Military heroes are usually well-recognized in their hometowns. Places, people, and things are named after them and discussed in programs and history classes. Not so for an American hero named Robley Dunglison Evans. 

     Robley D. Evans was born on August 18, 1846, to Samuel Andrew Jackson Evans (1816-1856) and Sara Alphonsa Jackson (1818-1892). The home that was the site of his birth stood between the Old Presbyterian Church and the Howard/Rakes Mansion, neither of which existed in 1846. The site was outside and across the street from the edge of the Town of Jacksonville, today Floyd.

     Robley was the second of five children, and his siblings were Anna Marie “Annie” [Hines] (1844-1886), Samuel Taylor (1847-1890), William Moore (1853-1880), and George Wilson (1854-1854). During Robley’s childhood in Floyd County, his father was a medical doctor who had graduated from the University of Virginia. Dr. Evans served as the jail doctor for Floyd County for several years and represented the county as a member of the House of Delegates from 1846 to 1847.

     Compared to most Floyd County residents in the nineteenth century, the family was financially well off. As one of the two or three largest slaveholders in the county, the family owned fifteen enslaved people and owned a house in town and a farm about four miles away. 

In the first of his two autobiographies, A Sailor’s Log, Robley describes his formative years:  “The home of my parents was in the mountains of Virginia, which…were almost as wild and rough as the partially settled mountains of the West.” Back then, Floyd County had about ten people per square mile, and the area around the courthouse was still sparsely settled.

     “My first distinct memory of myself is when I was about four years old. I had rather long, light-colored curls, was sturdy in health, and wore a blue velvet suit with a feather in my cap for ornament.”

    Robley continues, “at this time, I rode from my home to the schoolhouse every day, a distance of five miles, and while I can recall the way the teacher used to thrash the boys, first sending them to cut the birches, I cannot recall that I ever learned anything.

     “Life in the mountains of Virginia in my early boyhood was very different from any I have ever known since. The country was thinly settled, and the people were, as a rule poor, but what they had, they freely shared with their neighbors. Their hospitality was great and sincere. They were honest, hard-working people who insisted on straight dealing, and they sometimes took the law into their own hands to enforce their ideas.”

     “Churches and schools were few and widely distributed. In place of the former, we had the ‘circuit rider’…. Wheeled vehicles were not in use to any general extent for pleasure purposes, as the few roads we had were mere trails fit only for horses,” Robley explains.

     “The winters were very severe, and, of course, life was mostly indoors. When the river was in condition for such sport, we spent much time sleighing on it. My father had brought from the East a two-horse sleigh, and on this, the family had many jolly rides, particularly on moonlit nights.”

 Robley’s time in Floyd County ended when his father died in 1856. At age 10, he and the rest of the family moved to Fairfax to be among close family and to provide greater educational opportunities for the children. Robley’s mother, Sara, would later marry Joel Pepper and return to Floyd County to live.

      In 1859, Robley was living in Washington, D.C., with an uncle through whom he came in contact with William Henry Hooper, the delegate to Congress for the Utah Territory. Hooper offered Robley the Utah Territory’s Naval Academy appointment. To accept the proffered appointment, Robley had to move to Utah to establish residency.

     At age 13, Robley decided to move west to Utah alone. During his sojourn across the country, he was involved in a fight with Indians and received a slight wound from an arrow. However, he made friends with other Indians, who presented him with bows, arrows, pipes, and buckskin clothing when they parted ways. During the year he stayed in Utah, he met and introduced himself to Mormon leader Brigham Young.

In mid-July 1860, Robley left Utah and headed east on the overland coach; in Missouri, he took the train to Annapolis, Maryland. He stood for his entrance exam to the Naval Academy on September 15. He passed the exam not quite a whole month past his fourteenth birthday. On September 20, 1860, Robley reported for duty on the U.S.S. Constitution (“Old Ironsides”) for naval training.

     When the Civil War began, and Southern states seceded from the Union, many Southern men left the Naval Academy to return to their native states. Robley’s mother and family demanded that Robley resign from the Academy and return to Virginia. His mother even sent a letter of resignation for her son; the U.S. military accepted the letter. However, this was against Robley’s wishes as he had determined to “stick by the ‘Old Flag.’” Through the intercession of an officer on the Naval Academy staff, the resignation was withdrawn and canceled; Robley stayed in the Academy. Afterward, Sara and most of the family cut Robley off. Sara did not make amends with her son until near her death. 

     Robley was due to graduate from the Naval Academy with the Class of 1864 but was called to active service in September 1863. He served until late 1864 on patrol duties on the U.S.S. Powhatan in the Caribbean and along the Atlantic Coast.

     On December 22, 1864, the Powhatan was off the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Confederate Fort Fisher in Wilmington, North Carolina. Admiral David Dixon Porter attempted to blow up the fort using a boat packed with gunpowder. The ship blew up at 2 a.m., but with the sun rising, it was discovered that no damage had been done to the fort. Admiral Porter and General Alfred Terry were determined to make another attack on Fort Fisher.

     The Second Battle of Fort Fisher started with an ineffective naval bombardment on January 14, 1865. Then, at  3 p.m., Ensign Robley D. Evans led his marines over 1200 yards of loose sand; the marines broke under fire, but the attack continued. Robley took a wound to the chest in the initial charge; he patched that wound and continued.

     Moments later, he was shot three inches below his left knee. While continuing to move forward, he was hit a third time in the right knee. This third wound proved debilitating, and one of his men helped him to cover. Shortly thereafter, he received a fourth wound. While behind a sand hill, after that fourth wound took off the end of his toe, Robley shot and killed the sniper who shot him on the wall of Fort Fisher. He later declared, “in the excitement of the charge, getting wounded was fun.” 

     While lying on the sand, Robley watched much of the continuing battle for Fort Fisher. At 10 p.m., the Union troops finally took the Confederate fort. Toward the end of the fight, he was removed to a ship and eventually evacuated to Norfolk. In the hospital at Norfolk, the surgeon in charge wanted to remove his right leg. Robley argued with the staff, pulled a pistol loaded with six shots, and told the surgeons, “I would kill six before they cut off my leg.”

     Robley would have a lifelong limp, but they did not remove his leg. He later credited the doctor’s wife and daughter for saving his life. Since there were no trained nurses, it was their care that allowed him to survive a fever, erysipelas in his left leg, and an abscess in his right. His wounds healed by June 1865, By June 1865, but his limp was permanent.

     Believing that Robley could not perform the duties of a naval officer, the Navy Medical Board placed him on the retired list at 19. He was the only officer in the Navy up to that time to be retired for wounds received in battle. However, he had no intention of accepting this forced retirement and appealed to Congress. On January 25, 1867, now Lieutenant Robley D. Evans was reinstated to active duty. He would go on to spend another 40 years in service to his country.

To be continued next issue.

 Next- Part 2: Robley Evans Receives a Nickname