08/14/2026
The volunteer militia company known as the “Roanoke Minute Men” organized at Littleton, Halifax County, in December 1860. The winter was spent drilling and acquiring locally made uniforms, and on March 30, sixty-one men formally enlisted, the earliest date for any North Carolina company. One of those men was the recently married, twenty-six-year old farmer named John Ford Jenkins. He was joined by three of his brothers and dozens of cousins from the local community. In June, the company was assigned to the 4th Regiment N.C. Volunteers (renamed “14th Regiment N.C. Troops” in November 1861) as Company A. While in camp in Suffolk, Virginia, in July 1861, Jenkins detailed camp life to his wife,
“I want to come home but I don’t see no prospect of coming in a long time. I am very much obliged to you for the shirt and socks you sent… Send me an old song book if you have one to spare. We have forty men sick in our company…”
Except for being “sick in quarters” in June 1861 and hospitalized for unspecified causes in May 1862, Private Jenkins’ early service was uneventful. However, the 14th North Carolina became heavily engaged in the Seven Days Campaign, particularly at Malvern Hill. The unit suffered more than 110 casualties in that battle, including thirty-five men killed or mortally wounded in action. One of the wounded was Jenkins, who had one of his thumbs shot off.
Jenkins was promoted to corporal in early 1862, but was reduced to ranks by year’s end. The North Carolina Adjutant General’s Office was required by law to maintain a “Roll of Honor” of each Tar Heel unit. The entry for Jenkins in the Roll for the 14th North Carolina states that he was “In battle of Chancellorsville.” Casualties were again very high: forty dead and more than 120 wounded. Jenkins apparently escaped that fight unscathed, but he was a very sick man. He suffered from tuberculosis, endemic in North America in the nineteenth century. Called “consumption,” “phthisis,” and “phthisis pulmonalis” by contemporaries, it was a killer of Confederate soldiers. Under those names, tuberculosis is cited as the cause of death of 380 Tar Heel soldiers. (And doubtless claimed many more whose cause of death was not specified.)
Treatment of tuberculosis by Confederate surgeons was often nothing more than better diet and closer care than normally found in hospitals. (Although one surgeon prescribed a mixture of “black snakeroot and iodine.”) Many physicians recommended camp life rather than the hospital for convalescence, one claiming that symptoms were “greatly relieved and finally restored by the exactions of army life and the roughness and open air of field service.”
Such methods may have been prescribed for Jenkins, but the progress of the disease was inexorable. (His image, probably made in 1861, suggests that he suffered from it even then.) He was hospitalized on an unspecified date and died at the General Hospital No. 2 at Lynchburg, Virginia, July 27, 1863. His remains are in the Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, Confederate Section, Lot 1874, Grave 7, Row 2.
Left to mourn his loss was a young widow, and eighteen-month old daughter.
Image: The frock coat with tape trim on the cuffs and collar is seen on at least one other image from the “Roanoke Minute Men.” Jenkins also sports a North Carolina issue forage cap and a US M1842 musket. 1/6th plate ambrotype, unknown photographer.
Well over a decade ago, this 1/6th plate ambrotype shown was recovered in what has been described as a "trash heap" out of an estate, ready to go to the dump. Fortunately, the image ended up in the hands of a collector who in turn shared it with North Carolina images historian, Greg Mast. And Greg recognize him, from a solar enlargement/crayon portrait that had been previously shared with him by the family. That portrait is included in the comments below.
Image courtesy of Fred D. Taylor.
