Welcome to HickoryRecord.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

HickoryRecord.com - Hickory Daily Record

HomeNewsEntertainmentSportsLifestylesOpinionCommunityWeather Online Tools Jobs | Real Estate | Shopping | Classified

Librarian to present true story of flight and plight of teen soldier

Alan Rogers

Kim Wetmore is a librarian at Southwest Library in Mountain View.

WANT TO GO?

What: “Hickory’s Cold Mountain,” a presentation about the true story of a young man who tried to hide from the Civil War, then joined the Confederate Army and then deserted.

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Patrick Beaver Memorial Library, 375 Third St., NE, Hickory

Cost: Free

For more information: Call 304-0500

By Ragan Robinson | Hickory Daily Record

Published: April 27, 2009

HICKORY - Librarian Kim Wetmore kept Larkin Thornburg in a box for nearly a decade. She will let him out this week.

His story is too colorful for the bland manila envelope where she keeps the Civil War soldier's memoirs. His story is too big for the box.

Wetmore, who works at the Catawba County Library's Southwest Branch, was a genealogy librarian when one of Thornburg's descendants brought her the pages.

It is the first-person tale of a Gaston County man who dodged the draft and hid out in the woods when war found him an unwilling volunteer. He joined up, finally, when his evasion brought problems for his family.

A month later, he faced a choice. He could run toward the Yankees ready to fight or he could retreat across the river. Thornburg picked the river and the long way home.

He wasn't yet 18 years old.

Thornburg's memoir, titled "The Experiences of a Seventeen Year Old Boy During the War Between the States," stirred skepticism in Wetmore at first.

"I thought, 'OK, maybe Grandpa fudged a little'," she said.

She thought of the proverbial "three brothers" stories, those so many families have, in which three brothers come to the states. There's always one brother's storyline missing. There's always a part about the story a true genealogist can't back up.

But something about Thornburg's account appealed to her. There was fierce conscience it would have taken to refuse the fight in rural North Carolina, a state that didn't vote to secede from the union but ardently supported the South in the war. There was the brother who went to fight for the Confederacy immediately while the younger boy disappeared into the woods.

Wetmore went to the 1850 Census and found Thornburg listed, a 4-year-old boy. Ten years later, the records gave her small clues about the family. Occupations. Disabilities.

The father owns $350 in property. An older woman in the family is blind. Thornburg is 14.

The neighbors he mentions are accounted for.

The Battle of Cedar Creek, Va., happened the way Thornburg wrote it. The river is there. The railroad tracks are where they're supposed to be.

"Every genealogy story has sand and salt," Wetmore said. "You really have to sift."

She looked for the salt in Thornburg's narrative, the grain of truth. She found the whole shaker full.

In the years since, Wetmore has been thinking about the piece of historical fiction his story could make, should make. She's been listening for the voice of the boy in the words of the man who wrote the memoir. She wants the teenager to tell it, the one who liked girls and though he could hide from war in the woods.

The BIG Read, an effort to engage all of Catawba County the Civil War-era book "March," sped up her intentions. She will present a talk entitled "Hickory's Cold Mountain" on Tuesday. It's a take on Charles Frazier's bestseller, a story with some similarities to Thornburg's.

For Wetmore, his is a story about choices. It's about the things that determine who we become.

She's still listening for the young voice to narrate the book she envisions. Tuesday's presentation will have to be enough for now.

"Larkin needs to get out in the world," she said. "He needs to say sometimes you have to make decisions."