Mars Hill College Strategic Location, Divided Loyalties - Mars Hill in Madison County, North Carolina - Civil War Discovery Trail Sites on Waymarking.com

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

Type of site: Other Military Site Address: 205 Cascade St Mars Hill, NC 28754 Admission Charged: No Charge Website: [Web Link] Phone Number: Not listed Driving Directions: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   04/20/2023 Don.Morfe visited it 01/05/2010 Countrydragon visited it

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