep South. “It became a lifesaver during the Siege of Vicksburg. Soldiers used it to build fascines (bundled cane walls) and gabions (earth-filled baskets) to reinforce trenches and fortifications.” (At left, example of gabions at Fort Sedgwick (Fort Hell) at Petersburg, Va. Library of Congress)

A soldier with a Minnesota artillery battery wrote a June 1863 letter mentioning the features at Vicksburg:

“The embrasures, through which we fire, are made by setting up gabions on each side of the space left for the embrasure, where they are staked down and filled with earth. A gabion is made of stakes, with grapevines, young cane or flexible bushes woven through them, so as to form a hollow cylinder something like a large willow basket without the bottom, only much longer.

"The stakes are left projecting at one end some distance beyond the wicker work, and when the gabion is put in its place these projecting ends are driven into the ground and the gabion is filled with dirt. When we first came into the work the embrasures were not lined with gabions, and the consequence was that in one day's firing we blew out the embrasures so wide that a two horse wagon could have been driven through one of them.”

Before and after view of road section at Grant Circle (Vicksburg NMP)

The completion of the road project means the entire 16-mile tour road is now open to visitors for the first time since 2020, when heavy rainfall created a landslide.

Additional work at Grant Circle included milling and asphalt paving, new striping, curb and gutter replacements and installation of a new drainage system on the west side of the circle. 

Along North Union Avenue, work crews installed 900 aggregate piers under the new roadway as reinforcement to improve vertical load transfer and reduce the risk of lateral soil failure, the park said.

Before and after section of North Union Avenue (Vicksburg NMP)

The Friends of Vicksburg National Military Park helped advocate for the funding.

“The completed project includes improvements to drainage, erosion control, and ground stabilization to help keep these roads open for years to come,” the group said Monday. “This is a success our supporters can take pride in.”

The bedridden Widow Henry was killed by artillery fire in the chaos of First Manassas. The park now has her drop-leaf table that was struck by two bullets

Bullet damage along top of leaf and on pedestal (Manassas NBP) and ruins of home (Library of Congress)

The drums of war were beating in Washington, D.C., and the Confederacy’s Northern Virginia in late May 1861, when Hugh Fauntleroy Henry wrote home. His sister Ellen was living with their mother Judith at Spring Hill Farm at rural Manassas.

"Should troops be passing about the neighborhood, you and mother need not fear them, as your entire helplessness, I should think, would make you safe,” said the schoolteacher working in Alexandria, across the river from the capital.

He could not have been more wrong.

Two months later, the property was a maelstrom of ringing gunfire and accompanying bloodshed. The Civil War’s first great battle raged on Henry Hill, and Ellen and Judith were trapped in the middle.

Believing no civilians were inside, and firing upon Confederate sharpshooters, a Union artillery battery pulverized the home, fatally wounding Judith and wounding Ellen and Lucy Griffith, an enslaved girl. Judith Carter Henry, who was confined to bed, is considered the first civilian casualty of the war.

The 1870 rebuilt Henry House and the famous Henry Hill monument at Manassas (Picket photo)

Another casualty apparently was a drop-leaf table that belonged to the family.

“There are two bullets embedded in the table,” said Manassas National Battlefield Park museum specialist Jim Burgess. “One bullet bore a hole through the lower leaf and embedded in the central pedestal of the table while another bullet was stopped by the leaf but caused a crack in the entire length of the leaf along the grain."

The park was unaware of the table until last year, when a Vermont man reached out and asked whether it might be interested in purchasing the piece. Money was needed to pay for care for the table’s owner, said the friend, who had a power of attorney.

A typed note with the table provided details on its story. 

Park officials agreed to pay more than $10,000 for the antique.

 “It was a once in a lifetime acquisition,” added Burgess. “It certainly has plausibility.”

Sketch of Henry House by Capt. Leon Fremaux of the 8th Louisiana shortly after the battle

The curator hopes the table will one day go on exhibit with expanded information on the poor widow Judith Henry, who was 84 or 85 when she was killed.

“We certainly want to put it on exhibit once we have room for it,” said Burgess, adding that would require renovation to the visitor center and museum.

