Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 20, 1995 TAG: 9504210002
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: W11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At first glance, it looked like a piece of dark metal. She knelt and pulled the dirt back with her mattock.
A Civil War-era cannonball emerged. "Good thing I didn't hit," she said, laughing.
Actually, the cannonball wasn't dangerous, Hodges found out later. It's just a heavy, iron ball about the size of a grapefruit.
The cannon ball does pack a load of intrigue, however. To begin with, the odds of Hodges finding a 130-year-old Civil War relic near her house off Bradshaw Road were pretty long.
But she did. The question that lingers is - how did it get there?
Most likely, the cannonball was discarded in June 1864 as a Union army retreated over Catawba Mountain.
The Yankees were in a hurry after being ambushed by the Confederates at Hanging Rock. It was a "long and fatiguing march," one soldier was quoted as saying in war records, conducted on a hot, dusty, summer's day over a steep mountain.
With Confederate cavalrymen nipping at their heels, the cannonball may have become expendable after an officer recommended discarding all non-essential equipment.
"The road up the mountain is rough and will be very difficult for artillery...I have noticed...many worthless wagons, which might be thrown out and the horses used to assist the artillery," read one dispatch sent to the Union commanding officer, Gen. David Hunter, before the Yankees began to ascend Catawba Mountain.
The cannonball doesn't appear to have been fired, so chances are it was merely dumped.
by CNB