Kirk’s Raiders

Written By: Jane Gibson Nardy - Cashiers Historical Society | Issue: 2020/04 - April

During the 1990s, one of my Cashiers cousins, the late Madge Dillard Merrell, asked me to find out who was the man behind “Kirk’s Raiders” or “Kirk’s Army.” 

Since she was a child [born 1907] she had been told stories about the renegade group that, during the Civil War, had terrorized the civilian population of not only Cashiers Valley but all of Western North Carolina.

My subsequent research soon filled a box full of documents that told the life story of George Washington Kirk. He was a native of Greene County, Tennessee, which bordered Madison County, North Carolina. His wartime actions, some 150 years ago, are still remembered and talked about. What the Union called “brave acts,” the North Carolina victims called “atrocities.”

Recently, two area publications briefly mentioned G. W. Kirk in articles, leaving the impression that he was a scoundrel who, with a band of bushwhackers and deserters, went from village to village stealing everything in sight and mistreating anyone who got in his way. 

This description of his activities is accurate, but what doesn’t seem to be known is the fact that he was a bon-a-fide Union soldier who was following orders. Hear this…those orders did not excuse his cruel exploits. Yes, George W. Kirk was a commissioned officer of the Union Army. He was in his mid-20s when he first joined the Union Army and he was rewarded with steady promotions and increased responsibilities. 

In early 1864, now with the rank of Major, Kirk got the following order:

“Repair, without delay to the mountain district in the western part of North Carolina and collect together, rapidly, the straggling soldiers in that region and such efficient loyal citizens as you may enlist in the regiment which you are authorized to raise to be known as the Third Regiment of North Carolina Mounted Infantry. You may mount your regiment on private or captured horses. As soon as you have from 100 to 200 men, descend upon the rebels and destroy stores and means of transportation”

By the end of 1864, he was a Colonel.

In the spring of 1865, “Kirk’s Raiders” stopped at the home of the elderly Col. John H, Alley, in Whiteside Cove, Jackson County, North Carolina, where five children were sick with the measles. According to family descendants, besides the general looting, all mattresses in the house were carried outside, torn open and molasses poured over the pile. 

For a time after the end of the war, George Kirk had a job as a policeman at the capitol in Washington, DC. 

He died in California and on his tombstone in the Gilroy,* Santa Clara, California cemetery, is inscribed, “Col. George W. Kirk, 3rd NC Mounted Inf.” He lies alone with no family members nearby.

*Gilroy, California is the Garlic Capital of the World.

by Jane Nardy
Historian, Cashiers Historical Society