WELCOME


~ The pieces are all sewn together, stitched with love.........and a quilt tells a story and the story is our past ~

The Arrowood family immigrated from England to Maryland in the 1700's. They went south, eventually settling in the mountains of North Carolina. Later , some went further south, into the Piedmont of North Carolina, in search of work and a better way of life.



I am in search of my family.

I search for those that came before me, and lived their lives as best they could. I am in search of their stories, how they lived, and how they loved.


I shared this love of seeking the past with my Dad, sharing each new finding with him, the thrill in his heart intermingling with mine. I continue this search in his honor, and hope to know these people of ours when I join up with them all in heaven.

~ Steve Lewis Arrowood 1932-2008 ~


Come with me, back to a simpler time and place. A place far removed from the hectic pace of today. To a time when life was hard, but the rewards were great. When your quality of life was determined by your own sweat, your own toil, and your own ingenuity.


Would you like a glass of sweet tea? Let's sit out on the porch where we will catch the sweetly scented breeze of summertime. Maybe Grandma will fry up some of her wonderful chicken... Time slows here.

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"We shape our lives not by what we carry with us, but what we leave behind."

~You live as long as you are remembered.~


"Our most treasured family heirlooms are our sweet family memories. " Author: Unknown


"But those who came before us will teach you. They will teach you from the wisdom of former generations."

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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Alfred Benfield ~ Civil War Hero ~ Winters Connection


Louisa "Leweasy" Catherine Winters married Alfred A. Benfield on August 10, 1852 in Burke County, NC.


May 25,  1831  ~  May 1, 1932



Alfred Augustus Benfield was a brother of Elizabeth Caroline Benfield, who married James Lenoir Winters.


The following article was printed in the Morganton Newspaper ~


During recent Veterans Day celebrations, President Bush placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers in Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia.


Across our vast nation, many communities such as Burke County, also honored our military veterans from all wars.

While sometimes overlooked , the United States has also experienced the most destructive of wars, -a civil war- that raged from 1861 to 1865 as men that were dressed in blue or gray were killed and maimed by the tens of thousands in the defense of their nation and their honor.

Although Southerners, are on occasion, criticized for their failure to forget this war, there are many of us that believe that a nation is judged by its ability to remember such sacrifices.

In fact, our current Memorial Day began as “Decoration Day”, an observance started in the South after the war between the states when the flowers were placed on the graves of the Confederate and Union soldiers.


Alfred Augustus Benfield is such a man to be remembered. Born in the Oak Hill community of Burke County, where he lived as a farmer, Benfield enlisted in the Confederate Army on July 14, 1862. Assigned to Company C, 5th Battalion, North Carolina Calvary, this unit was known as the “Burke Rangers” under the command of Junius Tate.

Company C was later stationed in Clinton, Tennessee as a unit of Colonel John Palmer’s 58th Regiment of North Carolina Troops.



Benfield was captured at Wildcat, Kentucky on August 1, 1863 and taken to the Union’s prison camp at Camp Chase in Ohio.

Shortly before his capture, Benfield wrote to his wife from Big Creek Gap in eastern Tennessee, to report that he “was alive yet and in common health but all the men were suffering greatly from lack of food.

He wrote, “ I tell you men can’t stand it much longer, nor they won’t do it. There has ten run away out of our company….”


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