behind AotW

17 year old farm boy Thomas E Sims enlisted as a Private in the Orange Guards – Company G of the 27th North Carolina Infantry – in March 1862. Which is probably when this photograph was taken.

He survived the terrible combat at Sharpsburg in September that year but was mortally wounded in a little known skirmish at Gary’s Farm near Richmond, VA on 15 June 1864. Captain John Sloan of Company B later described the action there:

Our brigade, as yet, in the swamps of the Chickahominy, was almost daily employed in skirmishes with the enemy’s cavalry. On the 15th of June we came across a large force of cavalry at Gary’s farm. They had met a small force of our cavalry and had been driving them. When we arrived they dismounted and sent their horses to the rear, formed their lines and showed fight. After a sharp struggle their lines gave way, and we pursued them some distance through the woods. Their sharpshooters were armed with seven shooters, and they used them against us on our advance with telling effect. When they reached their horses they quickly remounted and were soon beyond our reach.

Young Thomas was taken to the Camp Winder hospital in Richmond and died there the next day, 19 years old.

This compelling photograph of him is from the Vanatos Archive, shared to his memorial on Findagrave.

John A Sloan’s narrative, based on his wartime notes, was published in his Reminiscences of the Guilford Grays, Co. B, 27th N.C. Regiment (1883).