behind AotW

Assistant Surgeon Hezekiah Ford Witherspoon of the 9th Louisiana Infantry was captured while tending to wounded troops after the battle of Sharpsburg in September 1862. He survived the war and was a doctor in Texas.

This great photograph of W.C. Fields includes Cora Witherspoon (1890-1957, finger wagging), a well-known stage and film actress of the 1910s-1940s. It’s a promotional shot taken on the set of their film The Bank Dick (1940). Some references say Cora’s father was a Confederate Assistant Surgeon, but that’s an apparent confusion between our Hezekiah and her father, Henry Edgeworth Witherspoon (1844-1898). It’s still a fine image.