Thirty caches are located in five different regions throughout NC. Instructions for sending the documentation are in the passport. Once all five regions are completed, you have earned a special NC Civil War trackable geocoin. Mail the passport to the address inside the passport – then your passport will be returned with your unique coin.
All of the containers are the same - camouflaged 6 inch PVC tubes - the code word you need for your passport is inside the container on a laminated card and also taped on the container that holds the log sheet. Date your logbook and add your code word in the numbered area for the cache. As the containers may become over tightened, carry a TOTT to ease the opening process.
Passports will be available at the event, some Civil War Museums in NC, and via mail if you send me you address or you can download your passport here.
Occupation of Smithfield:
This is the Johnston County Courthouse, the third to occupy this site. Here, on the steps of the second courthouse, on April 12, 1865, Union Gen. William T. Sherman announced Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, three days earlier. After some street fighting on April 11, the Confederates withdrew, burning the Neuse River bridge. Elements of the 75th Indiana Infantry were the first to occupy Springfield.
When Sherman arrived, he immediately established his headquarters in the courthouse. At about 5 a.m. the next morning, he received word of Lee’s surrender, and throughout the day he stood at the top of the courthouse steps and gave the news to his men as they marched by. Major Henry Hitchcock, of Sherman’s staff, watched as “brigade after brigade came along our HdQrs and were told the news …. Imagine the billows of tumultuous cheering which rolled along the lines … Meanwhile, band after band … made the little old town echo with music as beautiful as it was patriotic.” The Union army occupied Smithfield for two days before advancing on Raleigh.
“The streets are wide. The walks are nicely shaded by elms and hackberry …. Most of the houses are now deserted. Many of them have long been …. But the glory of Smithfield has departed, and that, too, before the war …. At the court house I noticed the shelves, in the offices, are emptied of their contents on the floor. The archives of Johnson [sic] county lie in confusion amongst the dirt …. The churches are open and the books scattered about the pews. At the graveyard I noticed the graves of a number of rebels, bearing ominous dates – about the time of the Bentonville fight.” - Chaplain John J. Hight, 58th Indiana Infantry