Dennis Harper’s family moved to the Wyse Fork area around 1964. Now, 49 years later, he’s recovered about 15,000 artifacts from the Civil War battlefield and is an expert on the clash that occurred there.
He said he’s picked up nearly every type of thing left behind in the battle that wouldn’t fall apart after more than a century in the ground.
“Most artifacts, like the lead artifacts, have a lead oxide, white patina on them, which kind of protects them,” Harper said. “So a lead bullet, if it’s in pretty good soil, tends to be exactly like it was when they dropped it, except for it has the oxidation on the outside. The brass stuff turns green, but it generally stays in pretty good shape.”
Harper said he used to play baseball with the other kids in his neighborhood before he moved to Wyse Fork, but there the kids weren’t as into those pick-up games, though were going out into the battlefield and picking up Minie balls and other bullets, and selling them at a quarter a piece.
He added that after the harvest, in the winter, you could spot the bullets on the ground, they were so plentiful.
When a light pole was placed in his yard, the soil removed from the hole had a bullet laying on top – that was the first one Harper recovered, and he considered it interesting enough to where he wasn’t going to sell it.
“So, I started collecting them, and I’ve been digging them up for about 50 years,” Harper said. “I’ve dug out probably about 15,000 artifacts off the Wyse Fork battlefield, ranging from percussion caps – the smallest of pieces — up to cannonballs. Sometimes you find bullets that were fired that stuck in trees, and the tree decayed except for pine knots — you find a pine knot that still has the bullet in it.”
His finds are now on display at the Kinston-Lenoir County Visitors Center, the lobby of King’s Restaurant on U.S. 70, and ready for display at the CSS Neuse Civil War Interpretive Center once exhibit space is built.
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.
Name: Dennis Harper
Occupation: Pharmaceuticals
Hobby: Civil War research and archaeology
Education: East Carolina University, B.A. in History