Thomasville

Thomasville. Caring for the Sick and Wounded. During the Civil War, Thomasville became a hospital center that treated the sick and wounded, civilian and soldier alike. From 1862 to 1865, a local doctor, D. W. Smith, operated a smallpox hospital just outside of town. In March 1865, Surgeon Simon Baruch arrived in Thomasville with orders to prepare a “hospital depot” to serve sick and wounded Confederate soldiers in North Carolina. The need for such services had grown acute as Confederate forces under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston battled Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s army during his Carolinas Campaign., By the time the first 280 wounded men arrived by train from the Averasboro battlefield that month, the hospital depot included several buildings. The Pinnix Tobacco Factory and the Baptist and Methodist churches were used to shelter the troops, while the office of the L. L. Thomas Hotel served as a headquarters., Preparing for the wounded soldiers’ arrival and maintaining the hospitals were community efforts. Students from the Glen Anna Female Seminary helped to fill pine-straw mattresses, while local women prepared food and served as nurses and local doctors assisted the Confederate surgeons. The Thomasville hospital depot provided care for hundreds of soldiers from both armies until it closed in the summer of 1865., The 34 men who died in Thomasville – among them 26 Confederates, 4 Federals, and 4 unknowns – were buried in a common plot in the city cemetery. In 1908, a Georgian who had served in the hospital depot led a successful fundraising effort to provide headstones for those who had died, as a tribute to the sacrifices of the soldiers and the dedication of the community who served them.