Postbellum Career and Death
After the war, Grimes returned to North Carolina and settled briefly in Raleigh. He subsequently moved back to Grimesland in January 1867 and resumed farming. Ten years later, he was named as a trustee of the University of North Carolina.
In 1880, Grimes was ambushed and killed in Pitt County, North Carolina, by a hired assassin named William Parker, presumably to prevent him from testifying at a criminal trial. Grimes had taken part in an attempt to deport immigrants, and was killed by their hitman. Parker was later acquitted at his trial. However, a number of years later Parker returned to the area drunk and boasted of his killing Grimes but winning acquittal. He was arrested for drunk and disorderly. That night a mob entered the deserted jail house, grabbed Parker and lynched him. Nobody was ever tried for the act. Grimes was buried in the family cemetery on his plantation, Grimesland, about five miles northwest of Chocowinity, North Carolina. A monument (a cenotaph) to the fallen former Confederate stands in Trinity Churchyard Cemetery located in the village of Chocowinity.
Portions of the letters written home by Grimes throughout the Civil War were published after his death in 1883, entitled Extracts of Letters of Major Gen'l Bryan Grimes, to His Wife.
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