Sgt Robert Watkins Adams, 5th Florida Infantry
The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia continually shed soldiers along its route through Maryland from first crossing the Potomac River into Maryland on 4 September 1862 to its return to Virginia on the 19th. Men left their units for lots of reasons, but a large number did so due to illness. Early in the campaign many of those were treated in Frederick, MD.
United States Army General Hospital #1 in Frederick, so named in June 1862, consisted of the Revolutionary War-era “Hessian Barracks” along with various outbuildings and tents. The Confederates arrived in Frederick on Saturday, 6 September and captured the hospital, medical staff, and some 150 Federal soldier patients. In the days afterward a large number of sick and wounded Confederate soldiers were admitted.
The following Friday, 12 September, lead elements of the Federal Army of the Potomac arrived in pursuit of the departing Army of Northern Virginia and they captured at least 470 Confederate soldiers who were left behind in the hospital too ill too march with their units.
Thanks to the Confederates in Frederick List online from Terry Reimer and the folks at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine (NMCWM) in Frederick, I can tell you something about the war service and lives of most of those men [my annotated list below].
Private John H Howey of the 30th North Carolina Infantry has a Maryland Campaign story like most of the soldiers on the list. Here he is at about age 17 with his father William (42) shortly after they enlisted together in September 1861.
John and William Howey, 30th North Carolina Infantry (1861)
William was discharged for disability in February 1862, but young John made it into Maryland in September only to be sent to the hospital in Frederick. Captured there, he was transferred to the prisoner of war camp at Fort Delaware on 18 September and on to Aikens’ Landing, VA on 2 October for exchange. Like many of the other Frederick prisoners, he then spent time in a Richmond, VA hospital and on sick furlough before being formally exchanged to return to duty on 10 November 1862.
John survived the war to surrender at Appomattox Court House, married, had 10 children, and was a farmer to his death in 1911 at age 66.
At the top of this post is a photograph of Sergeant Robert W Adams, 5th Florida Infantry, who was also a patient and captured in Frederick. He’s not on the List, but I found him while looking at about 20 other soldiers in his regiment who were.
His experience in Maryland and after capture was much like John Howey’s. He also survived the war, resigning in December 1864, by then Captain of his company, and was a state legislator and merchant in Florida until he died at age 46 in 1886.
The List and some statistics
Here’s a PDF copy of my annotated version of the Confederates in Frederick List. I’ve added notes about their names and units, and provide links to their bio sketches on Antietam on the Web. Click the page image here to see the list full size and/or download it.
Some list details:
- There are 475 lines on the original list, 4 of them are blank, and one name is cut off = total 470 names available
- Between April and August I worked through those 470 names
- I already had bio sketches for 82 of them in the Antietam on the Web (AotW) database but added further details
- For 36 of the names, I could not find enough information to write bios
- I added pages for 352 new men to AotW from the List
- Of the 470 men listed:
- the vast majority were in the hospital due to illness, only a few were combat wounded
- at least 11 died in Frederick in September or October 1862
- 8 died while prisoners at Fort Delaware afterward
- 21 or more died later in 1862 or early in 1863 in hospitals in Richmond, VA
Notes
The original source for the NMCWM’s transcribed Confederates in Frederick List is a hospital register found in wartime surgeon’s reports to the US Army Adjutant General’s office. Their citation is:
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.
See much more about wartime General Hospital #1 from the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.
Sergeant Adams’ photograph is from the State Archives of Florida.
That picture of the Howeys was published in Greg Mast’s State Troops and Volunteers, A Photographic Record of North Carolina’s Civil War Soldiers (Volume 1, 1995).
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