Reeves, Hugh C.

Summary

Father: Frederick Reeves
Mother: Edith Currie

Birth: c1817, Orange County, North Carolina
Birth Source: Census Records

Death: 13 Aug 1864
Death Source: CSA Service Record and Orange County Will Book G, Page 442

Spouse1: None

Narrative

Hugh C. Reeves did not marry, but his will written in 1863 leaves a curious bequest of $500.00 to William Alexander Workman, son of Mary Workman. William Workman was apparently under the age of twenty-one since the will stipulates as to the distribution of the legacy if William should die before the age of twenty-one.

In 1859, William Baldwin, husband of Hugh Reeves' aunt, Nancy Reeves Baldwin, died, leaving instructions in his will that his slave Jesse should be permitted to choose his own master and should be sold for five hundred dollars. Jesse chose Hugh C. Reeves who offered to pay the stipulated amount, but the executors refused to "make title or deliver the slave." Consequently, Reeves sued the executors and Baldwin's sons for permission to purchase the slave Jesse. (Source - Reports of Cases in Equity, Supreme Court of North Carolina, December 1859--August 1860, pp. 355-57)

Other than the above mentioned bequest to William Alexander Workman, his will written during the civil war, left his entire estate to his four sisters Lydia Borland, Mary Hasting, Edith Thompson and Sarah McDaniel.

Hugh C. Reeves' service to the Confederacy is recorded as distinguished. He enlisted as a Private on 4 March 1862 at the age of 40 in Company G, 44th Infantry Regiment North Carolina and died of disease on 13 Aug 1864 in a hospital at Richmond, Virginia.