Pvt. Joshua P. Stepp, CSA
 Civil War Service - Lost in the Records?

by Iris Teta Eubank Wagner

Some  years  ago  and   beginning  research to find the Civil War Service records of  great-great grandfather Joshua, I submitted an application to the NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORD ADMINISTRATION. The inquiry  produced no information for Pvt. Joshua P. Stepp, age 35, Confederate soldier from Buncombe County, North Carolina.

Since that time THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES has begun contributing images of historical documents to www.footnote.com.  Among those documents now online are the Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of North Carolina.

                    
                                Pvt. Joshua  P. Stepp  
        December 26, 1824 - August 27, 1862, Tombstone
                                                           Patton Meeting House Cemetery
                                                              Swannanoa, North Carolina
 

The Stepp cousins from Buncombe
Several cousins named STEPP from the Swannanoa Valley in east Buncombe County joined a company of men led by Capt. Zebulon B.Vance who had organized the company in Asheville on May 3, 1861.  The Stepp men were descendants of early Buncombe County settlers, and their families were in 1860 among the most prosperous farmers in Buncombe, owning large farms and slaves.   Capt. Vance was a robust, strong minded, and popular lawyer in Asheville.  He had served two terms as a U.S. Congressman from his district. The men rallied to him and to the Confederate cause -  Vance's "Rough and Ready Guards from Buncombe County."  Most of the men likely felt pride in their leader and felt honored to be joining his company of fighters.

Young Swannanoa resident of the time, WILLIAM McREE GUDGER, was a 2nd Lieutenant in Co. F.  His great-great granddaughter Catherine Brady tells in an article that At the start of the war William and the area Buncombe County men enlisted in Company F, the "Rough and Ready Guards."  It is noted in this  Gudger biography that William's brother Charles, also in Company F, died of typhoid fever in a hospital at Lynchburg, Virginia, on July 9, 1862.     

The company was organized as the 4th Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers.  By November, 1861 the regiment had been re-named and designated the 14th Regiment of Infantry of North Carolina Troops.  the "Roughs" became Company F of the regiment.

The Confusion of Names
Two of the cousins had first names starting with the letter "J." - JESSE STEPP and JOSHUA P. STEPP.  A younger cousin, JAMES PARLEY STEPP, entered the war at age 18, in July, 1863.  The Confederate records list them  variably as J.P. - J. Parley - J. - J. B. - Jesse - Jessie Parley - and Tisdale.  TISDALE STEPP and JESSE STEPP have numerous documents as they were in the war until their deaths at Spotsylvania Courthouse in 1864.  However, after studying the documents of these various identities, one document stands out in my mind as significant for  JOSHUA P. STEPP.  It is the document below which is included, mistakenly, it appears, with the Jesse Stepp records.
This document is the only instance in the collection of documents for the cousins that refers to J. Stepp.  The document shows J. Stepp was admitted to Camp Winder  hospital on August 29, 1862, with  Febris Typhoides. The admission date is so close to the date on Joshua's grave stone at Patton Hill Meeting House Cemetery - August 27, 1862 - that I cannot help but think this is indeed  a record for Joshua P. Stepp. 

Jesse was listed on a  muster roll  as having been "sick since Dec. 1, 1862," later than the time frame for this item. And other of Jesse's records are distinctively attributed to the name Jesse Stepp.

An article by George W. McCoy published in 1961 in the Asheville Citizen-Times,  writes about  Company F, the Buncombe "Roughs," in detail, from organization through the end of the war.  The name J.P. Stepp does not appear on the muster Roll of Company F, according to the records found in the John Evans Brown Papers at the State Department of Archives and History at Raleigh.

As McCoy writes, several of the officers "contracted disease in the dreary swamps of the Chickahominy," and died in July, 1862.  Zebulon  Vance's  law partner in Asheville before the war, William C. Brown, died in July in Richmond from disease. The 14th's regimental commander, Col. Roberts, as McCoy writes from the record, "was seized with a malignant fever indigenous to those parts."  The colonel died of his
National Archives image on footnote.com                                                       illness in July in Richmond.

