Colonel H.L. Cake of the 96th Pennsylvania Infantry, in reporting his regiment’s part in the combat at Crampton’s Gap on 14 September 1862, included this detail:
It was a most exhausting charge. By the time we had ascended half way the cannon had ceased firing on our left, and the enemy seldom replied to our fire with their muskets. We made captures at every step. After passing the crest of the mountain a lieutenant [which?] of the Fifteenth North Carolina delivered himself up, I sent during the charge, 42 prisoners to the rear, including the captain of Company G, Sixteenth Georgia, wounded, and other officers and men most of them unhurt.
That Georgia Captain was Augustus C Thompson, of Jackson County, who had been shot in the left thigh before he was captured. He survived, but was disabled for further service and went home.
This superb photograph of him was donated to the Library of Congress by Tom Liljenquist in 2012. I’d guess it was taken as he first entered service in July 1861.
While looking further into Captain Thompson today I found that picture of his wife, Mary Arline Randolph, shared to the Mormon genealogical database by Julie Kinkaid in 2022. I do not know when it was taken, but she looks very young – in her twenties, perhaps? She was 17 when she married 22 year old Augustus in 1850.
They had a daughter, Nancy, and both lived into their 70s, for the last 20 years in Lakeland, FL, where Augustus ran the county poor house. Mary Arline only outlived him by about 8 months.
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