The provenance of the table is a little fragmented.

Like many historic items that turn up years later, the furniture has made a circuitous journey, including ownership by a renowned surgeon.

Henry House was in constant line of fire that day

Warder & Catlett map of First Manassas, note Henry House at center left)

The table likely originally belonged to Elizabeth "Betsy" Carter, daughter of Landon Carter Jr. of Pittsylvania house, and sister of Judith Carter Henry. 

When Elizabeth died in 1822, her home, Spring Hill Farm, and the table passed to Judith. Officials have not analyzed the wood furniture, which may date to the late 18^th century.

Judith’s husband, Isaac, a surgeon who served with the U.S. Navy, died in 1829. A portrait, of Isaac now belonging to the park (right), hung in the home during the battle.

The afternoon of July 21, 1861, was pure chaos as Confederate and Union forces exchanged ground on Henry Hill. Union Capt. James B. Ricketts turned his guns on the home, trying to kill or chase off sharpshooters.

Legend has it that Judith had been carried earlier from the house on a mattress but brought back inside to the second floor to obtain some form of safety. It wasn’t enough

Amid a cascade of splinters, boards and shingles, Judith suffered a severe foot injury and other wounds from cannon fire. (For his part, Ricketts was wounded four times, captured and later exchanged.)

“The house was peppered by Confederate fire just as much as Union fire. We really don’t know for sure what” killed Judith, said Burgess.

According to a National Park Service archaeological report on the site, Pvt. Otho Scott Lee of the 1^st Virginia Cavalry recollected assisting in burying the dead and collecting abandoned equipment on the battlefield.

"I then rode over to the Henry house where Mrs. Henry had been killed during the battle. I saw her dead body in the bed where she had been killed, with her family around her,” Lee wrote.  “During the battle a grape shot pierced the house and passed through her body, killing her instantly.”

Visitors to Manassas can see the small burial plot where Judith, Hugh and Ellen rest together. (NPS photo, left)

The mother’s headstone reads:

The Grave of Our Dear Mother

Judith Henry

Killed near this spot, by the explosion of shelling in her dwelling, during the Battle of the 21st of July, 1861. When killed she was in her 85th year and confined to her bed by the infirmities of age. She was the daughter of Landon Carter Sen., and was born within a mile of this place. Her husband, Dr. Isaac Henry, was a Surgeon in the United States Navy, on board the frigate Constellation, Commanded by Com. Truxton, one of the six Captains appointed by Washington in the organization of the Navy, 1794. Our Mother through her long life, thirty five years of which were spent at this place, was greatly loved and esteemed for her kind, gentle and Christian spirit."

Famous doctor took table in lieu of cash

 After Judith was killed and the Henry House suffered battle damage, the surviving members of the family found refuge at nearby Pageland. Their old homestead was picked over by souvenir hunters.

“The table and other valuables had to have been recovered from the house before it was completely destroyed the following winter,” said Burgess. “Hugh Henry and sister Ellen lived in a new house built in the 1870s on the site of the original Spring Hill house until their deaths in the 1890s.” Nephew Arthur Lee Henry then acquired the place.

Abdominal and gynecological surgeon Dr. Joseph Price at some point entered the picture. The Virginia native acquired the table prior to his death in 1911 as payment for services rendered on an unnamed member of the Henry family.

“It is uncertain whether he got the table from Hugh or from Arthur,” said Burgess.

Price, who was only 8 at the time of First Manassas, gained fame for his skills and advancement of surgical techniques. He later moved to the Philadelphia area. An article in the Buffalo Medical Journal after his death had this fascinating detail: (Price at right, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) 

“For two weeks Dr. Price had been ill and was confined to his bed most of the time. The day of his death he was informed that a girl patient whom he had previously cared for had been received at his hospital suffering with appendicitis. He rose from his sick bed and did an appendectomy on this patient. Within an hour after the completion of the operation he complained of pain and informed his assistants that he was suffering with acute appendicitis and that an immediate operation was imperative. He superintended the preparations for the work and in a short time was operated. A few hours later he died not having recovered from the shock of the operation.”

