behind AotW

Not-quite 19 year old farm boy John W Wesley enlisted at Decatur in DeKalb County, GA on 1 August 1861 and mustered on 5 August as a Private in Captain Luther Glenn’s Stephens Rifles – Company C of Cobb’s Legion Infantry Battalion. He was marked as present for the period of November and December 1861 on the Company muster roll, the only direct record of his service.

On 13 January 1863, sometime after his death, his father Marvin filed a claim with the Confederate government for his final pay.

Between December 1861 and January 1863 his life is a mystery.

Family history says he was killed in the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862, but this is unlikely, given that he was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, VA. As far as I know, no soldier’s remains were ever removed from the battlefield for burial in Richmond. He could have been mortally wounded there (or at Crampton’s Gap on 14 September) and sent to a hospital in Richmond, dying later.

Unfortunately there are no records about this in his Compiled Service Record folder.

His grave marker in Hollywood has his death as 13 January 1862.

I do not know where that date came from. It could be that he died of disease or other non-combat cause in a Richmond hospital on that date, though I’d expect in that case the December 1861 muster roll to have him absent in hospital at the end of 1861. I’d also expect his father would have claimed earlier.

Family history also indicates John was a frequent letter writer, so they probably would have noted it if the letters stopped by January 1862. Though they do not give the dates of his letters.

He also has a modern government marker in his hometown of Lithonia, GA, requested by a well meaning person who seems to have taken the family lore about his death as fact.

I hope to learn more about John William Wesley and determine how he met his end – whether as a result of service in the Maryland Campaign 0f 1862, or otherwise. But for the moment all I have are questions.

His picture at the top is a page from Bruce, Wesley, & Cottingham’s Ancestors and Descendants of Marvin Hammond Wesley and Mary McClung (2000).

The grave marker photographs are by George Seitz and the late user Bud, respectively, online from Findagrave.