behind AotW

Private Samuel Boston Lathan, Company D, 17th South Carolina Infantry was seriously wounded in action at Turner’s Gap and captured nearby. He was finally back with his Company in the Summer of 1863, then served in the CS Commissary Department to the end of the war.

Afterward he was a teacher and school administrator, bookkeeper, railroad agent, and cotton merchant. He received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from Erskine College in 1934 and lived to be 96 years old.

He was interviewed during the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Folklore Project in June 1938 and remembered quite a bit about his life; a typescript is online from the Library of Congress. The cataloging card for those interviews shown here.