Bertie County NcArchives Biographies.....Hoggard, Calvin 1830 - 1876
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Gerald Thomas gerald_thomas00@comcast.net February 28, 2017, 5:02 pm

Source: Personal research
Author: Gerald W. Thomas

CALVIN HOGGARD:
“CHIEFTAIN” OF THE BERTIE BUFFALOES
by 
Gerald W. Thomas
© 2017

Calvin Hoggard, the son of John Hoggard and his wife, Eleanor (maiden named not
determined), was born in Bertie County in 1830. Calvin’s parents were born in
the 1790s and were likely married by the mid-1820s. In addition to Calvin, the
couple had two other sons – John Norfleet and Frazier – who were born prior to
Calvin. By August 1850 John Hoggard owned real estate reportedly valued at $600.
His household included his wife and sons, John N. and Calvin. Frazier had moved
out of his father’s abode and was working as an overseer on Jonathan S. Tayloe’s
farm.
	Within a couple of years of after reaching the age of majority, Calvin
purchased fifty-four acres of land from Humphrey Keeter. On February 14,1853, he
paid $75 for the tract which was located on the periphery of Bucklesberry
Pocosin and adjoined properties owned by Norman Cullen Capehart and James
Keeter. Almost nineteen months later (September 4, 1854), Calvin and Frazier
served as witnessed to their father’s real estate transaction with Humphrey
Keeter. John Hoggard sold to Keeter fifty acres along Bear Swamp in Bucklesberry
Pocosin. On November 3, 1854, Calvin acquired eighty acres of land from Thomas
Redditt. The parcel adjoined that of Calvin’s father. On January 21, 1857,
Calvin purchased twenty-five acres from his father, paying $100 for the tract
that was located in Bucklesberry Pocosin and bounded by his own land and that of
his brother, Frazier. In February 1858, Calvin again bought land from his father
– twenty-five acres in the in the immediately vicinity of his previous
purchases. Over a five-year period, Calvin had accumulated 179 acres of land.  
Calvin married Rebecca Miller (about age 20) in Bertie County on February 22,
1854. Unfortunately, their lives together would be short lived – Rebecca died on
October 24, 1857. Less than a year after Rebecca’s death, on September 23, 1858,
Calvin married Margaret Ann Smithwick (aged 16 to 17 years). Calvin’s and
Margaret’s first-born child, a daughter whom they named Sarah Temperance, was
born on Christmas Day, 1859. A second daughter, Mary Ellen, was born on October
16, 1862.
	Calvin Hoggard was a religious man as were the close members of his family. He
and his brother, Frazier served as deacons in Capehart’s Baptist Church where
their other brother, John Norfleet, presided for a time as pastor. (John
subsequently served as pastor of Ross’s Baptist Church.) Calvin’s wife, Margaret
was also a member of the church.
	As Calvin and Margaret endeavored to earn a living and raise a family, the
nation was plummeting toward war. Thirty years of confrontations, crises and
compromises, largely as a result of the slavery issue, had resulted in
unresolvable political and sectional issues. On April 12, 1861, the American
nation exploded into war at Charleston when South Carolina secessionists
attacked Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor. The Civil War had commenced.  
	The war would have a profound and tragic impact on Calvin and his family
members. Bertie County, while staunchly pro-Union prior to conflict, evolved
into a region of divided loyalties – while officially a Confederate
jurisdiction, many of the county’s residents continued to support the Union.
Calvin supported preservation of the Union. By May 1862 United States army and
naval forces had breached North Carolina’s defenses along the Outer Banks and
had occupied a number of towns situated along the sounds and connecting rivers,
including Plymouth, immediately across the Roanoke River from the southeastern
section of Bertie County. The occupying Union military forces – army and navy –
immediately began recruiting and enlisting North Carolina men into their ranks,
including Bertie County citizens.
