John Bartlett Fearing
(Pasquotank County)
Featured Character – 1861-1862
Although born in
“We returned the shots until we had no ammunition, then retreated under the heaviest shelling any man ever saw; we were compelled to run and fall at almost every step to escape the fragments. Some of our men were killed, some wounded, some cut off.”
Captured at Hatteras, Fearing
spent a short time in several Union prison camps before his exchange
and
release. In 1863, Fearing abruptly resigned his commission
and returned
home. He took the oath of allegiance, and even paid $2 in
federal income
tax to support the ongoing war. Fearing continued in business
as a
grocer although the 1870 Census listed his net worth at little more
than half
its 1860 value. After Emma Fearing died in 1867, John B.
Fearing married
Mollie Elizabeth Commander, niece of Cedar Vale’s Mary Elizabeth
Commander, in
1879. John Bartlett Fearing died on January 14,
1888.