James Iredell Hayman
(Tyrrell County)
Featured Character – 1865 & the
Return Home
General
Map of the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, Showing the Theatre of
Operations of the Burnside Expedition, Harper's Weekly,
March 1, 1862
Courtesy of the Museum of the Albemarle
Son of a Tyrrell
County
boatman, James Iredell Hayman
followed his father to the sea. He did not join the
Confederate Army
until February 1862, just before the Conscription Act came into
effect.
He enlisted in Company B, 3rd North Carolina Light Artillery
Battalion,
also referred to as the “Edenton Bell Battery” or the “Albemarle
Artillery.” Originally assigned to Robert E. Lee’s Army of
Northern
Virginia, the battery spent a majority of the war manning
fortifications around
Wilmington,
North Carolina.
On September 30, 1862,
Hayman received a promotion. He became the battalion’s
artificer, the
soldier tasked with the duty of repairing and maintaining the battery’s
cannons. Following the fall of Fort
Fisher, the
Bell Battery retreated
across southeastern North Carolina,
and joined Joseph E. Johnston’s hastily reassembled Army of
Tennessee.
After fighting in the Battle of Bentonville, the Bell Battery retreated
further
west to Greensboro.
Following his defeat at Bentonville and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox,
Johnston
had no
other options. On April 26, 1865 he ordered his forces to lay
down their
arms. Following his parole by the Union provost marshal in Greensboro, family oral tradition
states that Hayman
walked two hundred and thirty miles back home to Tyrrell
County.
He returned to the sea, eventually becoming the captain of an Albemarle Sound
steamship. He died in 1905.