Title: Letter from Captain Thomas Sparrow to Governor Henry T. Clark

Identifier: 0001-b1-fa   (https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/23736)

Description: Letter from Captain Thomas Sparrow at Ocracoke Inlet, N.C. to North Carolina Governor Henry T. Clark. Captain Sparrow enclosed a report to General Walter Gwynn about a Drill Officer at Fort Ocracoke. Captain Sparrow asks Governor Clark to send an efficient commander for the post because the current man assigned, Lieutenant Patrick Murphy, is a drunk. Captain Sparrow stresses that without competent officers it will be difficult to fend off an enemy attack. The Civil War correspondence relates the activities of Thomas Sparrow and his Washington Grays from their formation as a volunteer company in April of 1861, until their parole from a Union prison in February, 1862. From the papers of Thomas Sparrow (1819-1884), a lawyer from Washington, N.C. who fought in the Civil War and later represented Beaufort County in the North Carolina General Assembly.