	By the spring of 1862, the Confederate government needed more men for its army
than were volunteering and as a consequence, passed a law to conscript men into
the army. White males, aged eighteen to thirty-five, were subject to being
involuntarily thrust into the army. Numerous Bertie County men were not
receptive to such forced service and began to evade Confederate conscription
officers by hiding in the woods and swamps.
	Calvin Hoggard, aged thirty-two in 1862, was subject to being drafted. His name
appeared on the Durgan District’s 1862 military roll – a list of men potentially
available for military duty. But, Calvin, in defiance of forced military duty,
became pro-active against the conscription efforts in Bertie County. He attended
gatherings at the courthouse in Windsor where periodically the names of drafted
men were read. He then would visit the homes of the men in his area whose names
were on the conscription lists and “warn” them of their impending coercion into
military. Obviously, quite a number of the men went into hiding, singularly and
in small groups.
		As the war consumed the daily lives of Bertie County’s resident, Calvin and
Margaret suffered a heartbreaking personal loss. Their daughter, Sarah
Temperance, died on January 31, 1863. She was only three years old.
	In November 1863 Calvin began recruiting Bertie County men for service in the
Union army. The Second Regiment North Carolina Union Volunteers was being
organized at several points in eastern North Carolina, including Plymouth.
Charles Henry Foster, a Murfreesboro lawyer and newspaper editor, was in charged
with raising the regiment. On November 29 Foster formally authorized Hoggard to
recruit for the unit. 
Southern soldiers and secessionists commonly referred to eastern North
Carolinians who joined the Union army as “Buffaloes.” The name was synonymous
with thieves, deserters and outlaws. Confederates considered Buffaloes to be one
of the lowest forms of humanity.
Hoggard aggressively coaxed men from Bertie County while elements of the
Sixty-second Georgia Cavalry which were stationed in the region, sought to
prevent him. Soon, a personal challenge developed between Hoggard and Capt.
Byron B.  Bower, Company B of the Georgia regiment. By the middle of January
Bower’s troopers were thoroughly frustrating Hoggard’s efforts. On January 14
Hoggard informed Foster that his recruiting efforts would have been more
successful had he been able to go into Bertie County. Georgia cavalry “was so
thick” that he could not effectively recruit. Hoggard, while actively attempting
to raise men for the Union army, had not been officially commissioned as an
officer, but was acting under directions from Charles Henry Foster.    
	Maj. Gen. John G. Foster, commander of the Department of North Carolina, on
January 3, 1864, nominated Hoggard to be an officer in the Second Regiment North
Carolina Union Volunteers. Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, commander of the
Department of Virginia and North Carolina (General Foster’s superior officer),
appointed Hoggard to the rank of captain on February 2, 1864. He was assigned
command of Company E. Calvin’s brother, Frazier, was at the time of the
appointment, a member of that company, having enlisted one month earlier
(January 1, 1864).
	When Calvin was appointed an officer in the Union army, his wife, Margaret, was
expecting their third child. On July 6 Margaret gave birth to a son, whom the
parents named Thomas M.
	A number of joint army-navy raids by forces stationed at Plymouth were carried
out against targets in Bertie County and southeastern Hertford County in January
1864. By late January, the town of Windsor and a troop o the Georgia cavalry
stationed there were the focus of another joint expedition. Before midnight of
January 29, Union gunboats and a troop transport departed Plymouth ascending the
Roanoke River and steaming into the Cashie River. Union combatants were to march
to Windsor from Cedar Landing on the Roanoke River, and Cooper’s Landing, on the
Cashie River. At two o’clock in the morning, January 30, two Union gunboats
anchored in the Cashie off Cooper’s Landing, about seven miles from Windsor, and
discharged a contingent of Union soldiers, including Capt. Calvin Hoggard and at
least thirty Buffaloes. Hoggard knew the area well – Cooper’s Landing was a mere
couple of miles from his home. Through the nighttime darkness, Hoggard,
thoroughly familiar with the roads, cart paths and topography, led the
contingent to Hoggard’s Mill bridge. The soldiers reached the bridge about
daybreak and fired on the Confederate sentry posted there. He immediately fled
and the Union  men hastily assembled breastworks with dismantled timbers from
the bridge.
