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B. Witcher’s battlefield map (detail, click for full)

The map above is centered on the eastern part of the Miller Cornfield near the East Woods at Sharpsburg on the morning of 17 September 1862. There has been heavy fighting here since dawn and, along with other regiments in action, the 6th Georgia Infantry has been nearly wiped out. It is between 8 and 9 in the morning.

Stephen Sears, in his classic Antietam book Landscape Turned Red (1983), wrote this dramatic vignette of that time and place:

Private B. H. Witcher of the 6th Georgia urged a comrade to stand fast with him, pointing to the neatly aligned ranks still lying to their right and left. They were all dead men, his companion yelled at him, and to prove it he fired a shot into a man on the ground a few yards away; the body did not twitch. Private Witcher was convinced and joined the retreat. 

Over the years since I first read it, I had forgotten Benjamin Witcher’s name, but not that story. Who could forget that imagery? Even in combat, the shock of shooting into one of your own mess-mates would have been horrendous.

At least three other well-known books on the battle have used this anecdote, too, citing Landscape as their source. If you’ve read any of the basic literature, then, you will have seen it, and you’d remember.

But I’ve just found it isn’t true. It didn’t happen that way.

This lovely piece is a decorative military record – “very tastefully printed in 10 colors” – for Private Samuel Wilson Evans of the 12th Pennsylvania Reserves. He served from 1861 to 1864 and saw action at South Mountain on 14 September and at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

This certificate was produced by the Army and Navy Record Company, which was started in about 1883 by Walter C. Strickler (c. 1837-after 1920) of Philadelphia – an outgrowth of his personal project to gather an exhaustive timeline for every Union military unit and action of the Civil War. Strickler’s son Theodore compiled some of that work in When and Where we Met Each Other on Shore and Afloat … (1899).

The colorful parts of this decorative record were printed, but Evans’ name and service details are hand-written. It was “presented” in his name to his wife Sarah Jane and daughters Margaret, Nellie May, and Mary Belle on 1 October 1905. The original is about 19×27 inches and it’s online thanks to the Maryland State Archives.

Below is an advertisement in the National Tribune of 5 October 1905. By that time the National Tribune had bought out Strickler, and was offering these certificates on their own. Strickler and the Tribune had been in a marketing relationship for some years before.

County Donegal native Lieutenant James McKay Rorty was Ordnance Officer of the First Division, 2nd Army Corps (Brigadier General Israel B. Richardson) at Antietam. He was heroically and famously killed at Gettysburg in July 1862 while in command of Battery B, 1st New York Light Artillery – a remnant of the old Irish Brigade/2nd Artillery Battalion in which he’d originally been commissioned in 1861.

Equally famously, as a Private in the 69th New York Militia he’d been wounded and captured at First Bull Run on 21 July 1861 and held in a warehouse in Richmond, VA. On 18 September he and two other men, 1Sgt. William O’Donohue and Pvt. Peter Kelly, disguised themselves in civilian clothes and escaped. A week later they made it to the Potomac River and rafted out to Federal gunboats.

That’s the scene in the illustration above, from Frank Leslie’s Pictorial History of The War of 1861, posted online in company with a piece about Rorty from The Wild Geese.

The escapees are (probably) seen in the photograph below – left to right, Kelly, Rorty, O’Donohue – taken later, after all three were commissioned officers. It’s from owner Matt Regan and is online from Harry Smeltzer.

[updated February 2021]

Captain Charles F Walcott is a hero to those who study Massachusetts soldiers in the Civil War (or at least to me) because he wrote the Regimental History of the 21st Massachusetts Infantry (1882). In the preface he apologized for taking more than 15 years to complete the book while raising children and running a law practice in Boston.

A Harvard man, he’d adventured West during a “gap year” in 1857 before law school. He had travelled to Minnesota, “living with the Sioux and Winnebago”, went down the Mississippi to New Orleans and returned home by ship by way of Cuba.