Price was 58 years old.

The dining table passed to his daughter, Anne, and eventually to her second husband, Eric Renwick. Ann died in 1984. Eric survived her by 10 years and at some time he typed up an undated note about the table for a niece or nephew. He signed it “Uncle Eric.”

He incorrectly called Judith and Betsy “Henry sisters” – only Judith had that married name. Renwick describes Joseph Price as his father-in-law, though it is unlikely they knew each other; Eric was only 5 when the doctor died.

Renwick said the doctor was raised near Harrisonburg and operated up and down the region. “On one occasion he operated on one of the Henry’s. By this time they were short of funds and gave Dr. Price the table in lieu of cash.” The table was transported to Whitford, Pa., where the surgeon lived. (Click photo above to enlarge, Manassas NBP)

Renwick based his note on information passed down by Price and Anne. “I do not know when the table was made or who made it but knowledgeable people have told me that it was an antique in 1861.”

Vermont collector had a passion for antiques

Eric Renwick died in 1994; Burgess believes the table went to the niece or nephew and then to a Barre, Vt., resident whose business interests included a ski area and fuel companies.

He was a flea market and garage sale enthusiast as well as a noted local historian, the man’s February 2026 obituary says.

Marker at Henry Hill, the center of the Manassas battlefield (Shane Oliver, HMdb.org)

The 84-year-old was a respected antique collector and dealer in Vermont and the Eastern United States. His friend told the Picket he does not know how the collector got the table.

Manassas National Battlefield Park received the table in September 2025 and it remains in storage.

Eric Renwick concluded his note about the table with this line, which may one day come true:

“In several generations I feel that the table will be a museum piece.”

History investigators: College class is focusing on the stories of the enslaved people at Dawkins House in Union, S.C. The home to where the state's Civil War governor fled is being preserved

Shored-up house (Annie Smith/USC Union), 1850 Dawkins slave schedule; interior door (Picket photo)

A course that debuted Aug. 18 at the University of South Carolina Union won’t be like the campus classes I attended back in the day. There will be no lecture hall, study sessions or a professor regurgitating set material.

Rather, “HIST 480-701 -- Internship in Public History” will turn students into investigators, digging up little-known facts about the Thomas and Mary Poulton Dawkins House in Union and the people – free and enslaved – who lived there before, during and after the Civil War.

The timing of the class is perfect. The once dilapidated home is slowly being rehabilitated into a new campus facility.

“Everything we are doing is bottom up,” said Andrew Kettler, assistant professor of history at the two-year campus (right). He will work with a small, but he believes mighty, group. So far, three students have signed up for the assignment, which includes building an archival history.

Kettler hopes a few students more will join the inaugural effort. He expects a bigger class in the spring once the work and documentation takes shape.

Union, which is south of Spartanburg, briefly served as the Civil War capital of the state after Columbia fell to Union forces in 1865 and Gov. Andrew Magrath fled to Union. From about Feb. 15, 1865, until early April, Magrath ran the state from the Dawkins House. He apparently worked in an informal library near the drawing room, which survives today.

According to histories and local legend, Magrath and his subordinates burned possibly incriminating documents and correspondence in the home’s fireplaces. (The building served as South Carolina's capitol while the city was briefly is capital.)

The 1850 federal slave schedule indicates Thomas Dawkins (left) enslaved about 20 persons, but there may have been more elsewhere. Some likely worked at other locations besides the home, which was called “The Shrubs.” (The project has not yet found an 1860 slave schedule)

Over the years, residents came and went from the Dawkins House, which is located on the small USC-Union campus. But there had been one constant: The deterioration of the building into near ruin.

Now the nonprofit Preservation South Carolina is working with the campus and local leaders to rehabilitate the house into an alumni and corporate center for the college. Raising money for the effort has taken time, but officials continue to make progress.

“This is the first time for PSC to have a class that is going on at the same time as one of its preservation projects,” said Kettler.

There’s a lot at stake. Supporters say it’s important the full history of the home and its occupants be told, warts and all. But they also want the building to be aimed at the future and bring new attention to USC Union, which has a growing enrollment. Currently, it has about 1,400 students; many are affiliated with the athletics programs.

