Company A, 29th Regiment was headed by Captain William C. Walker, Sr. of Nottla Community in Cherokee County, North Carolina. Enlisting at age forty, he served as Captain from the company's inception until September 24, 1861, when he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel and transferred to the field and staff of this regiment. He was killed by bushwhackers in 1864 at or near his home after he had supposedly resigned his commission.

First Lieutenant under Captain Walker was James Stanhope Anderson from Cherokee County who was promoted to Captain filling Walker's post. Anderson resigned February 16, 1863, suffering with "hernia."

James M. Shearer served as First Sergeant, then Second Lieutenant, later First Lieutenant, and finally Captain for Company A. After being captured at the Battle of Chickamauga, he was sent to prison camp at Louisville, Kentucky. Later he was confined at various prisoner of war camps such as Johnson's Island, Ohio, Point Lookout, Maryland, and Fort Delaware, Delaware, and from the latter he was released on June 12, 1865.

Among others serving as lieutenants were Abel S. Hill, Napoleon B. Hill, John J. Johnson, George M. Loudermilk, William B. Nelson, and M. A. Plyler, all residents of Cherokee County, North Carolina.

Harvey H. Davidson, a former county sheriff from Persimmon Creek Community, was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of Company C, 39th Regiment at its organization. He was promoted to colonel before he was shot in the arm, shattering the bone near the elbow, during the Battle of Murfreesboro (Stones River). He was captured, hospitalized, and miraculously survived, minus one arm. A short time later, he was released to return home.

Other residents of Cherokee County serving in Davidson's company included Pascal C. Hughes, First Lieutenant, Captain, and Major, Felix P. Axley and David L. Walker, First Lieutenants, Hugh W. Rogers and Miles Dickson "Dick" Kilpatrick, Second Lieutenants, Enoch Voyles and John A. Cotter, Junior Second Lieutenants, and Abram Booker, Captain Enoch Voyles of Persimmon Creek Community deserted or resigned; and then after Tennessee fell to the occupying Union Army, he enlisted with the Third Mounted Infantry Regiment of the Union Army in Monroe County, Tennessee. He was appointed Captain of Company G comprised mostly of men from Monroe County, Tennessee and dissidents from Cherokee County, North Carolina.

Agonized by Union sympathies throughout the conflict, others followed their good friend, "Noch" Voyles, and they also enlisted as one hundred-day soldiers in various companies of Tennessee's new Union regiment led by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Divine from Monroe County, Tennessee, and better known as "Fightin' Joe." Many mountaineers, loyal to democracy, had been conscripted against their will into Confederate service, in spite of the Southern denial of active conscription. Confederate morale had been extremely high at the outset with President Jefferson Davis swamped by more volunteers than the South could arm. But morale by 1864 was sinking fast. As Confederates lost more battles and strongholds in 1864, their soldiers became battle-fatigued, increasingly discouraged, and disheartened. When medicine and supplies were cut off by Union embargoes near the end, Rebels were stranded not only with dwindling ammunition but suffering from malnutrition, diseases, and exposure. Some infantrymen marched barefoot.

Vacillations among soldiers in the area had multiplied as war dragged on. Men swayed for sundry reasons like trees leaning this way and that, twisting in a mad, fierce wind. Not one escaped the ordeal, and all who survived bore their scars, visible or not. It was not surprising that many local soldiers resorted to "hiding-out" sequestering themselves in the vast secluded forests, foraging for food, and living like squirrels. As long as weekly newspapers went to press, the lists of such deserters grew longer and bounty for their return increased.

Farmers from the ridges between Tennessee and North Carolina so wrestled with the issues that their names more often than not appear on both Confederate conscripts and on Tennessee's Union muster rolls as well. Many pro-Union citizens of this area would have preferred to stay out of the conflict entirely, but war permitted few, if any, choices. Not merely a brothers' war, nor war waged between father and son, this was a conflict of man against himself. The Civil War grew like a raging forest fire in a summer drought consuming everything and everyone in its path. Families were enveloped; lives were consumed; and survivors drifted within the empty, smoldering ruins.

To these survivors, losses would never be replaced; emptiness, never filled; and heartbreak, never mended. So grievous were the losses, so intense the fear, so pervasive and deplorable the ruin that some descendants could recount the pangs of war one hundred and twenty-five years later.

Arthur, John Preston. Western North Carolina a History 1730-1913. Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1973-4.

Civil War Centennial Commission. Tennesseans in the Civil War. Part I. Nashville, Tennessee: 1964.

Civil War Centennial Commission. Tennesseans in the Civil War. Part II. Nashville, Tennessee: 1965.

Clark, Walter, editor. North Carolina Regiments 1861 - 1865. Goldsboro, North Carolina: State of North Carolina.

God's Country. Murphy, North Carolina: Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce, 1982.

Hurlburt, J. S. History of the Rebellion in Bradley County, East Tennessee. Indianapolis: 1866.

Jordan, Weymouth T., Jr., compiler. North Carolina Troops 1861 - 1865. Raleigh, North Carolina: Division of Archives and History, 1981.

Long, Paul J. "Bushwhacking Is a Part of Our History," Monroe County Democrat, November 12, 1969.

Long, Paul J. Our Hill Country Heritage, Williams and Related Families. Volume 1. Oak Ridge, Tennessee: 1970.

McKinney, R. Frank. Torment in the Knobs. Athens, Tennessee: 1976.

Wright, Gen. Marcus J., compiler. Tennessee in the War 1861 - 1865. New York, New York: Ambrose Lee Publishing Company, 1908.

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