Location: US 158 at Potecasi Creek bridge
County: Hertford
Original Date Cast: 1960
An engagement at Potecasi Creek, also known as the “Battle of Mount Tabor Church,” took place on July 26, 1863, between local Confederate forces and a Union expedition led by Major General John G. Foster intent on destroying the Confederate rail junction at Weldon. Foster’s men advanced along the Chowan River from Roanoke Island landing at Barfield’s (what is now known as Tuscarora Beach) near Winton. The force, consisting of nearly 1200 men, then proceeded toward Murfreesboro.
In the weeks prior to the battle, Union raiders had destroyed railroad bridges at Rocky Mount, Tarboro, and Greenville. In response, local Confederate officials established a series of minor entrenchments alongside the Hill’s Bridge over the Potecasi Creek, approximately three miles between Winton and Murfreesboro. As Foster’s advance guard, consisting of the 17th Massachusetts and 9th New Jersey regiments approached the bridge, they were caught in an ambush by elements of the 12th North Carolina Cavalry Battalion, led by Maj. Samuel J. Wheeler.
Wheeler’s force, consisting of roughly four companies, recently recruited from Northampton and Hertford counties and numbering approximately 150-200 men, opened fire from wooded areas aligning the main road, before retreating to the entrenchments on the northern side of the creek. The Confederates pulled some of the planking from the bridge during their retreat, and the 9th New Jersey drove the enemy “in confusion before them.” Severely outnumbered, Wheeler’s men retreated from their positions, losing seventeen men captured, as well as at least one man killed in action. Union losses were never reported. Another fifty-two members of the 12th North Carolina Cavalry Battalion were captured or surrendered the following day.
Despite their best efforts, the Confederates were unable to hold or even to damage Hill’s Bridge. Major General Foster reported that his force attacked and that the “enemy in small force was forced to retreat too hastily to seriously damage the bridge.” Two days later, the Union forces were defeated and turned back at Boon’s Mill by the 35th North Carolina Regiment led by Colonel Matt W. Ransom. The remains of the Confederate entrenchments are located in a wooded area just to the south of the highway on the Murfreesboro side of the Potecasi Creek Bridge.
References:
J. M. Drake, The History of the 9th New Jersey Veteran Volunteers (1889)
Louis H. Manarin, ed., North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, II (1968)
Roy Parker, “Roanoke-Chowan Battlefield - A Tour in Words, Maps, Pictures,” Gates County Index, December 27, 1956
F. Roy Johnson and Thomas C.Parramore, eds., The Roanoke-Chowan Story (1959)
War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. 27, Pt. II, pp. 979-981 (1889)