The land of Mecklenburg County, Virginia rolls from pasture to
forest to creek. Wild roses and honeysuckle form dense thickets,
and glossy leaves of poison ivy climb oak and ash and maple. In
the 1860s this was farm country, dependent on bonded black labor
to make its red soil produce abundant crops of tobacco, corn,
hay. And from her male ranks came soldiers prepared to fight for
the right to prosper by the South’s peculiar
institution–slavery. Among these men, in March of 1864, were
William Green Dodson, age 18,and his uncle, Benjamin Franklin
Dodson, age 37. Digging around in the archived Civil War Service
Records within Footnote.com I discovered the elements of Ben and
Greene’s 1864 story. I then correlated that keystone data with
information from the 1860 Federal Census and the book Chase City
and Its Environs to tell this family tale. Ben Dodson enlisted 8
March 1862 with Captain Thomas Taylor Pettus, commanding
officer, signing his papers in Mecklenburg County. The husband
of Delia Boyd Dodson and fath