Otter Creek Bridge Skirmish

Otter Creek Bridge Skirmish. "…difficult …to carry". , On July 18, 1863, Union Gen. Edward E. Potter led infantry and cavalry from New Bern to destroy the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad bridge at Rocky Mount. The infantry feinted toward Kinston and returned to New Bern. Potter raided Greenville, then sent part of his cavalry to Rocky Mount and occupied Tarboro. The raiders damaged or destroyed bridges, trains, munitions, and mills before returning to New Bern on July 23, but the Confederates restored rail service by Aug. 1., Union Gen. Edward E. Potter led his cavalrymen through Falkland on Sunday evening, July 19, 1863, on the way to Tarboro and Rocky Mount. Returning to Pitt County from Tarboro the next day, Potter encountered 150 Confederate soldiers under Maj. Thomas Claiborne at the Otter Creek Bridge, a mile and a half west of here. Claiborne had burned the bridge and positioned most of his force on the eastern side of the creek as sharpshooters. He fired prematurely on Potter’s advance with two small mountain howitzers from the 7th Confederate Cavalry, inadvertently warning Potter of the trap. After an hour’s engagement, Confederate Col. William C. Claiborne arrived with reinforcements, including a four-gun Alabama battery, the Montgomery True Blues. The gunners poured a heavy fire from their larger pieces into the Union position across the creek., Potter later wrote that he found the Confederates “in considerable strength,” and that “their position was a very difficult one to carry.” Sgt. H.A. Cooley, 3rd New York Cavalry, found a black man who told him about an unguarded ford called Dupree Crossing a short distance upstream. Potter’s force crossed the ford and marched away on Otter Creek Church Road. Col. Walter Newton, a local militia officer, and his nephew, W.B.F. Newton, fired on the Federals and then fled into the woods. Potter’s men set Col. Newton’s nearby house afire, but the slaves extinguished the blaze., Unaware that Potter had evaded him, Col. Claiborne shelled the Union position across Otter Creek into the night. By the next morning Potter’s force had reached Grimsley’s Church in Greene County., [Caption:] , The Thomas Dupree Plantation, 2.5 miles west, was where Sgt. H.A. Cooley learned of the ford upstream behind the plantation.