Kittrell's Springs
Kittrell, Vance County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Kittrell's Springs. Health resort, social & recreational center in the19th century. Site of N.C.âs first Confederate General Hospital, 1861-1865. Springs ½ mi. W.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
In the nineteenth century, Kittrell's Springs drew visitors as a fashionable health resort and social retreat, its mineral waters promising restoration. When the Civil War came, the resort took on a graver role as the site of North Carolina's first Confederate General Hospital, operating from 1861 to 1865. The springs themselves lie a half mile west.
Why it matters
Kittrell's Springs traces the arc from genteel antebellum leisure to wartime necessity, showing how the Civil War transformed even places of rest into instruments of the Confederate war effort.
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Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Kittrell Confederate Cemetery
Kittrell, NC
During the last, desperate years of the Civil War, the Kittrell Springs Hotel was pressed into service as a Confederate hospital, and the men who died there were laid to rest nearby. Fifty-two soldiers, each grave individually marked, rest in this cemetery a short walk to the northeast. Their deaths in 1864–65 speak to the sickness and wounds that filled the war's makeshift hospitals far from the famous battlefields.
John White
Warrenton, NC
During the Civil War, John White served as North Carolina's commissioner sent to England to purchase ships and military supplies for the Confederate war effort, braving the risks of transatlantic wartime trade. After the war, in 1870, General Robert E. Lee visited White at his Warrenton home, which stood one block east. White's mission reflected the Confederacy's heavy reliance on European goods.
William R. 'Sawney' Webb
Person County, NC
Born near here in 1842, William R. 'Sawney' Webb served as a Confederate soldier before founding a school in 1870 that, relocated to Bell Buckle, Tennessee, became the celebrated Webb School. Late in life he served briefly as a United States Senator in 1913.
Old Breastworks
Raleigh, NC
In 1863, by order of Governor Zebulon Vance, earthen breastworks were thrown up around Raleigh to guard the capital against Federal cavalry raids during the Civil War. The fortifications ringed the city as the tide of war turned against the Confederacy. Remnants of these earthworks survive a third of a mile to the west.