Person:Moses Walters (1)

!Moses owned a large farm in Buford township. He operated a general store, cotton gin, corn & timber mills. His two-story colonial home still stands in the southeastern section of Union Co., NC. He lived in Union County & enlisted at Camp Stokes on 4 Dec 1864, for the war. He was captured in a hospital at Richmond, VA 3 Apr 1865 & transferred to Newport News, VA 23 Apr 1865. He was released at Newport News on 30 Jun 1865, after taking the Oath of Allegiance. Moses was a Private. He was in Co. D, 10th Bn, NC Heavy Artillery. He was married at the home of J.A. Belk's by Rev. C.A. Plyler, according to the Walters Bible. His obituary appeared in the Monroe Journal 31 Dec 1937. Another article was in The Enquirer-Journal in Monroe on 20 Jan 1983 which chronicled his life and some of his Civil War experiences. He is buried at the Walters Family Cemetery. Excerpts of his obituary are: "One of the last of the old soldiers and splendid citizen passes Tuesday night...He was in his 93rd year...The death of Mr. Walters removes a man who may be said to have been a veritable landmark in this section... His name was a synonym for character and uprightness...Boy Soldier; Peaceful Man... Of all the middle aged men, boys and old men who went out to the Civil war, only three or four now remain. Soldiering was to him like any other disagreeable task might be, something he had to do as a matter of duty. His nature was gentle. His philosophy of life was peace not turmoil...His study was the scriptures and he knew them as few men do and he followed his conscience and his own judgement." On page 445 of "The Heritage of Union County, NC", one of his grandsons, P.F. Walters, recalled this about his Grandfather Moses. "If Moses had not had meat with a meal, he felt he had not eaten. Having been raised poor and in the South, most of the time that meat was pork; ham, sausage, fat back, pickled pigs feet, chitterlins, liver mush - in other words, the whole hog. When my grandfather was about ninety years old, he was not feeling very well and my father, F.W. Walters took his father to a physician, one of the few times Moses ever went to a doctor in his life. I do not recall Moses' complaint, but when the doctor found out how much pork my grandfather was eating, he told Moses not to eat any more pork and to come back in about two weeks for a check- up. In about two weeks my grandfather went back to the doctor who asked him how he was feeling. My grandfather replied, 'About like common.' The doctor then asked Moses if he had left off the pork as he had been instructed to do. Moses replied, 'Doctor, that morning after I left your office two weeks ago, I did not eat any more pork the rest of that day. And the next morning when I got up, I could not tell that I felt one bit better, so I went back to doing what I have been doing for ninety years.'" His marriage bond lists his first name as "Mosesla".