At the beginning of the Civil War, Francis Marion Poteet (1827-1902) was a miller living in the Dysartsville area of McDowell County, North Carolina. He was conscripted in 1863 and seved as a private in Co. A, 49th North Carolina Infantry. At the time of the 1860 census, F. M. Poteet and his wife Martha A. E. Hendley Poteet (1826-1902) had eight children; eventually they would have thirteen. F. M. Poteet survived the war and both he and Martha died in April 1902.