Georgia cavalrymen at their camp in Windsor, alerted by the firing at Hoggard’s
Mill, saddled up and pulling one piece of light artillery galloped off toward
the bridge. Arriving at the bridge in short order, they engaged Captain Hoggard
and the Union contingent in a brief exchange of gunfire. The Georgians fired
only one round from the cannon, to no effect. They then turned away from the
bridge and headed back toward the town. Before reaching the town they ran
headlong into Union soldiers who had marched from Cedar Landing. The Georgians,
totally surprised, broke off from the engagement and fled westward into the
countryside from Windsor.
Following the conclusion of the skirmish, Captain Hoggard and his men marched
from Hoggard’s Mill through Windsor to the gunboat anchored in the Cashie River
at the town’s docks. The vessels, after dropping off the Union contingent at
Cooper’s Landing, had steamed upriver to Windsor to support the attack. The men
reboarded the boats and steamed back to Plymouth.  
The personal animosity between Captains Bower and Hoggard intensified. Hoggard
reportedly intended to capture the Buffalo-persecuting Bower or die trying.
Likewise, Bower desperately wanted to apprehend the “Chieftain” of the
Buffaloes. On February 12 Hoggard had slipped back into Bertie County and was
visiting his wife and children at their home. Captain Bower, having been
informed that Hoggard was with his family, detailed about seventy-five men form
his command and personally leading them, slipped up to the Hoggard home
unobserved. The Georgians rapped on the door of the residence and requested “an
interview” with Captain Hoggard. Soon, the door opened and Hoggard, attired in
his Union uniform complete with captain’s bars, faced his adversaries. He had
become a prisoner of war.
Bower’s capture of the “renegade and Buffalo Captain” generated a great deal of
excitement. He detained Hoggard at his camp in Windsor for a day before
assigning a detail of five troopers to escort the prisoner to Brig. Gen. Matt W.
Ransom’s headquarters at Weldon. However, the guards stopped at night at an
undisclosed location, where four of them fell asleep and the fifth, carelessly
attending to his duties, afforded Hoggard the chance to escape back to his
command in “Yankeeland” (Plymouth). Captain Bower was exasperated.
In February 1864 Charles H. Foster was of the opinion that all of the companies
of the Second Regiment North Carolina Union Volunteers needed to be assembled at
Beaufort for the benefit or organization and drill. On February 20, Foster
issued orders to Captains Johnson and Hoggard to have their companies
transferred from Plymouth to Beaufort by March 10. Hoggard, however, immediately
wrote to Foster and requested that the order be rescinded. Hoggard noted that he
could “help protect [his] home and kindred” if he and his company remained at
Plymouth. Foster relented and allowed Johnson and Hoggard’s companies to stay at
the town. 
In April 1864 Company B (Capt. Littleton Johnson, Bertie County) and Company E
(Captain Hoggard) were stationed at Plymouth as components of Brig. Gen. Henry
W. Wessell’s 2,800-man command. On Sunday, April 17, a large Confederate force
of infantry, artillery and cavalry, commanded by Brig. Gen. Robert F. Hoke,
attacked the Federal garrison and laid siege to the town. In the early morning
hours of the nineteenth, the Confederate ram, Albemarle, arrived on the scene
and immediately sank the Union Navy’s commander’s flagship, the Miami, and
forced the other gunboats to withdrawn downriver to Albemarle Sound. Early the
next day it was clearly evident that the Union garrison would capitulate.
