CSA 4-2, 5¢ blue, plate position 1 (4 nice large margins) tied WILMINGTON N.C. 5 PAID APR 1 (1862) pre-war altered PAID 3 CDS (although PAID 3 is not struck up) on cover to James Robeson Prospect Hall Bladen County NC, small sealed tear at left top. $125.

The Robeson family first came to North America from Scotland about 1676. Thomas Robeson was the first Robeson in North Carolina. He was granted land on the Cape Fear River by King George II in 1735. The land was located in Tar Heel, N.C., part of Robeson County since its separation from Bladen County in 1787. Robeson County was named for Col. Thomas Robeson, Jr., and his brother Capt. Peter Robeson in honor of their service in the Revolutionary War. Walnut Grove, the original homestead, and the 1855 homestead, were still in family hands in 2003. By 1863, war had again involved the inhabitants of Walnut Grove. James Robeson's two oldest sons, James McKay ("Coy"), aged twenty-one, and Cad W., aged nineteen, enlisted in May of 1863 as privates in Company H, Thirty-Sixth Regiment North Carolina Troops