Historic Doubts as to the Execution of Marshal Ney (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. TESTIMONY. Colonel John A. Rogers, Florence, S. C. (September, 1888): " I first saw Peter S. Ney at my home in Brownsville, Marlborough County, S. C., in the fall of 1819. My father, Colonel Benjamin Rogers, met him at a hotel in Cheraw in September or October (1819), and engaged him as a teacher. He taught with great success about three years, and then went to North Carolina (in 1822 or 1823), where he taught for several years. I saw him often afterward, for he made occasional visits to his friends in South Carolina, and taught again in the State about 1844. He told my father that he was a French refugee; that he had left France for political reasons, but would give no further account of his life. He was a man of remarkably fine presence, and would arrest attention anywhere. No stranger could meet him without asking the first individual that he saw, Who is that man ? He was tall?I suppose about six feet high?large, not corpulent, but muscular; a little round-shouldered, though otherwise erect, with fine military form and carriage. He looked every inch the soldier, even when he was quite an old man. His head was slightly bald on top. His hair was not a decided auburn, but was what might be called a reddish-blonde. His complexion was fair and ruddy; chin round; mouth tolerably large; lips compressed; nose high and large; eyebrows heavy and full; forehead broad, high, and massive. His eyes are hard to describe. They were a dark blue, verging on gray, with remarkably large pupils. When quiet, they had the mildest expression, but when excited, they were terrible?an eagle would dart from them in sheer envy. He spoke English well, though with a slightly foreign accent. For a list of witnesses, see Appendix C. He appeared to be more of a Scotchman than a ...