Captains Hoggard and Johnson, ordered their men – a significant number of whom
were residents of Bertie County – to make their escape. Men franticly crossed
the Roanoke River in canoes and small vessels while others chose to swim. Both
Hoggard and Johnson escaped with members of their companies. Later in the day,
General Wessells surrendered the Plymouth garrison to General Hoke. Some of the
men who got away from Plymouth were picked up by Union gunboats along area
waterways in the days that followed. Others fortunately reached their homes in
Bertie County and hid out. Those men who did not escape, became prisoners of
war. More than three dozen Bertie County men were captured at Plymouth,
including Sgt. Frazier Hoggard, Captain Hoggard’s brother. The prisoners were
mostly transported to the hell-hole prison at Andersonville, Georgia where all
of the Bertie men perished, except Yancy Evans (Company B). Sgt. Hoggard was
incarcerated at Castle Thunder Prison, Richmond, Virginia, where he died on
January 24, 1865, of “phthisis” (pulmonary tuberculosis).      
The straight-line distance from Plymouth to Calvin Hoggard’s residence in Bertie
County was approximately six miles. Calvin made his way across the Roanoke and
Cashie rivers, and coursed through tangled brush and miry swamps to reach his
home. He immediately went into hiding within close proximity of his home and
family. Near the end of May he decided that he would return to the Union forces,
it being his first opportunity to make the attempt. Confederate army and navy
forces controlled Plymouth, but Union gunboats controlled area waterways, except
for the Roanoke River along which Plymouth was situated and in which the
formidable ironclad, Albemarle, roamed. Early in the morning of May 31, the
Union gunboat, Whitehead, was stationed in the Albemarle Sound at the mouth of
Cashie River when its crew sighted a canoe with two men silently sliding down
the river. Captain Hoggard and an unidentified Buffalo soldier were in the
vessel, having slipped out of Bertie County after staying concealed for six
weeks. The Whitehead took the men on board.
One of Calvin’s descendants recalled that during the war, Calvin hid in the
woods with a local black man to avoid Confederate patrols. Confederate soldiers
caught Calvin’s cohort and hanged him until he was “almost dead,” trying to get
information concerning Calvin’s whereabouts, but the black man “didn’t talk.”
The man, through his action in the face of death, affirmed his loyalty to a
neighbor who was standing up for the Union. Since this account was based on
passed-along oral family history, the period of time during which Calvin and the
African American hid obviously is not known. It may have occurred during a
period when Calvin was avoiding Southern conscription officers, or during
April-May 1864, after he escaped at the Battle of Plymouth.
Captain Hoggard, having returned to duty, had no company left to command. The
battle of Plymouth had taken an extremely heavy toll on his company. By August
1864 various Union officers felt that the Second Regiment North Carolina Union
Volunteers should be disbanded and its remaining members placed in Northern
regiments. Company E consisted of Captain Hoggard and eight men who had returned
to duty. Officials refused to muster Hoggard and his soldiers. In late September
the commissary of musters for the Department of Virginia and North Carolina
suggested to Col. Walter S. Poor, then commander of the Second North Carolina
Regiment, that the commissions of the officers of the regiment be canceled. Poor
disagreed and replied to the commissary that he could not believe that the
United States would do such injustice to any North Carolina officer whose
company just six months prior had been filled. The men had “endured every
hardship a soldier is called to endure,” particularly treacherous for officers
from a state that was in rebellions. Captain Hoggard’s commission was not
cancelled.
In February 1865, Union army officials initiated actions to consolidated the
First and Second Regiments North Carolina Volunteers into one unit. As a
consequence of the forthcoming consolidation, Capt. Calvin Hoggard was mustered
out of service on February 23, by reason of being a supernumerary. Four days
later remaining members of the Second Regiment were transferred to the First
North Carolina. The Second Regiment ceased to exist. Less than two months later
(April 9, 1865), Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army to Gen. U.
S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. Four devastating years of war had
finally come to an end.
