behind AotW

In 1864, building on information collected by others, civil engineer Simon G. Elliott documented the locations of more than 5,800 soldiers’ burials on the battlefield of Antietam on a map. His similar work for burials at Gettysburg has long been known, but a copy of his Antietam map lay largely unnoticed in the New York Public library for many years until library staff digitized the map and made it available online between 2015 and 2018.

In June 2020 Gettysburg researchers Tim Smith and Andrew Dalton were looking into Elliott, came upon this map, and brought it to the attention of other historians and the public.

I’ve broken my digital copy into 14 large segments, each covering about 1/2 square mile of the battlefield, to make it a little easier for you to explore and make sense of this huge map. They’re all now up on Antietam on the Web (AotW) in a special exhibit.

49 individual soldiers and 32 regiments are identified on the big map. I have highlighted each of them in white and linked them to related pages on AotW so you can get more information about them.

On the occasion of the battle anniversary this month I’ve taken stock of the AotW database. There may be another lifetime’s work to do in other areas of the Campaign, but I now have a reasonably complete list of the troops who were killed and mortally wounded at Sharpsburg.  The first of its kind anywhere, as far as I know. Pretty cool!

I’ve created a couple of new reports on the subject which you can download at the end of this post.

When I count the individuals who were killed outright or were mortally wounded and died on 16, 17, or 18 September 1862 I get 1,653 Confederates (the Official Records say 1,550 were killed) and 2,205 Federals (OR has 2,100).

I’ve also pulled the names of the soldiers who died of their Sharpsburg wounds in the days and weeks afterward.  These make an additional 772 Confederates and 980 Federals.

So if you suspected the official numbers were a little low, you were right. As a caution, let me remind both my readers that the records are sometimes awful and occasionally missing altogether, and besides, I’ve certainly not seen every source there is to see. I’m sure I’ll find more names to add.

Also, I need to look at it some more, but there may be enough in my collection to name most of those 5,800+ burials on the newly-identified  S.G. Elliott map.  Just don’t ask me to guess which of those little marks are which person.  I haven’t looked at any others on the map yet [update: see my annotated exhibit on the Elliot map], but the man listed in the map portion above as F.L. Fraser is E. L. Fraser, Private of Company I, 12th South Carolina. Later records of his field burial correlate well with the 1864 Elliott map.

Ok, so just in time for the anniversary, here are 2 versions each of two reports listing the killed of Antietam. As always, if you can add names or improve the information please let me know.

Men Killed in the Battle of Antietam at Sharpsburg, Maryland 16-18 September 1862
Sorted by state | Sorted by rank [3834 names, 1.0 MB pdf]

Men Who Later Died of Wounds from the Battle of Antietam at Sharpsburg
Sorted by state | Sorted by rank [1736 names, 500 KB pdf]

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These new lists and the ongoing Dead of the Campaign list are also hosted, and will be updated in the future, under Antietam 150: The Dead of the Maryland Campaign elsewhere on this blog.

It’s turning out to be another productive year for Antietam on the Web.

Soldier profiles I added today for Parker’s Richmond Battery put the total number of individuals in the database over 19,000.

More tomorrow.