Walcott was the original Captain of Company B of the 21st, commissioned in August 1861, and he commanded it on the Maryland Campaign of 1862 – at Fox’s Gap on South Mountain and right behind the 51st PA & 51st NY over Burnside’s Bridge at Antietam.

He left the 21st Massachusetts in April 1863 and married Anna Morrill Wyman in October.

He did a 90-day stint commanding a local militia unit in the Summer of 1864 then was appointed Lt Colonel (soon Colonel) of the new 61st Mass in September. He mustered out in June 1865.

In 1866 he was honored by brevet to Brigadier General of Volunteers.

He was a lawyer in Boston for the next 20 years and died at age 50 in 1887.

In about 1980 his grandson Dr. Charles F. Walcott (Harvard, Harvard Medical School) donated a box of Indian artifacts to the Cambridge (MA) Library, a few of which are identified as local to Massachusetts, collected by Dr. Walcott. The rest are apparently of unknown provenance. That collection is pictured online via Flickr.

“The only outlier to the Native American objects in the collection is a box containing two bullets and a minie ball from the Battle of Antietam” – actually 2 minie bullets and a musket ball or cannister shot, I think.

Although not documented, I can guess who first collected some of these objects, can’t you?

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The late-1864 photo with his wife is at the Library of Congress (part of the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs).

I’ve been pushing hard the last few months to get more soldiers into the database on AotW, focusing particularly on those who died on the Campaign.

As a result I’ve posted an update to the list of The Dead of the Maryland Campaign of 1862. It’s now up to just over 6,300 people out of the more than 7,600 who died.

There’s so much more to do, but this is a good jump from the previous edition.

Pages for those individuals and thousands more are available on AotW, of course, if you want to see more about them …

I’ve found a fascinating description of the Smoketown Hospital as it was in January 1863 in a letter to an Indiana newspaper. I came upon it while looking into one of the many soldiers of the 27th Indiana Infantry wounded at Antietam, Private Thomas Mitchell Gaskins. 

The writer lists some of the patients, like Gaskins, and their status, which is immediately useful, but his description of the hospital facilities and staff are the most interesting pieces to me.

Here’s my transcription of the complete letter as published:

U.S. Hospital at Smoketown,
or Antietam, Jan. 15, 1863

Editors Sentinel: As the people of Indiana take a deep interest in the condition and treatment of our sick and wounded soldiers, enclosed I send you a short statement of what came under my own personal observation.

read the rest of this entry »

At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 1918, the Great War ended under the terms of an armistice, a cease-fire agreement, signed at 5 o’clock that morning.

The most immediate requirement of the Armistice was the withdrawal of all German forces to the line of the Rhine River, which, along with “beachheads” on the east bank, was the part of Germany to be occupied by Allied troops. French, British, Belgian, and American.

One of about two million Americans of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France that day was 23 year old Joseph F. Downey from Scranton, Pennsylvania, my grandfather.

That lovely hand colored map, Territorial Terms of the Armistice, is among a stunning cache of papers he left us. They’ll help me remember him and those millions of others on this centennial of the end of the First World War.

Lieutenant Nathaniel Wales’ story at Antietam may be unique. It is certainly startling: he was saved from a fatal wound by wearing armor at the battle.

I’ve not previously found anything else like this associated with Antietam. Having little experience with the subject, then, I went off to find out something about body armor of the Civil War. As a bonus along the way, I also came upon a number of interesting characters and connections in Wales’ family.

Our man was probably named for his 5x great-grandfather Nathaniel Wales (1586-1681), weaver, who arrived in Massachusetts from Yorkshire, England in 1635. He made the passage in the ship James out of Bristol with other pilgrims including the Reverend Richard Mather (1596-1669), father to Increase, grandfather of Cotton. Wales was later brother-in-law, by the second of his three wives, to Major General Humphrey Atherton. Wales’ descendants were generally successful business people in Boston and nearby towns.

