General Notes

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James A. Sibley paid $1,000 to E.G. Knight in 1858 for 200 acres of land on the head waters of Buffalo Creek in Anson County, North Carolina.  He built a house and moved his family there.  H e enrolled in the Confederate States Army at Wadesborough, North Carolina, 10 May 1862 and joined Captain L.. A. Johnson's Company of the 4th North Carolina Cavalry, 59th State Troops, at Camp Vance, near Kittrell's, North Carolina.  He was furloughed home in July and August 1864.  It is possible that his first wife died at this time.  The circumstances of her death are not documented, but he, in later life, claimed she had been murdered by a rebellious slave.

After the war James returned to home to find his livestock gone and his buildings burned, except for the house.  Wheeler's Cavalry had passed through the area requisitioning all food stuffs and livestock, followed closely by Sherman's army which destroyed everything else of value to an army.

James married his second wife, a school teacher and widow, after the war,but for reasons no t clear to his descendants, he left his family in North Carolina and went to Texas where he apparently intended to obtain land and begin a new life.  He never communicated with his family again and they assumed that he had died.  The Federal Census in 1880 lists Jane Sibley as "widowed" and in 1909 she applied for a widow's pension on the service of James A. Sibley in the Confederate States Army.  In fact, he arrived safely in Texas, acquired land in Lee County and lived there the rest of his life, marrying for a third time and raising a third family. He is buried at Sam Smith Springs Cemetery near Beaukiss, Texas, now called Lawhon Springs.  The inscription on his gravestone reads, "Farewell my wife and children all/ From you a father Christ doth call".