CityView Magazine

Button.” This was to signify that the house was paid for when completed. An original old kitchen, located in the side yard, was one large room with a chimney running through the center. On either side of the chimney was a fireplace. All the cooking was done here and carried into the house. Family first When the house was completed, James Kyle gave it to his daughter, Margaret, as a wedding gift. She and her surgeon husband, Dr. J.F. Faulk, lived in the house until the end of the Civil War. The Faulks moved to California to live near a friend he had met while in the Army. James Kyle bought the house and gave it to his younger daughter, Annie, who married her cousin, Confederate Captain Jesse K. Kyle of Virginia. It was Annie Kyle who organized the J.E.B. Stuart Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Fayetteville, meeting with the group in her home. And it was Annie Kyle who helps tell the story of Civil War Days in Fayetteville. Her account of the visit of Gen. Sherman’s Union Army in March of 1865, was published in a booklet, “War Days in Fayetteville.” “I had been in the hospital only about a half hour,” she wrote, “when an officer came up the steps and said: ‘Ladies, if you have a home and children you had better go to them, as Sherman is entering the town.’ “When I reached my room at home I sank into a chair and felt that I must give up. My nurse, fortunately, did the best thing for me, placing my little boy in my arms. I then felt I must be brave. “They entered the kitchen and took our dinner that was cooking, with the pans, ovens and all, and they searched my house from top to bottom taking everything they could carry. “It is impossible to write or tell what we endured and it never will be known until we stand before the judgment seat of God. “Fayetteville suffered more than most towns, for we had five cotton factories in the town and one at Rockfish, just a few miles away, and they were all burned to the ground, leaving hundreds of people without work or any means of gaining Above | The Kyle House served as Fayetteville City Hall until 1991 when it was purchased by St. John’s Episcopal Church. bread. And as we had been robbed of all we had, we, of course, could not help them.” The house was spared and a number of other Kyle family members lived there through the years until it was sold to the City of Fayetteville in 1963. Anita Kyle grew up visiting her grandmother there. Both her grandmother and father believed the ghost stories. “Both of them have said they have experienced it,” Kyle said. “They said it was like walking through a cold glass.” City Hall Until 1991, the Kyle House was City Hall, used as office space for the city manager and his staff and it also housed the office for the mayor of Fayetteville. Former Mayor Bill Hurley and his staff often told stories of their spirited office environment. They experienced machines that came on by themselves, unexplained noises, icy drafts that came from nowhere and furniture that would rearrange itself. When former City Manager Roger Stancil was an assistant city manager, he had an office upstairs CityViewNC.com | 31

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