Hiding Hearts: An Appletree Swamp Romantic Escapade

On March 21, 1865, the mayor of Goldsborough, (now spelled Goldsboro, ) North Carolina, surrendered the town to General William Tecumseh Sherman's troops. It was the end of the Union Army's march through the Confederacy, the deathblow that sealed the fate of the Southern insurrection. Charlotte Bratcher, Lottie to friends and family, an eighteen-year-old farm girl from Wayne County, had no particular allegiance to the Southern cause. She is known as the best horse rider in the county. She a...