1st Sergeant John Wall Norwood

1st Sergeant John Wall Norwood

Company C (the “Haywood Invincibles”), 25th Regiment N.C. Troops

John Wall Norwood (born ca. 1844) resided with his widowed mother and four siblings in Haywood County. The family owned substantial real property and nine slaves. John volunteered on May 31, 1861, for service in the “Haywood Invincibles,” subsequently Company C, 25th Regiment N.C. Troops. Despite his youth, John was immediately designated “company commissary” and served in that capacity for three months. Promotion to fifth sergeant followed in early 1862 and to first sergeant on April 30. From July to October 1862 John was on detached service at an unspecified location as a “wagon master.” He had returned to duty by the Battle of Fredericksburg, however, where the 25th North Carolina sustained 101 casualties, including twenty-two men killed or mortally wounded. John was one of the latter, “wounded severely in [the] thigh,” and died at a Fredericksburg hospital on February 2, 1863. John’s mother pressed a claim for his back pay and was awarded $81.50 in September 1864.

Unknown Photographer

1860 U. S. Census, Division 37, Haywood County, North Carolina, population schedule, page 133, dwelling 939, family 939, Sary Norwood household; 1860 U.S. Census, Division 37, Haywood County, North Carolina slave schedule, page 2, Sary Norwood, slave owner; Manarin et. al., North Carolina Troops 8:128-129; Mast, “North Carolina Casualties”; service record files of John W. Norwood, 25th Regiment N.C. Troops, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers from the State of North Carolina (M270), RG109, NA.

North Carolina Museum of History