Union County has a long segregation history and the area was known for Ku Klux Klan activity and postwar lynchings. There have been recent efforts, however, to acknowledge that history. Kettler said there is much more to learn.

2021 markers details part of the county's lynching history (Picket photo)

Annie Smith, director of development on the campus, said the course also will seek to identify those individuals who lived in the original structure between 1765 and the early 1800s, before Thomas Dawkins bought and expanded the residence.

The class research will include library, courthouse and genealogical records. Kettler previously told the Picket the aim is less about assigning blame for slavery than moving toward acknowledgement and reconciliation

“We don’t know what we are going to find. It just has to be an honest investigation,” said the professor, who showed the students the outside of the home after the class began.

So far, they have possible names for 2 enslaved

A large focus of the class is finding out about the enslaved persons, most of whose names are not know. Names were not included in old census records.

“Focusing searches on that specific population will also allow for uncovering connections to the later history of Black citizens in Union County,” says the class syllabus.

Kettler (right, Picket photo) and a couple students conducted some research over the summer, including at the South Caroliniana Library at the main University of South Carolina campus in Columbia. “We’re digging constantly,” he said.

Kettler, 42, said they have learned the possible names of two of the enslaved. He is not identifying them at this point until he can confirm accounts. One was mentioned in a postwar newspaper article saying the bride was a Dawkins servant (slave). The second may have been a lynching victim in the 1870s, said the professor.

He expects students will glean more names from county-by-county agricultural censuses.

“Tracing formerly enslaved people is very difficult because of name changes,” said Kettler. Others may have moved north decades later during the Great Migration.

The students, working like detectives, will dig up records from myriad sources, such as death schedules and wills. If they can find a Dawkins will, it may list enslaved persons and what they may have received upon Thomas’s death. That could help the effort to find out more about those individuals.

College hopes for an archives open to the public

The public history course outline includes this overview:

“Students will be engaging with archival documents to gain respect for the application and relevance of historical knowledge, as well as support the broader goals of the university and its environs. With the work in this course, USC Union students can begin to explore documents that are to be organized into a “Dawkins House Archive” that will be housed at the future Alumni and Corporate Sponsor Center in the Dawkins House. Our focus on the course will be on answering: What were the historical experiences of those who resided at the Dawkins House?”

Kettler envisions binders of documents at a location ”where people can see the actual letters.” (At left, part of 1867 correspondence by Thomas Dawkins)

Students will share extensive readings during the semester. Topics will include the Dawkins House, memory, the antebellum period, slavery, Reconstruction, “historic sites as powerful institutions,” contemporary Union and modern public history.

The class is half education on the topic and half working through the methods of public history. Students will analyze documents, said the professor. “They will do the work of the historian.”

Resources include census records, newspapers, the Union Country Museum, Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site, diaries and other papers. Kettler wants to see if the county clerk has deeds to property owned Thomas Dawkins. That might help the researchers go back to those who lived in the house way back in 1765.

One goal of the endeavor is to get local folks involved in uncovering the area’s history and make the Dawkins House a destination of sorts. Kettler, who believes a book may result from the project, is available to speak to groups about the Dawkins House as part of South Carolina Humanities’ speaker’s bureau.

For white citizens, a world turned upside down

When it comes to the Civil War period, recorded experiences have almost exclusively been of white people.

Mary Poulton Dawkins was many things in her 86 years, the majority of which were ensconced in the home that was dubbed “The Shrubs” in honor of a family estate by the same name in her native England.

Dawkins (right), who in 1845 married Thomas, a prominent South Carolina judge 14 years her senior, was described by relatives as headstrong and proud of her imported furniture and Queen Victoria.

There was another side of the Englishwoman, however, that doesn’t project well these days.

While of the “highest culture,” Mary had a tendency toward bigotry, an observer wrote, and a paternalistic view of slavery.

Enslaved people had become a majority in Union County during the 1840s.

Following the South’s loss in the Civil War, and the Dawkins’ fortune largely gone, Mary lamented Reconstruction and the brief political power accorded to Black people.

