Vital Supply Line

— Confederate Lifeline —

The Roanoke Navigation Company opened the upper Dan River here for batteau traffic in the 1820s, and the towns of Leaksville (present-day Eden) and Madison became river ports. During the antebellum era, farmers shipped their produce downstream to markets in eastern North Carolina and Virginia. On the return trip, the bateaux carried goods bound for the town merchants. When the Richmond and Danville Railroad reached Danville, Virginia in 1856, batteau traffic decreased below that point.

After the Civil War began in 1861, batteau owners continued to ship goods up and down the river. In Danville, Confederate authorities soon established hospitals, prisons for captured Union soldiers, and a large quartermaster commissary. Early in 1863, the Confederates commandeered Dan River batteau to transport iron and large quantities of grain and other foodstuffs from Madison and Leaksville to the Danville commissary. From there, the railroad transported supplies to Confederate forces in Virginia.

In the summer of 1863, the Danville firm of Jones, Neal, and Farrar contracted with the quartermaster in Danville to furnish coal to heat the prisons and hospitals there. Because coal was in short supply in the South, the company reopened the Wade Coal Mines two miles west of Leaksville. In 1863-1864, Union prisoners from Danville dug a large quantity of coal there; it was loaded on the bateaux nearby and shipped downstream to Danville. Leaksville Landing, one of the batteau docks, was located a short distance upstream from here.

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Show me all markers in:  Eden, NC  |  Rockingham County  |  27288  |  North Carolina  |  United States of America

Leaksville Landing
"River boat Men: Dan River, 1792 - 1892"
"Land of Eden"
Annie Eliza Johns
"Land of Eden"
Land of Eden
Luther H. Hodges
Leaksville Cotton Mill
Barnett Canal
Calcium Carbide

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