Thomasville

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

Thomasville, North Carolina · United States