Potecasi Creek: The Weldon Railroad Raid
North Carolina
On July twenty-sixth, eighteen sixty-three, a Union column moving toward the Confederate rail junction at Weldon ran into an ambush at the bridge over Potecasi Creek. Major Samuel Wheeler commanded roughly one hundred fifty to two hundred Confederate defenders who had dug entrenchments in the wooded banks on the north side of the crossing. As nearly twelve hundred Union soldiers from General Foster's column approached, Wheeler's men opened fire and then fell back.
Seventeen Confederates were captured and at least one killed. Union losses went unreported. The skirmish was a small bump on a larger expedition that aimed to destroy rail bridges supplying Richmond.
Two days later that expedition was turned back for good at the Battle of Boon's Mill. Confederate breastworks stood sixty yards southwest of this site.
