At about the age of 11-12 years, Leonard Mabane, as a slave, was drafted into the Confederate Army. General Robert E. Lee took note of the young boy and must have seen a reason to trust him with the General’s valued horse.
The large gray stallion was Lee’s prized possession and many pictures of the General astride his famous horse were taken after the war ended. It was the young Leonard Mabane who made sure the horse received the best of care.
Mabane was all alone.
His entire family had been dispersed to other owners. He never knew his actual birth date, but he estimated he was born about 1851.
His birth took place on a North Carolina plantation.
Under the leadership of General Lee, he was at the Battle of Gettysburg. Perhaps Lee’s heart was tender toward the young lad and knowing the keeping of the horses would keep the boy off the battlefield, he chose to give him that duty.
When the Confederate soldiers under Pickett’s charge recoiled, young Mabane was recorded as being with General Lee.
Mabane would later recount the sight of seeing, “Lee riding out to meet the shattered followers of Pickett and saw Lee as he removed his hat and bowed, saying that he was to blame for the decision to ‘make the charge.'”
None of the many newspaper articles concerning Mabane mentions any time spent in the Union Army, yet his headstone says that he spent time fighting as a Union soldier after he escaped from slavery.
No mention is made of his time spent in the Confederate Army. If the information on the tombstone, erected after Mabane’s death, is correct, we must assume that he escaped slavery in the south, left the Confederate Army and made his way to the Union forces and freedom.
Another possibility is that by the time Mabane died, his service in the Civil War had ended 57 years before. Perhaps those who erected the monument either did not know of his time spent in the Confederate Army of they failed to mention it.
After the war ended, Mabane traveled north until he reached Ashtabula County. The Follet family of Pierpont, well-known anti-slavery advocates, took him into their home. The Follets were childless and happy to welcome the young man onto their little farm on Caine Road, northwest of Pierpont.
On the 1874 Atlas of Ashtabula County, land consisting of 64 ½ acres in the northwest part of Pierpont is owned by Emily Follet. In the 1905 Atlas of Ashtabula County, the land mass has increased to 67 ½ acres and it is still listed under the name of Emily Follet.
The property is about a mile from the one-room Graham Road School once located in the southwest corner of Graham Road and Route 7.
Mabane did not have the opportunity for an education and upon learning, at the deaths of the Follets, that he had inherited the farm and land, it was his expressed desire that upon his death, the money from the estate would be used to help the local school.
Unfortunately, Mabane, probably unable to read or afford an attorney, had never written his desire on paper.
The case went to court and the judge’s hands were tied. Without a will, Mabane’s money would go to the state. But the judge made the only choice he could in the matter. He allowed all the money ($500 in 1912), to be used for a monument over Mabane’s gravesite.
Today, you can view the impressive large headstone in the Evergreen Cemetery in Pierpont on Cemetery Road. Unfortunately, the stone does not mention Mabane’s service in the Confederate Army.
Either the headstone is incorrect, or Mabane escaped from the southern forces and joined the Union army.
It would be a fitting tribute to the memory of Leonard Mabane to establish a scholarship named in his honor to fulfill his desire to help students and schools. Although he never received an education, a scholarship, school fund or donation in his honor would be a fitting legacy.
Information concerning Leonard Mabane was gathered from the 1985 Ashtabula County History and old newspaper articles.