On May 29, 1865, Pres. Andrew Johnson issued two proclamations designed to bring
North Carolina back into the Union. The first provided that pardons be granted
to those citizens who took the Oath of Allegiance to the United States. However,
persons who had been officials in the Confederate government, had served in the
army at the rank of colonel or above, and had left federal positions to join the
Confederacy, were required to submit to special pardons. The second proclamation
directed William W. Holden, the provisional governor of North Carolina, to hold
a state convention comprised of “loyal” citizens to alter and amend the state’s
constitution. The delegates to the convention were to eliminate slavery in North
Carolina, acknowledge that the state’s secession was illegal, and repudiate
debts incurred to aid the rebellion. Holden announced on August 9 that elections
would be held in the counties on September 21 to elect delegates to the
convention which would be held in Raleigh on October 2. A number of Bertie
County citizens voted for Calvin Hoggard, although he did not receive a
sufficient number to be elected as a delegate. (The convention passed ordinances
approving of all three stipulations. Bertie residents subsequently voted to
ratify the anti-slavery and anti-secession ordinances. Ratification was not
required for the debt ordinance.)
During the January to March 1866 session of the North Carolina General Assembly,
Calvin Hoggard, a Union man, was recommended by the lawmakers to be appointed a
justice of the peace in Bertie County. Bertie County’s legislators during the
session – John Pool and David E. (Senate) and Peyton T. Henry and Lewis Thompson
(House of Commons) – most surely recommended Hoggard for the position. On
January 25, 1866, Gov. Jonathan Worth formally appointed Hoggard as a justice.
Calvin and Margaret, with two children in their household, had a daughter born
onto them on December 8, 1866. They named the baby Annie Rebecca. But
astonishingly, both of Calvin and Margaret’s older children – Mary Ellen (aged
five) and Thomas M. (aged three) – tragically died on the same day, September
29, 1867.
Tragedy seemed to have become the normal course of events for Calvin and
Margaret. She gave birth to a daughter, Mary C., on March 20, 1869, who died
seven months later (October 19, 1869). Another daughter was born on June 3,
1871, whom Calvin and his wife named Margaret A. The child did not live five
months and died on October 31, 1871. A son was born on November 30, 1872, and
died a little over twelve months later, on December 13, 1873. Modena Graves, a
daughter, was born on November 11, 1874. By the end of 1874, Calvin and Margaret
had born unto them eight children, of whom only two were alive.
	In 1872 both Calvin and Margaret, members of Capehart’s Baptist Church,
apparently decided to leave the church. Both individuals received letters of
dismissal in May 1872. Likely, the couple terminated their memberships in order
to join Lawrence Baptist Church which was being organized by residents of
Bucklesberry Pocosin. Lawrence Baptist Church was formally organized in 1874 and
the worship building constructed within a couple miles of Calvin and Margaret’s
home. During that year “Brother” Calvin Hoggard asked for another letter of
dismissal from Capehart’s Church. The letter was granted.
The Unites States Congress passed a law in 1871 that created the Southern Claims
Commission. Established as an organization of the executive branch, the
commission’s purpose was to allow Union sympathizers who lived in the Southern
states to apply for reimbursement of property losses resulting from confiscation
by United States military forces during the war. In early 1873 Calvin Hoggard
submitted a claim for $475 for a horse and “yacht” (likely a small river boat)
taken by the army. According to his submission, General Henry W. Wessells,
overall commander of the Plymouth garrison, reportedly told Hoggard that he
“should be paid.” The commission denied the claim.    
Calvin’s health began to deteriorate during the post-war years. Described as a
short, chunky man with dark completion, he became afflicted with “lung disease.”
One near neighbor stated that when Calvin “came home from the war” he had “a bad
cough” and his voice was hoarse. He complained of “misery in his side and breast
[that] gradually grew worse.”  Another neighbor, who worked on Calvin’s farm,
recalled that he “had a horrid cough” and “complained a great deal.” Timothy
Hoggard, a fellow Buffalo soldier during the war, stated that during the winter
of 1864 Calvin “was taken with a deep cold … [which] went into pneumonia.”
