There is a lot of forgotten history in Clinton. As the Henry County Museum gears up for September’s Civil War displays, and the annual Cemetery Walk (in October), I thought Clintonians would enjoy a brief history of Nathaniel H. Duff – Civil War Veteran and bricklayer by trade. He won’t be one of those featured in the Cemetery Walk, but many of you may remember his home on Ohio Street:
Nathaniel H. Duff was born in Washington County, Virginia on February 25, 1843. At the age of 15 he entered the trade of a brick layer in Taylorville, TN. While in Taylorville, the war broke out and he returned home and enlisted. He found himself in Company H of the 37th Virginia Regiment. Duff fought with them nearly until the end of the war. The biographical information from the History of Henry County says he fought until the end of the war – but it did leave out some details. The official records for the 37th shows he “deserted to the enemy.” The war was hard on many Confederate Soldiers; the South was always short of men, munitions, and supplies and the Union was not. But if one were to track his unit’s movements throughout the war, it would be hard to imagine that his “desertion to the enemy” was much more than a surrender of which there was probably no other alternative (other than death).
Duff enlisted in early 1861; Company H was called “King’s Mountain Rifles” and they didn’t get much of a break. They cut their teeth early at the Battle of Kernstown. Old Stonewall Jackson was there, and it was a Southern victory. King’s Mountain Rifles were sent along the entire Shenandoah Valley campaigns but were forced to a dead stop in August of 1862 at the Second Battle of Bull Run.
It did not get any better for Duff and Company H: In September, at Sharpsburg, he was severely wounded in the arm and shoulder and hospitalized in Virginia; he was given a 30-day furlough in October but returned to service just in time for the next round of fighting: Gettysburg. Who knows if Duff had fully recovered from his injuries at Sharspburg as so many men were lost in very fierce fighting there and as mentioned above, the South was always in need of men and materials. Of course, Sharpsburg is better remembered as Antietam today – still the single bloodiest day in American History. The casualties combined for both sides were over 22,000 men: the Northern Army of Virginia lost 10,000.
Gettysburg wasn’t much better. From their position on Seminary Ridge, the King’s Mountain Rifles watched Pickett’s fateful charge. But after three days of fighting, they were given orders to march on again.
The official records show that on March 8, 1864, at a place called Morton’s Ford, Duff “surrendered to the enemy.” In about a year General Lee would surrender at Appomattox. The Henry County Histories say Duff returned home and then went to Philadelphia for a while, but a healthy suspicion in the contrast between that and the official records should probably lead one to believe it was the other way around: it is probable he finished out the war in Pennsylvania as a “guest” of the Union Army before returning to Virginia. Either way, he did not stay in Virginia long.
In June of 1868 he moved to Sedalia, and soon after he moved to Clinton. Probably eager to put things behind him, he took up the trade he had started before the war and was soon engaged in manufacture as well as contract work. He married Lulu Messick on November 3, 1870, and to that union had three children.
After settling in, Duff built a home which used to stand at 619 E. Ohio Street. The home, while it stood, was the subject of many a high schooler’s art class project. The ornate porch posts with decorative pottery especially caught one’s eye. Broken pottery pieces were used on the gables, too, and at a little round window near the top of the gable sat a clay puppy dog which looked down on the street below.
Nathaniel Duff passed away on December 7, 1911 and was interred at Englewood cemetery.
