Staff Report
On Saturday, June 12, at 11 am, at Asbury United Methodist Church, the Yadkin County Historical Society, Asbury United Methodist Church, and descendants and friends of Lewis L. Chamberlain (1833-1865) will dedicate a new home for his lost headstone at the cemetery. The public is invited to attend. Donations will be requested to support the new placement of this headstone and the upkeep of the cemetery. Next May, a second ceremony will remember the Civil War service of Chamberlain and other Civil War veterans, both Union and Confederate, who are buried in the cemetery.
On September 27, 1862, Lewis L. Chamberlain, of Hamptonville, was 27 when Yadkin authorities forced him to enlist in the 13th North Carolina Infantry Regiment in Raleigh, NC. Soon after, his wife, Elizabeth Nichols Chamberlain, wrote a letter to NC Governor Zebulon B. Vance, asking him to dismiss her husband from the Army. Mrs. Chamberlain describes herself as a “poor woman with one child” and no family to help her at home. She said that her husband was forced to enlist, even though his body was diseased. After authorities arrested him, she said that her husband was not given a physical examination. Vance ordered his secretary to reply that he did not have the authority to release her husband, so Lewis remained a soldier fighting for the Confederacy until 1864, when he went home and died on April 23, 1865, aged 32 years.