A scholar on Civil War Military Hospitals, C. P. Schulze, explains that "Injuries and diseases which are today minor annoyances were in the 1860's often fatal." And the best care was " to little avail."


From a report in  the Richmond Whig
August 29, 1862 . . . "Several hundred sick soldiers arrived in the city yesterday afternoon by the Central Train, and for want of proper arrangements for their reception and accommodation, the poor fellows had to lie down in the streets, near the Provost Marshal's office, where they remained for two or three hours.  They were at length marched off to Camp Winder, two miles distant.  Many of them had eaten nothing during the day.

The Roll of Honor
Both JESSE STEPP and TISDALE STEPP died in 1864 near Spotsylvania Courthouse. They are included on the ROLL OF HONOR OF COMPANY F, 14TH REGIMENT OF NORTH CAROLINA TROOPS.

There is also J. PARLEY STEPP whose name is included on the CONFEDERATE ROLL OF HONOR FOR COMPANY F, 14TH REGIMENT OF NORTH CAROLINA TROOPS and identified as  18-year-old J. Parley Stepp, who enlisted at age 18 on July 1, 1863.   James Parley Stepp, son of Adeline and the elder Jesse Stepp of Swannanoa,  DID NOT DIE IN THE WAR !  He died in Attala County, Mississippi in 1886.  He is living in Attala County with his family on the 1880 U. S. Census.

The Confederate Draft enacted April, 1862
As he was older, Joshua may have waited to join the 'Roughs,' or a different company, until after the Confederate Draft was enacted on April 16, 1862, at which time older men would have been drafted into service.  He may have decided to join and serve with men he knew from Buncombe, and rode to their camp in southwestern Virginia, arriving in July, when the typhoid outbreak, as was reported,  was most dangerous.  He may have become ill over the next few weeks without ever having enlisted.

Alexander Porter's death in December, 1861
Another reason Joshua may have waited to join or enlist in the war, was the illness and death of his father-in-law ALEXANDER PORTER.  Mr. Porter died in December, 1861. Joshua may have felt an obligation to his family, his wife and children, to stay with them at this difficult, personal time, and to not  volunteer for war service. 

A conveyance of property deed signed by all Alexander Porter's children and children-in-law, including, it is said, signed by Joshua P. Stepp and wife Isabella Stepp, registered at the Buncombe County Courthouse on June 30, 1862, only two months between the registration date of the deed and the date of death on Joshua's tombstone.  Though the registration date of the deed was June 30, the heirs may have actually signed the deed earlier in the year.  He may have reached the place where Company F was in camp in July, 1862.  The 14th Regiment would have been in camp in the swampy area around the Chickahominy River.

Given the chaotic time of war in which the Confederate Records originated, unless a later item of proof surfaces from as yet an untapped source, I will believe that JOSHUA P. STEPP became ill with typhoid fever in the summer of 1862 in unsanitary Civil War camp environments in the swamps of the Chickahominy.  Records indicate that some men did not officially enlist until the company was camped near Suffolk, Virginia.  The absence of an official enlistment document could indicate that Joshua became ill early in the company's encampment at Camp Ellis, near Suffolk, before he had officially enlisted. Therefore, no official enlistment document ever existed for him, so none was found to place his name on a list.

I will consider that August 27, 1862 - the date on Joshua's grave stone - to be the date, or near date, of his death in Richmond, Virginia.  Whether true or not, this is the date of death ascribed to him.  And what might be most important to Joshua is that descendants have cared to learn of his experience in the war, and see him and remember him as the handsome man looking back at us from the photograph.   He is not lost in time. e

Background Information

Capt. Zebulon Baird Vance
Vance was a young, respected attorney in Asheville, born to a family of early settlers in Buncombe, as  were the Stepp men, of early and prominent settlers in east Buncombe.  Vance's father settled on Reems Creek, north of Asheville, where in 1830  Zebulon was born .

