Private Thomas Lafayette Morrison- Company A

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The following photographs and information are original members of the "Bloody Sixth". I am honored to include their stories and images here. If you would like to share a story or photo about your 6th NCST ancestor, please leave a comment and I will be in touch

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Private Thomas Lafayette Morrison

Company A

No known photograph

Prior Occupation: Farmer

Enlisted: September 22, 1862 For the War 

Where: Burke County 

Age at enlistment: Rappahannock Station, Va.  on 7 Nov. 1863 

confined at Point Lookout Maryland

Thomas Lafayette Morrison was born on December 31, 1837 in Burke County, NC. His parents were John Duckworth Morrison of Burke County, NC and Fannie Epley of McDowell County, NC. Thomas was married to Temperance Louse Hall on December 20, 1860 in Burke County, NC. In less than two years after his marriage, Thomas enlisted in the Confederate States Army in Burke County, NC as a Private on September 22, 1862. He was in Company A, North Carolina 6th Infantry Regiment. While his young wife was at home, he shouldered the musket and marched against the enemy. He wrote a running account of his experiences as a soldier in a series of letter to his wife.

At his request, she kept all the letters he wrote and when he came home after the war he copied them all with his own hand in a book he acquired for the purpose. In the introduction Morrison wrote as follows:

“This is copied from the letters that I sent home while I was in the war. I left home in the 22nd of September, 1862. While in service, I was in Virginia all the time until I was taken prisoner on November 7, 1863, on the Potomac River, was taken to Washington City and stayed two nights and one day and then was taken to Point Lookout, Maryland. There I stayed one year and six months and then was paroled and sent to Richmond and stayed ten days and want then from their home till exchange and at home twenty-three days and peace was made. I went through the war and got back without the mark of a bullet.” 

Thomas returned to Silver Creek Township, Burke County, NC to live out the remainder of his life as a farmer of corn and wheat. He died at the age of 76 on August 7, 1914 from a strangulated hernia. He was buried in the Snow Hill Methodist Cemetery in Burke County, North Carolina. 

These letters were first published in the May 27, 1927 issue of The News Herald newspaper, Morganton, NC and the others appeared subsequently until the entire group on thirty-eight letters selected had been completed.

Click below to read the letters