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Middleton’s new book looks at county during Civil War
By Lynn Hotaling
A local minister who survived the horrors of war half a world away has now written about the toll armed conflict took on Jackson County a century and a half ago.
The Rev. Walter Middleton, 86, a survivor of World War II’s tortuous Bataan Death March, chronicles the bloody Civil War years that brought hardships to the mountains as bands of deserters and renegades raided farms, stealing and destroying provisions isolated families – mostly women and children – needed to survive.
The Rev. Walter Middleton of Dillardtown will sign copies of his book about life in Jackson County during the Civil War, “Trouble at the Forks,” on Saturday, Jan. 14, from 1-3 p.m. at City Lights.
Based on family stories and the author’s own research, “Trouble at the Forks” is a collection of events that happened in and around Tuckasegee in the mid-19th century. The book’s central character is Middleton’s grandfather, David Middleton, who was forced to assume leadership of his family when Walter Middleton’s great-grandfather, Nathan Middleton, left his Canada community farm to fight in the Civil War.
As a child, Walter Middleton spent many hours in his grandpa’s company, listening to his tales and memorizing his account of the family’s survival during the dark days when the nation was split by the fever of war. “Trouble at the Forks” begins with an overview of the settlement of Tuckasegee and describes how his great-grandfather Nathan met and married his bride, Polly Pickelsimer, and acquired the family farm on Rich Mountain at what is still known as “Polly Middleton Gap.”
The Rev. Walter Middleton’s new book “Trouble at the Forks” chronicles life in Jackson County’s Tuckasegee and Canada communities during the Civil War. Based on stories Middleton heard from his grandfather as well as the author’s own research, the book also gives details of Tuckasegee’s bloody Hooper-Watson feud. Middleton will sign copies of his book Saturday, Jan. 14, from 1 until 3 p.m. at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.
It also touches on the infamous Hooper-Watson feud that resulted in a string of murders and had its origins, according to Walter Middleton, in the same passions that ignited the Civil War. Middleton said he had heard of the bad blood between the two families all his life, but that it was mostly whispered about as if it were a forbidden topic.
“I kept hearing stories when I was growing up about the Hooper and Watson feud,” he said Monday. “People knew about it, but it was a ‘no-no.’ People were afraid they’d lose a lot of friends if they wrote or talked about it.”
Middleton said he felt qualified to write about the bloody quarrel because he knew both sides. He had talked with several members of the Hooper family, including the late Kent Coward, whose mother was a Hooper from Tuckasegee. In addition, Middleton had the Watson version of the feud because a member of that family married his grandpa David’s sister.
“Bud Watson – the one that got away when his father and brothers were killed – married my grandaddy’s sister (Sereptha) – and he told all that to my grandpa’s family,” Middleton said.
“That feud was politics to a great deal,” Middleton said. “The Hoopers were Republicans, and the Watsons were Democrats.”
Walter Middleton said the Civil War period remained vivid in his grandfather’s mind until David Middleton died in 1928 at around age 85. The times were so hard that his grandpa couldn’t help remember them, Walter Middleton said.
Despite having his grandfather’s stories to rely on, Middleton said he had to “piece together” the stories that comprise his book.
“Each family told different versions,” he said. “I had to pick what I thought was nearest the truth. I had a pretty good lineup on it because of the stories I’d heard from Grandaddy.”
Though their wartime experiences were separated by more than a hundred years, Walter Middleton said he thought similar qualities helped them survive terrible times.
“Once when I was giving a talk, someone asked me what I attributed surviving my prisoner-of-war experience to,” he said. “I said I thought it was due to grit and grace, and that I provided the grit, and the good Lord provided the grace.”
According to Middleton, his grandfather David also needed “grit and grace” to make it through the difficult times the Civil War brought to Jackson County’s remote mountain farms.
Walter Middleton will sign copies of “Trouble at the Forks” this Saturday, Jan. 14, from 1 to 3 p.m. at City LIghts Bookstore in Sylva.
Middleton, who lives in Sylva, is also the author of “Flashbacks: Prisoner of War in the Philippines,” a memoir of his survival of the Bataan Death March. His first book, “Qualla: Home of the Middle Cherokee Settlement,” traces Cherokee history and lore in the Qualla Boundary and draws on stories told by his Cherokee grandmother, Mariah, who was David Middleton’s wife.
For more information on the Jan. 14 event at City Lights, call the bookstore at 586-9499.
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