Fellow soldiers feared that Calvin might die, but he recovered. Hoggard further
stated that Calvin, in making his escape at the Battle of Plymouth, crossed the
Roanoke River and “waded more than a mile through the Roanoke and Cashie River
swamps from shoe deep to wast [waist] deep in mud and water and got over in
Bertie Co.” After making his way back to the army, Timothy elaborated that
Calvin was again taken sick, suffered with a cough and “was confined to his bead
[bed] nearly all the time for three weeks.” Obviously, Timothy was of the
opinion that Calvin became perpetually ill while serving in the United States
Army. Calvin reportedly said on numerous occasions that “he caught his death in
the Army.”
Calvin Hoggard, bedridden, died on March 23, 1876; he was only forty-six years
of age. The reported cause of his demise was lung disease. He was buried on his
farm in the Bucklesberry Pocosin about eight miles from the town of Windsor. He,
along with other members of his family, are buried together in a small cemetery
that is situated about a quarter of a mile from the Cooper Hill Road. The
cemetery is well maintained and boasts a stately flag pole up which often flies
the American flag – a patriotic act of which Calvin, the “Chieftain,” would
surely have approved.
Calvin Hoggard, according to all accounts, was a good man. He was a church-goer,
a deacon in the church and was characterized as a Christian. He sacrificed
tremendously for the perpetuation of his country during a most demanding time.
During his lifetime he suffered tragic loss and tragic loss. His first wife,
Rebecca Miller, passed away prior to their fourth wedding anniversary. Six of
his eight children died at ages of four months, seven months, one year, three
years (two children) and five years. His brother, Frazier, who served in the
Union Army at Plymouth in Calvin’s company, was captured and died as a prisoner
of war.
At Calvin’s death, his two surviving daughters were quite young. Annie was nine
years and three months old; Modena, one year and four months. As with so many
unfortunate events detrimentally impacting the family, the two girls would have
to grow up without their father. Modena was not even old enough at Calvin’s
death to ever be able to recall him. 
Margaret, Calvin’s widow, married Charles L. Keeter, on December 10, 1880. Annie
died on May 12, 1885, at the age of eighteen years. Annie’s death left Modena as
the only surviving child of Calvin and Margaret. Modena lived to adulthood,
married William Henry Sallenger and they reared a family together.    
_______
Sources: Information regarding Calvin Hoggard’s Union military service was
principally derived from my books, Divided Allegiances: Bertie County during the
Civil War (1996) and Bertie in Blue: Experiences of Bertie County’s Union
Servicemen during the Civil War and supplemented with other sources, including
information and documents from his Union army military file and Union pension
application file, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Other sources included
United States censuses of Bertie County, 1850 through 1880 (National Archives);
Bertie county deeds, marriage records, and death records from the Register of
Deeds office, Windsor; newspaper articles during the Civil War period; Bertie
County Miscellaneous Records at the North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh;
transcripts of letters by Capt. Byron B. Bower and his brothers, Sixty-second
Regiment Georgia Cavalry, courtesy of Ms. Adelaid Wolf; documents from Frazier
Hoggard’s Union army military service file and Union pension application file
(National Archives); Southern Claims Commission records, National Archives. In
1998 I visited the family cemetery in which Calvin Hoggard and family members
are interred and obtained limited information from headstones. I obtained
further information during interviews and discussions with Mrs. Kenneth
Sallenger, William “Billy” Sallenger, and Neil Baker. Of particular note, Neil
was a close friend of mine and a fellow genealogical researcher. He and I often
shared information and records with each other since we had common ancestors
from Bertie County. Sadly, Neil passed away a few years ago.

Additional Comments:
I grew up at the head of Cooper Hill Road, about 6 or 7 miles from where Calvin
resided. I am a member of Bucklesberry Hunting Club which covers many acres all
around where Calvin owned land. His great grandson, William "Billy" Sallenger
was the treasurer of the club until he passed away a little over a year ago.
Over the years Billy and I had a number of conversations around the clubhouse
about our Union ancestors.

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