behind AotW

2nd Lieutenant of Captain Manley’s Battery A, North Carolina Light Artillery, Charles Christopher Wrenshall was a civil engineer before the war. He led a section of the battery in action near Burkittsville and at Crampton’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862. In his brief Report Captain Manly wrote:

I am indebted to Lieutenant Wrenshall for the fine management of his section during the entire fight.

He was in wounded in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September and resigned his commission on 11 October for disability. He was commissioned Captain in the CS Nitre and Mining Corps and by January 1863 was working in the Nitre Bureau at San Antonio, Texas. After the war he worked railroad bridge and line projects all over the country. The town of Wrenshall in east central Carlton County, MN was named for him by the Northern Pacific Railroad.

Illustrated here is his patent for a railroad water tank design (1887), from the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office.