Private Gilbert L Kirkpatrick of the 16th North Carolina Infantry was one of hundreds of Confederate soldiers who were sent to a hospital in Frederick, MD between 6 September 1862, when the first elements of the Army of Northern Virginia arrived in the city, and 12 September, when the army departed for points north and west.
More than 400 of them were too ill to travel and were left behind in Frederick, like Kirkpatrick, and were captured there by Federal troops.
A week later he was transferred from General Hospital #1 to Fort Delaware, and on 2 October to Aikens’ Landing, VA for exchange. He was admitted to a hospital in Richmond, VA and approved for a sick furlough soon after.
After getting paid up to date on 29 October, he probably set out for his home in Haywood County, NC, a trip of some 400 miles, but he never arrived.
I think, somewhere on the way, his condition worsened and he died, perhaps as an unidentified soldier at a train station or small town on the route.
His father, desperate for news, posted this in a Raleigh newspaper in January and February 1863:
Notes
I’m looking into each of the 466 names in the Confederates in Frederick List – soldiers, like Gilbert Kirkpatrick, left behind in Frederick that September. Thanks to Terry Reimer and the team at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine for producing and sharing that.
Their source was:
Confederate Wounded Admitted to Hospitals in Frederick, Maryland after Antietam; Entry 621 Surgeons Reports: File A and Bound Manuscripts; Box 24; Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94; National Archives Building, Washington, DC
The drawing of US Army General Hospital #1 is from an article about it, also by Terry. I don’t (yet) know the artist or original source.
The news clipping is from the Weekly Raleigh Register of 31 January 1863 online from North Carolina Newspapers, a project of DigitalNC.
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