Mars Hill College-Strategic Location, Divided Loyalties - Mars Hill
Posted by: Don.Morfe
N 35° 49.623 W 082° 32.968
17S E 360040 N 3965873
Confederate troops left Mars Hill to forage in March 1865. Col. George W. Kirk led his 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry (U.S.) into the village and burned the college dormitory and teachers' residence.
Waymark Code: WM17Y3E
Location: North Carolina, United States
Date Posted: 04/19/2023
Views: 0
TEXT ON THE HISTORICAL MARKER
Mars Hill College-Strategic Location, Divided Loyalties
Baptist farm families here established Mars Hills College in 1856. The four-acre college campus had three structures by 1861: a two-story brick classroom building, a frame dormitory for boys, and a frame teachers' residence. They stood about 75 yards in front of you.
During the war, neighbors, families and even brothers here were divided in their loyalties to the Southern cause, but many joined the Confederate army during the first two years. Mars Hill was a strategic location, a crossroads for north-south and east-west travel. A hundred-man detachment from the 64th North Carolina Infantry - called "Keith's Detail" - was posted here, the first of several Confederate units at Mars Hill during the war. The college was closed during the last two years of the conflict as conditions in mountain communities deteriorated and supported for the Confederacy waned.
Home Guard commander Gen. John W. McElroy had his headquarters here after July 1863. He wrote to North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance in April 1864, "I have 100 men at this place to guard against [Union Col. George W.] Kirk, of Laurel, and cannot reduce the force....In fact,it seems to me that there is a determination of the people in this country generally to do no more service in the cause."
Confederate troops left Mars Hill to forage in March 1865, just before Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender in Virginia, Kirk led his 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry (U.S.) into the village and burned the college dormitory and teachers' residence. Mars Hill College survived the war's depredations, but it took forty years to replace what had been destroyed
Name of Battle: Burning of Mars Hill College
Name of War: U.S. Civil War
Date(s) of Battle (Beginning): 03/01/1865
Entrance Fee: Not Listed
Parking: Not Listed
Date of Battle (End): Not listed
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Visit Instructions:
Post a photo of you in front of a sign or marker posted at the site of the battle (or some other way to indicate you have personally visited the site.
In addition it is encouraged to take a few photos of the surrounding area and interesting features at the site.