“At first, she didn’t know what was hunting her. She only knew it had her cornered. That, and she reckoned the creature was sizable.
Rachel didn’t dare open the shutters of the small window to look. Heavily pregnant with her second child, she was alone in a one-room cabin save for her sleeping two-year-old, and the sharp, piercing contractions announcing the imminent arrival of another babe.
“Damn it all to ever-loving hell,” she thought, before guilt swiftly followed. She glanced upward. “Lord, forgive me for cussing up a storm. but if ever there were a time for it, I reckon it’s now.”
Over Home, by Kathy A. Fleming. All rights reserved.
Historical Fiction by Kathy Allen Fleming
Over Home is more than a novel—it is history carried in memory, shaped by a rugged land and its determined people.
Set in the hills of Pensacola, NC, during the years surrounding the Civil War, it blends fact and fiction to illuminate the untold stories of my ancestors and their neighbors.
Rooted in extensive research, the book preserves real names—enslaved individuals, Native Americans, mountaineers—honoring their legacies while weaving imagined lives into the historical fabric. Some characters are drawn directly from family histories, others are inspired by regional tales, all bound by the hardships and resilience that defined their era.
This is not a strict historical account or genealogical record, but an exploration of survival, faith, and the enduring ties of family and community. Through my blog, I’ll delve deeper, unraveling archives, oral histories, and personal testimonies to bring these stories into the present.
History leaves scars, but it also offers hope. I invite you to journey Over Home, where the past lingers in the land and in the lives of those who remember.
The novel will be available soon. For more information, contact me at overhome1@outlook.com. Or join our mailing list at mailinglight@overhomeartisty.com.
Rachel
Anne Roland Allen
(1812 - 1916)
Rachel Allen lived a hundred years and then some—a century and four, a lifetime carved deep into the soil of Pensacola, North Carolina. A woman of quiet resilience, shaped by war, love, and the unrelenting passage of time.
She buried one husband and bore the children of another, two brothers bound to her by love and fate. Squinty Bill—his poor eyesight giving him a name more remembered than the man himself—left Rachel too soon, vanishing into the unspoken past, his cause of death lost to time. When he died, he left her with three small children and another swelling in her belly, a widow before she’d found solid ground.
Five years passed, and Rachel did what women of her time often did—she remarried, survival making its own choices. Adoniram Allen, her late husband’s brother, and ten years her junior, stepped in, not just for duty but perhaps for love. With him, she raised five more children, their youngest, Ellis, marking the line from Rachel’s world to mine.
The family nestled along Cattail Creek, in Pensacola, in dwelling number 62—a number etched in census pages but unmarked by memory. That land, worn by storms and swollen by Hurricane Helen’s wrath, still holds its ghosts, along with the fighting spirit of its people.
Rachel knew the sharp edge of conflict. Her father, Hallie Roland, owned slaves, yet Rachel herself did not. Her husband, Adoniram, became a Union Bushwhacker, riding with the North Carolina Third Mounted Infantry, under the notorious “Cutthroat Kirk.” She buried him in the Allen Cemetery, where his allegiance to the Union would long be remembered in a land torn by war.
But Rachel’s story is not just her own—it is a story of divided sons and fractured loyalties, of family straining against the tide of history. Her oldest boys, James and Henry Roland Allen, fought for the Confederacy, soldiers of the NC 16th Infantry, marching for a cause opposite to their step-father’s.
Henry was wounded—his leg shattered at the Battle of Seven Pines, where blood ran thick beneath Virginia pines. And when Lee stood before Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, at least one of Rachel’s sons was there, watching the war breathe its last, though its scars would never truly fade.
Rachel lived through it all—war, loss, motherhood, survival. Her photograph at 100 years old shows the weight of all she carried, yet it is hard to imagine her young, full of fire, standing between two armies, holding nine children in the balance of war.
Over Home explores the echoes of her life—the divisions that ran through the Allen family, the lasting wounds of history, and the quiet strength of a woman who endured more than most.
Montraville
“Mont” Ray
(1833-1913)
Outlaw, Soldier, Survivor
Mont Ray, the author’s second great-grand-uncle, was a right rascal, as they say. A Confederate soldier turned deserter, a leader of men yet an outlaw in his own land—his story is tangled in the upheaval of war and survival.
He enlisted with the 16th North Carolina Infantry, Company C, likely standing among his kin at the Battle of Big Bethel, the first land engagement of the Civil War. But war wears down even the fiercest souls. By April 1862, Mont abandoned his regiment, leaving behind both his duty and his family, slipping back into the hills of Yancey County.
There, he gathered a band of Home-Made Yankees—Unionists or opportunists, depending on who was telling the tale. They numbered between 65 and 75 men, striking where they pleased, never tethered to a cause beyond survival.
Their most infamous act came in spring 1864, just as Burnsville reeled from a food riot, where fifty armed women seized wheat stores meant for the Confederate Army. (Was Mont’s wife, Mary Polly Austin Ray, among them?)
Soon after, Mont and his men stormed the town, breaking open the magazine and stealing over 100 state-owned weapons. They raided Bailey’s Store, made off with a slab of bacon, and left an enrollment officer named Lyons wounded but alive. Reports say Burnsville was theirs for a week—until Colonel John B. Palmer of the 58th NC Infantry arrived with 200 men and artillery, sent to restore order.
Mont escaped, but some of his men did not. And not long after, Kirk’s Raiders, the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry USA, struck Camp Vance deep behind Confederate lines. on their retreat the Raiders burned Col Palmer’s home and the Cranberry Iron Works. Family may once again have played a role. Mont’s brother, Sgt. Paul Samuel Ray, rode with Kirk—was this retribution? The timing suggests it, though history never confirms whispers of revenge.
After the war, Mont’s name lived on in bloodshed. The murder of Alexander Jackson Brown outside the NuWray Inn sealed his legend. Drunk and reckless, Brown taunted the Ray brothers, calling them “Damn pups.” Sam shot him. Mont finished him with a blade, swift and merciless.
A warrant followed, issued by the Governor himself. But Mont slipped away, vanishing forty miles into obscurity, crafting sandals and waiting for time to erase his sins. When the witnesses were gone, he returned, stood trial, and walked free.
He and Mary Polly Austin Ray had nine children: perhaps more with his second wife, Jane Styles. He lived out his days in Swain County, NC and is buried at Hanging Dog Baptist Church Cemetery.
Thanks to the Yancey County Historical Association, in Burnsville, the historical waymarker.com program, the North Carolina State Archives, and Ancestry.com. The search for Mont Ray’s truth continues.
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![Amos Lafayette Ray and Martha Allen Ray]()
Amos Ray owned a Tavern. His Pretty Wife Martha had a time with her sons Mont, Sam and Joe
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![Sgt Paul Sam Ray, married]()
Sgt Sam Ray was one of Kirk's Raiders, after the War she stood against the KKK, but was never paid for his service.
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Nancy Allen Blankenship, was Rachel's only daughter. She married Jonas who ran a bloomery, and does not appear to have served in the military.
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![Joe Ray]()
Joe Ray, a Southern Unionist who rode with Sherman
