By Floyd Hendley
Statesville, April 17—In a secluded little churchyard about 10 miles east of here just across the line in Rowan county there stands an old weather-beaten tombstone, grayed with the passage of the years, at the head of a sunken, grass-covered grave. A well beaten pathway leads from the entrance to the grave cut by the feet of hundreds of pilgrims who have traveled from far and near to read this brief inscription on the headstone:
In Memory of Peter Stewart Ney
a native of France and a soldier in the French revolution under Napoleon Bonaparte
who departed this life Nov. 15th, 1846, Aged 77 Years
That simple inscription is all. Stories handed down from past generations give widely varied accounts of the identity of the man buried there but an authentic record of who he was has never been produced and probably never will be.
Marshal Ney is a tradition in the community, a kind of family skeleton. One is told that he was an officer in the army of Napoleon when the French war lord was at the height of his military career. He was convicted of treason, sentenced to be executed and in the gray light of early morning was stood up before a wall and presumably shot by a firing squad. But, according to accounts, the loyal solders fired over his head, bundled him into a coffin and en route to the graveyard transferred him to another box and shipped him to America where he finally ended his days as a schoolmaster in the western part of Rowan county.
It is recited how the silent little schoolmaster in on one occasion demonstrated his unusual skill as a fencer; how he always kept locked in his room a small mohair trunk but that once a glimpse into it disclosed a French military uniform of the Napoleonic period and an array of rapiers never owned except by one of high rank in army circles.
When the news of Napoleon’s death in exile reached him shortly after he opened classes one morning in the little rural school of which he was master, he is said to have completely broken down, dismissed the pupils and sat throughout the day alone in the schoolroom. Upon his death a strange young man came for the mysterious mohair trunk, gathered the few other belongings of the aged teacher together and departed as quietly and silently as he came. The body was buried in the cemetery of Third Creek Presbyterian Church and the mystery surrounding the little old schoolmaster has never been satisfactorily explained.
The grave is set in an appropriate environment, for there hangs over old Third Creek Church an atmosphere of the old Bourbon South—the south of beauty, pomp and chivalry. The present church itself is not so old, having been built in 1835, but for more than a century before the edifice that now stands in Third Creek bottom was built a house of worship had been maintained on the site. One old grave in the adjoining cemetery records the fact that William Johnson was buried there January 20, 1708. Another reads: “Here lyes the bodys of James and Margrat Murray, June, 1776.”
The old church was built when slavery was prevalent in North Carolina and the south was in the heyday of that era often described as golden. A gallery is built with a little narrow flight of steps leading up near the door of the church where the slaves came to worship with their masters. The giant oaks standing around the church door which now shelter, on Sundays the automobiles of the congregation, once sheltered the carriages and stately spans of the elite of the community. Generations have waxed and waned beneath their shade.
The old landmarks stand vigil over the church and the grave of the mysterious man whose colorful figure has lent glamor to the spot but whose identify no one has ever been able to definitely establish.
From page 8 of the Concord Daily Tribune, April 17, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-04-17/ed-1/seq-8/