Vance knew the Stepp family 
The 1790 census of Wilkes County, shows Vance's mother's Zebulon Baird family owned an adjoining farm to THOMAS STEPP's farm.  Thomas was Joshua's grandfather. 

By 1857 Vance had served two terms as a U. S. Congressman.  That year University of North Carolina professor Dr. Elisha Mitchell lost his life on the mountain that now bears his name, and whose measurements of the mountain still stand as its official height.  The elder JESSE STEPP,  father of young  TISDALE, JESSE, and JAMES PARLEY STEPP owned most of the mountain, and donated five acres at the summit for a gravesite and memorial for Dr. Mitchell. 
Dr. Mitchell was descending the mountain in Buncombe County when he fell to his death from a forty foot cliff and waterfall.  When he didn't appear for a pre-arranged meeting, the call went out for search volunteers, a group that grew to 500 men.  Dr. Mitchell's body was found at the bottom of a deep ravine.  Vance was one of the first men to volunteer in the search..  He later wrote of the experience.  In his article, Vance  remembered the names of 35 volunteers, and named them. JOSHUA STEPP was among those men he remembered who volunteered for the search team in 1857.

Vance later built a large home in the mountains near Black Mountain which he called Gombroom.  There he hosted reunions of surviving soldiers of his "Rough and Ready Guard" and of the 26th Regiment he had commanded as colonel before being elected Governor of North Carolina  in 1862.

(left) Appalachian Voices website : www.appvoices.org 
An 1857 lithograph showing the waterfall on Sugar
Camp Fork where Mitchell lost his life.
Photo:  Pack Memorial Library, Asheville.

Vance was with his "Roughs" less than five months.  On August 27, 1861, he was commissioned a full colonel and given command of the 26th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. 

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Original Narrative © copyright Iris Teta Eubank Wagner 2009

Sources : 

Joshua P. Stepp and Isabella Porter Stepp, tombstones, Patton Meeting House Cemetery, Buncombe County, Swannanoa Valley, North Carolina, at Bee Tree, off Old Highway 70, on Patton Cemetery Road.

Inquiry to the National Archives and Records Administration, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20408-0001, May 26, 1999, form # A486954.

National Archives and Records Administration, Publication Number M270, Compiled Service Records of Confederate soldiers from North Carolina units, labeled with each soldier's name, rank, and unit, with links to revealing documents about each soldier. Military Unit:  Fourteenth Infantry.

George W. McCoy, Buncombe 'Roughs' In Last Charge At Appomatox, transcribed by Catherine Brady from the Asheville Citizen-Times, Sunday, December 24, 1961, to the website www.14thnc.com/Profile-Company_F.htm.

W. T. Jordan. Jr., compiler, North Carolina Troops 1861 - 1865:  A Roster of Soldiers, pp 451-452; Unit Histories by Louis H. Manarin, Vol. VII Infantry of the 22nd - 26th Regiments, pp 246-247, 455-457.  Raleigh, North Carolina, Division of Archives and History.

Janet B. Hewett, ed. and Joyce Lawrence, arr., North Carolina Confederate Soldiers 1861 - 1865, Unit Roster, Vol 3, Broadfoot Publishing Co., Wilmington, N.C., 1999, p 1047.

Mark Tindall, Civil War historian, email, 2007, with suggestions and possibilities, and answers to questions  concerning the re-naming of  the North Carolina Regiments. 

Civil War Richmond www.mdgorman.com - From the Richmond Whig, August 29, 1862

Mrs. Marian E. Miller, Old Buncombe County Heritage, Article # 559, Jesse and Adeline Stepp.

Information provided by Catherine Brady, great-great-granddaughter of William McRee Gudger, 2nd Lieutenant, Company F, 14th North Carolina Infantry Regiment.  Transcribed to website www.14thnc.com.

Pete Ivey, "Mitchell Died 100 Years Ago," article appearing in the April 13, 1957 issue of the Asheville Citizen-Times, Asheville, North Carolina.

Zebulon B. Vance, "The Search for Professor Mitchell's Body," The Asheville Spectator, August, 1857.