“The negroes on the plantation had really no ill feeling, but poor ignorant creatures, they were intoxicated with the idea of power and always fond of idleness; began to steal and destroy property, scarcely a night without a burning,” Mary wrote in a memoir penned late in life. “There was no redress, no law, and the ‘Ku Klux’ was formed to frighten the negroes, so sensational, supersti­tious.”

Kettler said Thomas Dawkins lived in a world based on the idea the patriarch is nearly above the law on his own property, a theme popular on Southern plantations.

“Dawkins basically had one square mile that defined his life.There are four large Southern homes within a few blocks of the Dawkins House, one we date to 1850 and another to 1857. Those would have been his direct neighbors less than a mile away, he said. 

”A half mile up the road is the church he paid to build. And just up Main Street would have been the courthouse where he practiced as a lawyer and then a judge. (At left, Episcopal Church of the Nativity, Wikipedia).

“This was a figure who exemplified the Southern ideal of Pater Familias, and used Greco-Roman architecture to signify that in a Greek Revival-esque home,” the professor added.

Group is raising more money for work on house

Some 120 years after Mary’s death, Preservation South Carolina is raising money for the next phase of the restoration of the residence.

Bill Comer, a Union native who is heading up the DawkinsHouse rehab project for PSC, previously said the refurbished site will provide lessons from the past once it reopens.

Early rendering of what the house will look like when completed (PSC)

The $300,000 state-funded Phase 1 of the work, which concluded more than a year ago, shored up the building. Phase 2 will be much more extensive and expensive.

PSC said they need at least $845,000 for the next phase of work. About $284,000 has been raised or been committed, including a $100,000 award from the Timken Foundation and a $25,000 grant from the SC Department of Archives and History, said Comer.

Donations to the project can be made here.

“We hope to finalize other significant funding arrangements within the next several weeks. Fundraising efforts will be ongoing until the house is fully renovated and ready for use,” Comer said in an email.

It is anticipated Bennett Preservation Engineering of Charleston will begin updating and preparing design specifications for Phase 2 in early October and that construction will begin in January 2027. “Phase 2 will take the building well beyond stabilization to the point that it is ready to accommodate the Final Phase of mechanical, electrical and plumbing construction,” Comer said.

USC Union offers associate degrees in arts and science and a bachelor's in nursing

After that, the house will be owned by the Union Laurens Commission for Higher Education.

“PSC will continue to work collaboratively with USC Union and the commission via a memorandum of understanding to help secure funding and to provide historical preservation counsel until it is completely finished,” Comer added.

Juggling myths and the real stories

The Dawkins House rehabilitation and the university course are coming at a fortuitous time in South Carolina.

Gov. Henry McMaster has championed commemoration, including the state’s importance in the American Revolution. That awareness includes the complex history of slavery and its legacy, said Kettler.

“The base of the Freedmen’s Bureau was in Beaufort, South Carolina,” he said, arguing that’s where emancipation really began.

There are a lot of stories about the Dawkins House, he argued. “School kids know about the myth of McGrath’s silver.”

Upon learning of Rebel Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in early April 1865, Magrath and his staff raced away from Union as Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's Federal troops moved in. 

Magrath apparently hid a silver tea set at the Dawkins' home while he was based there. Mary Dawkins wrote the couple took the set to Mills House in Charleston after Magrath was released and they gave it to him.

The silver tea set story is covered in the book "South Carolina's English Lady," compiled and edited by the late Sarah Porter Carroll in the 1980s. You can read the text on Family Search (right).

Letters and accounts written by relatives of Mary Dawkins -- and included in Carroll's book -- suggest slaves at “The Shrubs” and any other land owned by Thomas were treated more kindly than at other plantations. But that view belies the fact the institution was inherently cruel and violent.

For Kettler and students, this will be in intense exercise in public history, a movement that marries academic with engagement in the community.

Kettler hopes uncovering the history of the house and 19^th century Union will better inform the community of its rich, complex history.

There is a  “mythic, shrouded history we are going to uncover.”

READ MORE:

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/04/as-fundraising-intensifies-to-fix-up.html

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