71 WBM Shortly after the dinghy was lowered to the ocean, it capsized in rough surf. The men clung desperately to the overturned boat until waves pushed it onshore, but Greenhow, weighed down by her hoopskirt and corsets, disappeared beneath the dark, turbulent sea. YZ Right: Private J.J. Prosper For Me D. Doctor DeVowell Conner reportedly found Greenhow’s body after she died by drowning when a launch from the blockade-runner Condor carrying her to shore near Fort Fisher capsized in heavy seas, as depicted in the diarama, above. to her untimely death. “One of the soldiers who found her body brought me a small satchel containing 100 gold sovereigns which had been suspended around the ill-fated lady’s neck, and which may have helped to drag her down when the boat upset.” According to family tradition, the musket-bearer who found Greenhow’s body was the soldier with the unique name, Private J.J. Prosper For Me D. Doctor DeVowell Conner, of Company E, 36th Regiment North Carolina Troops. (It was said that Conner, who apparently stood only about four feet tall, was the shortest man with the longest name in the Confederate army.) His first thought was to keep the gold, and he even buried it, but his conscience or the prospect of punish-ment eventually got the better of him and he turned in the money, for which he was allegedly awarded a $20 gold coin. Adding to the legend of Greenhow’s drowning was an account by a “Late Confederate Officer” who stated, “the gold she had sewed up and concealed about her person had borne her down and was the cause of her death; that had it not been for the weight she would have been saved.” An 1864 gold sovereign held a value of $4.84, with each coin weigh-ing 7.98 grams. If Colonel Lamb’s recollection was accurate, Rose Greenhow carried less than two pounds of gold, hardly enough dead weight to have caused her to be dragged beneath the waves. Colonel Lamb sent Greenhow’s body upriver aboard the transport Cape Fear later that morning, October 1. News spread like wildfire through the city so that by the time the Cape Fear arrived, the docks were lined with distressed women and curious onlookers. Although Greenhow appeared to have no close acquaintances in Wilmington, ladies of the Soldiers’ Aid Society received her body and took it to the home of Mrs. DeRosset, the organization’s president and wife of a prominent physician, at Second and Dock streets. “She was an elegant woman, not at all changed by death,” DeRosset observed. Little Rose was attending school in France when her mother departed England for the Confederacy, and was devastated when the news reached her that her mother had drowned while trying to run the Union block-ade of Wilmington. She and her two surviving sisters filed a bill of complaint, saying that they never received any of their mother’s clothes, jewelry or money. The suit was filed against the appointed estate lawyer, William A. Wright, the recipient of Greenhow’s personal effects, turned over to him by Colonel Lamb who believed they would be turned over to her survivors, but never were. In 1888 the Ladies Memorial Association of Wilmington erected a large white Italian marble cross at Rose Greenhow’s gravesite in Oakdale Cemetery. By then an endowment fund for care of the grave had been established by her daughter, Rose Greenhow Duval, the wife of Lieutenant William P. Duvall of the US Army. The inscription on Greenhow’s headstone reads: “A Bearer of Dispatches to the Confederate Government. Drowned off Fort Fisher From the Steamer Condor While Attempting to Run the Blockade September 30, 1864.” Today Rose O’Neale Greenhow’s grave is maintained by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and it is one of the most visited sites in historic Oakdale Cemetery. www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com DIARAMA COURTESY OF THE CAPE FEAR MUSEUM. PORTRAIT COURTESY OF CHRIS E. FONVIELLE JR.
2014-9
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