Margaret Holt Furgurson Harris
(Northampton County)
Featured Character – The Home Front
Margaret
Holt Furgurson Harris
Courtesy of Ernest B. Furgurson
On January 7, 1828, twenty-year old Margaret Holt married
Levi Furguson in Southampton County,
Virginia. The Furgusons had two sons that survived to
adulthood, Jesse Levi Furguson and Baker L. Furguson. Levi Furguson died in 1837, and the following
year Margaret Furgurson married a wheelwright, Absalom Harris of Northampton County, North
Carolina.
Together, Margaret and Absalom Harris had three more sons, Michael
Decatur Lawrence Harris, Benjamin Franklin Harris, and Thomas Jefferson
Lafayette Harris. All of the Furgurson
and Harris male children left home in the antebellum period. Jesse Furguson became a coach painter in Hertford County.
Baker Furguson became a merchant in Northampton County
and his half-brother, Thomas Harris, clerked in his store.
Upon the outbreak of war, however, all the
men came home and enlisted in the 12th North Carolina Infantry. After several reorganizations, that unit
became the 32nd North Carolina Infantry. Baker Furguson won an election for the
company’s second lieutenancy, and his brother, Jesse Furgurson, served
alongside him as sergeant. The three
Harris brothers enlisted as privates, but quickly rose through the ranks. Promoted to sergeant after his half-brother
Jesse Furgurson became third lieutenant, Michael Harris fought at the sides of
his family until wounded at the Battle of Fort Stedman, Virginia on March 25,
1865. Captured in a hospital after the
fall of Richmond, he spent the last few months
of the war in the Union prison at Point
Lookout, Maryland. Just days after Michael Harris’s wounding,
Union fire hit Jesse Furgurson in the right hand, something so serious that his
superior officer sent him home. Baker
Furgurson left in the service in 1862, complaining of a “hernia” that made him
“unable to perform the duties incumbent upon me.” Of all the Harris and Furgurson children,
only Thomas and Benjamin Harris served until the war’s end. The Federal Provost Marshal recorded them as
two of only one-hundred and fourteen members of the 32nd North
Carolina Infantry to surrender at Appomattox
with General Robert E. Lee. Amazingly,
all five brothers survived the war.
Baker Furgurson and Thomas Harris returned to their store. Jesse Furgurson married Mary Theresa Baker in
1867, ultimately moved to Granville
County, and continued to
work as a coach painter. Michael and
Benjamin Harris followed the path set by their father and earned a living as
wheelwrights. Their mother died in 1885.