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Alfred May, one of nine children of John and Elizabeth Tyson May, was born in Pitt County on March 24, 1843, in a home built by his father and the family slaves. The May land had been in family hands since before the American Revolution, and John had achieved success as a prosperous landholder. To work the land, he used both family and slave labor. The 1860 census indicated that John May owned twenty-eight slaves who ranged in age from four to fifty years. The census also listed Alfred, the youngest male in the family, as a student. No doubt John and Elizabeth May followed the secession crisis with close attention and concern, since they had sons of military age. John May died on May 25, 1861, just five days after North Carolina left the Union. Perhaps because of their father's death, the sons felt obligated to stay at home and care for their mother and sisters. However, in 1862 the war took the boys from the farm into Confederate service. First Robert enlisted on April 7, then Benjamin on May 6, and finally Alfred on August 25.
Alfred May left his Pitt County home in the summer of 1862 and traveled to Wilmington, where on August 25 he enlisted in Company F (Trio Guards), Sixty-first Regiment North Carolina Troops. He served in the same unit as his older brothers Robert and Benjamin May. The regiment fought in eastern North Carolina in 1862, and in 1863 it saw combat at Battery Wagner near Charleston. The following year, the Sixty-first North Carolina fought in several battles around Richmond. Benjamin suffered a wound to the head at Petersburg in July 1864, and Robert died in a Richmond hospital of unrecorded causes in October. The regiment participated in the last major battle of the war at Bentonville in March 1865. At some point in the war's final days or after the Confederate surrender, Alfred returned home and carefully put away his uniform, rifle, cartridge box, pistol, and many other items, including objects that he apparently carried home as battlefield souvenirs. The grouping of artifacts displayed here is unique. It is the largest extant collection of objects associated with a North Carolina Confederate enlisted soldier.
Alfred May returned home determined to prosper in postwar North Carolina, despite the loss of much of his family's wealth through the emancipation of their slaves. Gradually Alfred acquired land that had passed to other family members and consolidated the May holdings. On October 12, 1875, he married Ida Eugenia Wooten, and eventually they had eight children. When he died on March 29, 1906, Alfred was buried in the family cemetery, just a few hundred feet from his place of birth. The objects that Alfred May brought home from the Civil War passed down first to his children and then to his grandchildren as family treasures. They were displayed during family gatherings on special occasions, and the story of Alfred's war service was told. The May farm in Pitt County still remains in family hands today. In the early 1990s, Alfred May's grandchildren donated his Civil War artifacts to the North Carolina Museum of History.
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