Mike Parker: Local historian publishes compilation of Wyse Fork documents
When Dennis Harper was 11 years old, he became fascinated with the Wyse Fork Battlefield. In the decades since, Harper has collected more than 12,000 artifacts from that battle.
“First one I ever found was laying in my front yard,” Harper told Zach Frailey in a 2016 interview. “I got a metal detector at 14 and upgraded from there. When most kids played ball, we hunted bullets.”
Over the years Harper has recovered pieces of China dating back to the late 1700s (soldiers may have used to help dig earth works due to their lack of shovels), bottles, and other not-so-obvious era relics.
One of the most fascinating finds is what he calls “carved bullets.”
“Soldiers would sometimes whittle bullets after they misfired. They’d have a small screw on the end of their ramrod, twist it into the bullet and pull it out of the barrel,” Harper explained. “Other times, they’d be in the bullpen (where captured soldiers awaited transport). Their guns had been confiscated, so they had bullets in their pocket. To pass the time, they’d whittle away at them.”
Through painstaking research, Harper has identified the companies and units that some of the art came from.
Harper also spent years collecting documents, maps, drawings, and photos, as well as relics. While he was locked down during the COVID pandemic, he decided to pull his collection together and create a book.
“The Battle of Wyse Fork, March 7-10, 1865: A Collection of Documents” is his collection put into book form. Harper lists himself as “compiler,” not “author.” Much of the text in the book comes from documents Harper collected through the years.
One example is the first chapter titled “Wyse Fork Battlefield Nomination for the National Register of Historic Places.” This chapter comprises nearly half the length of the book and contains the historic struggle preservationists went through to have the Wyse Fork Battlefield recognized and listed a nationally important.
The book includes the more than 70 pages produced during the application for recognition. After reading this application, I was overwhelmed with the amount of detail the process required.
Chapter two presents artifacts and photographs of the battlefield and the historic markers of the Battle of Wyse Fork. More than a dozen pages present a variety of artifacts from carved bullets to types of ammunition used at the battle to artillery ordnance to buttons and belt buckles from uniforms. Some photos shows the names of soldiers discovered on the ceiling of the Cobb House.
One chapter is a tribute to William H. “Bill” Rowland who has done so much to document and tell the story of Lenoir County Civil War history. Another chapter shares the findings and conclusions of a paper presented by Katherine Carter in November 2016 to the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, held in Nashville, TN.
Carter’s conclusions should inspire a sense of pride in the history of our area. She wrote:
“It is apparent both from recent archaeological surveys and a long history of collecting that more data is available about the role played by Kinston throughout the Civil War than has been previously addressed in the professional sphere. … Further research could and should be done on other Civil War-era sites that would have been active on the periphery of the battle, such as campsites, hospitals, and checkpoints.”
I am sure those who read Dennis Harper’s compilation of materials will leave his book with a deeper sense of the pervasive impact the war had on all those who lived in Kinston and Lenoir County.
Mike Parker is a columnist for Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.
