Capt. Matthew Gooding & The Nashville

The Rebel Steamer Nashville
Running the Blockade at Beaufort, NC
Harper's Weekly
April 1862
 
Captain Matthew R. Gooding, born in 1830 to Jonathan and Rachel Harker Gooding, was reported to be one of the best-remembered figures of the local Civil War patriots. Gooding and the Nashville ran the Federal blockade of Beaufort harbor and helped destroy Yankee commerce ships at sea. Painted the color of a Hatteras fog and burning smokeless anthracite coal, the long, low-converted sidewheeler was nearly invisible against a wooded shoreline. Captain Gooding died in January of 1863, leaving his wife Rebecca Harker Gooding and four-year-old son Herbert in Beaufort. He is buried in the Old Burial Ground on Ann Street in Beaufort. Information gathered from: Beaufort’s Old Burial Ground by Diane Hardy, Mamré Wilson and Marilyn Collins