C.E. Bost, 83, Visiting Raleigh, Talking About Civil War, Aug. 1, 1925

Visits Capital After Absence of 64 Years. . . Caleb Ervin Bost, 83, Tells about Civil War Experiences—Now Living in Florida

Raleigh, July 31—Caleb Ervin Bost, 83, resident of Miami, Fla., and nearly all of his life a farmer about the Cornelius section of Mecklenburg, is in Raleigh for the first time since he took a horse stall on a freight train 64 years ago and rode to New Bern to defend the Neuse metropolis against the bombardment of the federals.

Mr. Bost, who is a first cousin of Mrs. J.W. Cannon of Concord, and native of the Bost Mills section in Cabarrus, is visiting kinsmen in Durham and Raleigh. He spent Thursday night in Durham with Rev. Sidney S. Bost, whom the patriarch had never seen. From there he came to Raleigh. Driving over the capital this afternoon he could remember nothing that he saw in the first days of the war. A vivid recollection he has of the conflict. Coming to Raleigh under the command of General Lawrence O’Brien Branch, of this city, he and his fellow soldiers set out by train for New Bern. The soldiers rode in a freight car used, without the slightest change, as a horse car. The Confederates ran the horses out and the men in. They went to New Bern in that grand military style.

The put up a good scrap but the Yankees got New Bern. Then the soldiers went with the army of Northern Virginia. Mr. Bost stayed to the bitter end. He lost a brother in the Gettysburg fighting.

The octogenarian has his farm in Mecklenburg, but he is toed [tied] to Florida. He comes from the late home of William Jennings Bryan, whom the folks of the flowers followed politically save in the policy of taxation, and religiously save in nothing.

From page 3 of The Concord Daily Tribune, Saturday, Aug. 1, 1925

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-08-01/ed-1/seq-3/