Reeves Homeplace

Reeves Homeplace. A Close Encounter. , On March 24, 1865, Union Gen. George Stoneman led 6,000 cavalrymen from Tennessee into southwestern Virginia and western North Carolina to disrupt the Confederate supply line by destroying sections of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, the North Carolina Railroad, and the Piedmont Railroad. He struck at Boone on March 28, headed into Virginia on April 2, and returned to North Carolina a week later. Stoneman's Raid ended at Asheville on April 26, the day that Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Union Gen. William T. Sherman near Durham., Union Gen. George Stoneman's raiders passed through this area April 1-2, 1865, on their way north to Virginia. Confederate Maj. Richard Elwell Reeves, who had organized the first Surry County volunteer unit ar Dobson in 1861, encountered some of the Federals here at his home., Reeves and a friend, Lt. Col. William Luffman, 11th Georgia Infantry, were asleep in the farm office nearby when the raiders appeared. Luffman, a native of Spring Place, Georgia, was recuperating from wounds. A Federal soldier on Luffman's horse, which he had taken from the stable, demanded that the men surrender. Luffman fired his pistol and the soldier fell from the saddle dead, shot through the chest. Luffman and Reeves ran to the river and plunged in to escape, evading capture while the Union raiders searched the riverbank. Reeves and Luffman left the water downstream, then stopped at the Bowman, Butner, and Phillips houses and eventually reached Salem. Luffman returned to Georgia, and Reeves returned home after the war ended., After the men escaped, according to family tradition, the angry Federals attempted to burn the house by throwing coals from the fireplace onto the family belongings while Reeves's mother, Elizabeth Early Reeves, tossed the burning articles back into the fireplace. A partly burned picture frame survives as a family heirloom today. The soldiers finally withdrew when Mrs. Reeves promised to give the dead raider a proper Christian burial. He was buried on the hill to the northeast. Today, the Reeves's farm office, constructed of brick nogging about 1835, is the only surviving contemporary structure.