behind AotW

Lieutenant Ivory Quinn Perry of Company A, 19th Mississippi Infantry was wounded in the foot and captured at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and afterward disabled for active service. This photograph of him in uniform was kindly contributed to the FamilySearch database by Natalie Brannon in July 2022.

Captain Noah A Burly, a Captain in the 17th South Carolina Infantry sent the following to the Confederate authorities in Richmond, VA on behalf of his brother James Calvin Burly, late of the 12th Mississippi Infantry.

James was wounded at Sharpsburg in September 1862 and again, mortally, at Gettysburg in July 1863.

This document is among those in James’ Compiled Service Records, now in the National Archives, Washington, DC, and online thanks to fold3. It was particularly interesting to me because it has the brothers’ surname handwritten as Burly. Most family records and grave markers spell it Burley.

My transcription:

[reverse]
W.H. Taylor Esq
2d Auditor’s Office
Richmond, Va

Trenches near Petersburg Va
Oct 21st 1864

W.H. Taylor

Dear Sir, Enclosed you will find a Final Statement of my brother, J.C. Burly, Co. I, 12th Miss Regt. You will confer a great favor to me and my family by paying the dues called for to his Mother, Mrs Elizabeth Burly, Monticello P.O., Fairfield Dist, So. Car__ I am res your obt svt

N.A. Burly. Capt.
Co B 17 SC Vols

William George Stigler was 3rd Sergeant of Company I, 12th Mississippi Infantry when he was wounded at Sharpsburg in September 1862. He was captured in the Wilderness, VA in May 1864, by then reduced to Private, and was a prisoner at Point Lookout, MD to March 1865.

At the end of the War he was in Alabama and he was paroled by Federal authorities at Montgomery on 10 May 1865. Here’s his parole document from his Compiled Service Records, US National Archives, online from fold3.

He was then 22 years old, and unless the officer filling out the form made a mistake, was only 4 feet and 5 inches tall.

A fine post-war photograph of Theodore Barber Day, Antietam veteran and late Private, Company C, 2nd Wisconsin Infantry, thanks to descendant Sam Day.

Theodore’s great grandson Terence Lee Day and his son Daniel S Day researched and produced a Life History [PDF] of him in 2017. Daniel shared it on the FamilySearch database and invites feedback.

S.H. Whitworth (c. 1870)

[touch image to see the whole piece]

A man familiar with violence, Samuel Hudson Whitworth survived a serious wound at Sharpsburg in 1862 while a Sergeant in Company C, 12th Mississippi, and in March 1886 was instrumental in the shooting deaths of 23 black citizens in a vigilante action at the Carroll County Courthouse – the Carrolton Massacre.

In July 1888, about a year before his killing, he’d incurred the murderous anger of his neighbors by his actions resulting in the deaths of two men and wounding of two others, at a store at Rising Sun, a small rail station on the edge of his Leflore County, MS farm. Here’s a news story about that earlier incident:

[touch image to see the whole piece]

The photograph at the top was shared to Ancestry.com by Keaton Bryan in 2016; I’m guessing at the year it was taken based on his apparent age and clothing style.

The clippings here, online from newspapers.com, are from the Brookhaven Leader of 29 August 1889 (top) and the Vicksburg Evening Post of 16 July 1888.

The article about the Carrolton Massacre from the Mississippi Department of Archives & History, linked above, was written by Rick Ward, who also wrote a fictionalized account of the massacre titled Blood for Molasses: A Mississippi Massacre (2012); Ward refers to his protagonist as “Houston Whitworth.”

The Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad (Y & MV) was incorporated in 1882 and was part of the Illinois Central Railroad system.

From the records of the US War Department’s Office of the Quartermaster General, now online thanks to Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com, here’s his widow’s application for a government marker for Sharpsburg survivor Leroy Thomas Daughtry, late Sergeant, Company C, 12th Mississippi Infantry. He died relatively young, just about 30 years old, in 1871.

From the New Orleans Daily Picayune of 29 October 1862, online from Newspapers.com, casualties among the troops of the 19th Mississippi Infantry at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862:

I’ll get to each of these names as soon as I can …

From the New Orleans Daily Picayune of 29 October 1862, online from Newspapers.com, casualties among the troops of the 12th Mississippi Infantry at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862:

See more about these men starting with the AotW page for the regiment.

I made my semi-annual pilgrimage to Sharpsburg last week, focused on the Antietam Institute‘s Spring Symposium. For much more about the 2023 Symposium itself, look for Facebook and other social media posts from the Institute and some of my fellow attendees.

I had some time while in the area, also, to get to the Antietam National Cemetery to find one of my guys, and to roam the Antietam battlefield to visit a few cannon.

Private Thomas Henry Green of the 16th Mississippi Infantry survived a chest wound at Sharpsburg in 1862 and returned to duty to serve to the surrender at Appomattox Court House in 1865.

Here he is somewhat post-war from a photograph contributed to the FamilySearch database [free membership required] by Katherine L Brister.