Ben & Rebecca Marshbanks DeBruhl

Benjamin and Rebecca DeBruhl. Francis Marion Marshbanks and Martha Ann Salmon Marshbanks and a new beginning in Mars Hill, N.C. in 1867

Ben entered the South Carolina State service at the beginning of the Civil War.
He served 90 days in the 2nd South Carolina Regiment before that Regiment was amalgamated into the Confederate States of America army. They discovered that Benjamin was still not 16 years old even though he had already served 90 days in the State Militia. When he turned 16 he enlisted again in the Confederate Army and joined the 7th South Carolina Cavalry. He served in this unit until the end of the war in April 1865. His brother George Ephraim DeBruhl also served in the same regiment. Records show he was with his Regiment until the night before the surrender at Appomattox. His commander Fitzhugh Lee requested permission from his uncle Robert E. Lee to try for a breakout through the Federal Army surrounding the southern army. Lee gave the go ahead and the Cavalry did manage a breakout and moved west towards Lynchburg Virginia. There they disbanded with instructions for each man to make their way home. Benjamin came back to Greenville, South Carolina area where he and Rebecca started a family. When the first and second Reconstruction Act was passed in 1867/1868 things took a turn for the worse. Former Confederates were stripped of their rights. Ben and Rebecca and Rebecca’s family Francis Marion Marshbanks and Martha Ann Salmon Marshbanks decided to leave South Carolina forever and relocated to the Forks of Ivy section of Madison County North Carolina in 1867. They settled along Gabriel’s Creek and raised 13 of 14 children born to them. When they settled in Mars Hill Ben was only 23 and Rebecca 21 years old!
The church records show they transferred their membership from the Reedy River Baptist Church in Greenville, S.C. to Gabriel’s Creek Baptist Church Mars Hill, N.C. in 1867.
Much credit for the survival of many mountain families can be traced directly to the church families throughout the mountains for keeping not only the faith alive, but the people themselves. It became pretty much a community effort to feed clothe and house the children as well as the adults. It has been said nearly half the population was engaged in making liquor and the other half in consuming it. One had to wear a badge to keep from selling it to each other. It was a lawless and rowdy place, with the little mountain churches and their constant appeals to conscience and reason the only limiting influence on the energies and passions of the young men who seemed at times to defy all natures laws or man made boundaries. These same men could and did stick with their women folk and the womenfolk by and large stuck it out and raised families oftentimes with only will power and their Christian faith.
Rebecca died in 1931 aged 87 Ben died in 1916 aged 72 Frances Marion Marshbanks also served in the Confederate Army and was captured at the Battle of Bentonville, N.C... He was sent to a Federal Prisoner of War camp on Long Island, N.Y. After the war he made his way back to Charleston, S.C. and thence to Greeneville, S.C. and home. After the war South Carolina was devastated and Confederate Veterans civil rights were stripped by the First and Second Reconstruction Acts. These families like so many others started anew with raising livestock, timber and subsistance farming. When tobacco was introduced as a cash crop it supplanted most of the livestock business. Farming however carried on and is still a major industry in Western North Carolina.
In 1867 the Marshbanks family along with Ben and Rebecca’s DeBruhl family decided on the move out of South Carolina forever. Both families came to Mars Hill section of Madison County together.


Battles and Leaders
National Archives
Church records
Confederate Military records

Researched and written by Norman DeBruhl the great grandson of Ben and Rebecca DeBruhl.