By the Book

‘The Last to Die,’ a novel by Graham K. Strickland

A guest review by GEORGE J. FLUHR

Little did I know, in 1984, when I began a correspondence with Graham K. Strickland of North Carolina, that it would result in a fascinating novel of the American Civil War.

Strickland, as a young man in 1954, had been told by his father that his great-grandfather, Thomas Strickland, had been killed in a railroad accident while unloading munitions. Thomas had gone to war in 1862, a year after his marriage, and had never returned. As happened to so many families the details of the loss of a loved one had never reached the family. His great-grandson was determined to find out the whole story.

For 30 years he searched libraries, courthouses and state archives, ultimately finding his ancestor’s service record with the puzzling note “killed at Shohola PA in a train wreck.” A phone call to Shohola provided information that he had sought for 30 years and that his family had sought for over a century. (Nine families in the past 30 years have traced their Civil War ancestors to the Shohola train wreck.)

On July 15, 1864, a train carrying 833 Confederate prisoners of war to the federal prison at Elmira, NY collided with a coal train at Shohola. About 65 persons--both prisoners and guards—died and were buried beside the tracks. In 1911 they were moved to the National Cemetery in Elmira. Thomas Strickland’s name, and others of his regiment, appear on the Shohola monument there. The story of the wreck has been told many times, and is now regularly commemorated by the Shohola Railroad and Historical Society, which also has an exhibit on the train wreck in the Shohola Caboose museum.

For Graham Strickland, the information from Shohola was the end of a search but the beginning of a new endeavor. Realizing that several of the men killed at Shohola were from the same part of North Carolina, and the same regiment as his great-grandfather, he began to research the battles of Clingman’s Brigade, Hoke’s Division. He not only read the reports of their battles, but also visited the battle sites. These formed the setting for a fascinating novel.

The story begins with Thomas Strickland’s wedding in 1861, when rumors of war permeated every conversation. The farmers of North Carolina had two choices: enlist or be called up. The author describes troop movements and battles, the capture, the train wreck and, for those who survived, life in the prison camp and ultimate return home.

Sub-titled “A Story of War In The Carolinas and Virginia,” this book is a treasure for the Civil War history buff. Strickland has carefully described the action in each battle fought by the brigade and has illustrated positions of the troops with maps. Uniquely for a novel, he includes a bibliography, enforcing the idea that the book is as much history as novel.

The characters—some real, some fictional—come alive in that “Gone With the Wind” era, and the reader, although knowing the contrary, begins hoping they will all pull through. We hear the soldiers speak, as they no doubt spoke, on topics that varied from concern for the crop harvest to their philosophical opinions as to the causes of the war. The author acknowledges that the book has “a distinct Southern flavor.”

In a well-developed historical novel, Graham K. Strickland has put faces on the great national tragedy that was the Civil War and the local tragedy that was the Great Train Wreck at Shohola.

“The Last to Die” by Graham K. Strickland (331 pages, paperback) is available at $17.95 from Jarrett Press, 2609 Discovery Drive, Suite 121, Raleigh, NC 27616 or through a local bookstore.

[George J. Fluhr is Pike County Historian and Chairman of the Shohola Township Board of Supervisors.]