Stobrod Thewes was a Confederate soldier and musician who served in the 25th North Carolina Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Stobrod Thewes was born in Cold Mountain, North Carolina, and he worked as a farmer for several years. He fathered Ruby Thewes, and he was an abusive father for many years, beating his daughter and once abandoning her on a mountain. He went on to serve in the 25th North Carolina Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War, and he took up music to relieve the stress of war. Thewes came to believe that music had changed his life and his ways, and he decided to desert the regiment during the Siege of Petersburg and return to Cold Mountain. He returned in the winter of 1864-1865, and, while his daughter was initially enraged with him, she and Ada Monroe agreed to shelter him, and he gradually made amends with his daughter. He, Georgia White, and Ethan Pangle formed a troupe of fiddlers and banjoists and took up residence in a mountain cave to evade the Confederate Home Guard, but they were later caught by Home Guard officer Raymond Teague, who shot Pangle dead and wounded Thewes. Thewes was rescued by Monroe and Ruby, who took him to an abandoned Cherokee camp in the mountains and hid from the Home Guard. They were later tracked down after the Home Guard captured and tortured White, but William P. Inman, a fellow deserter, arrived in time to help kill the Home Guardsmen, although he was fatally wounded in the process. After the war's end, the Thewes family, the widow Sally Swanger, and Georgia White came to live with Monroe and her daughter at the Black Cove farm.