Our Nathaniel’s father Thomas Crane Wales (1805-1880), 7 generations down the line, was prominent in the boot and shoe business, particularly in rubber overshoes and boots. He seems to have been a major player in that market for much of the 1840s and 50s. He had invented and patented a lined, waterproof cold weather boot he called the “Arctic”, which was hugely popular and widely imitated. As a result, I expect young Nathaniel had the benefit of a well-to-do Boston upbringing and education.

He was a salesman in Dorchester when the Civil War began, and also belonged to a Boston militia company called the New England Guard. He was 18 years old when he enlisted as First Sergeant, Company G, 24th Massachusetts Infantry in September 1861. He looks to be a very self-possessed young man.

The fine folks at the Western Maryland Historical Library (WHILBR), on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the War, scanned and transcribed a large number of local newspaper pieces for the period 1861-65. I’ve just picked up on four of these specific to soldiers who died in Hagerstown after Antietam in October, November, and December 1862.

Here’s a sample, a clipping from the Hagerstown Herald of Freedom & Torch Light of 19 November 1862:

For some of these men, I only had known that they had died, but not where or when. I’ve got some updating to do!

[Latest update of 10 March 2024]

At the bottom of this post you’ll find the latest lists of the men who died on, or as a result of, the Maryland Campaign of September 1862.Their names are pulled from the database of Antietam of the Web, so there’s an individual page there for each one of them, should you care to learn more.

The first is a list of the soldiers killed at Sharpsburg on 16, 17, or 18 September. The Official Records (ORs) and the Antietam Battlefield Board put the number killed at Antietam at about 1,550 Confederates and 2,100 Federals. I’ve found 1,729 and 2,205 so far.

The second is of those who died of their wounds in the days and weeks after the battle. Just as dead, these men are not included in the counts above, and only make the scale of the carnage that much worse. There are 829 Confederate and 1,015 Union soldiers here.

The third lists all of the individuals who died on, or as a result of, the Campaign as a whole, which covers the period of 4 September – when the first Confederate troops crossed the Potomac River into Maryland – through 20 September 1862, the end of the battle between threatening Federals and the rear guard of the Army of Northern Virginia near Shepherdstown, VA. Included are deaths in the combat actions of the Campaign: the fights on South Mountain, at Harpers Ferry, Sharpsburg, and Boteler’s Ford, and in a myriad of skirmishes that month; and also more than 300 men who died of disease, accident, or other cause.

Although mostly complete, these lists are an ongoing work – I will continue to add individuals as I learn of them. Also be aware that the information is only as good as the sometimes imperfect historical record behind it.

[Original post of 25 Aug 2012]

Attached to this post is my first feeble attempt at a list of individual soldiers who died on the Maryland Campaign of 1862 – those killed or mortally wounded in action, or otherwise died as a result of their presence there. As far as I know there is no single, comprehensive list anywhere. This one is a start.

I have been motivated in part by the upcoming memorial reading of the names of the Dead of Antietam at the Antietam National Cemetery on Sunday, September 16. ANB Ranger Alann Schmidt is leading the effort, and put out a call for names to add to the lists of local burials he already has available (National Cemetery, Rose Hill,  Mt Olivet, and Elmwood).  I hope to be able to contribute some others.

The following nicely summarizes what we’re up against here, though. It’s from the folks at the Western Maryland Regional Library:

According to the Antietam National Battlefield website 2,100 Union solders were killed, 9,550 were wounded, and 750 were listed as missing or captured. Of the Confederate soldiers, 1,550 were killed, 7,750 were wounded and 1,020 missing or captured. The number of men who died of their wounds or the number of missing who had been killed is not known. A conservative estimate of 20% of the wounded dying of their wounds and 30% of the missing killed gives an approximate number of soldiers who died as a result of this battle at 7,640.

This doesn’t even consider the hundreds who died in other action and of other causes during the Campaign – on South Mountain, at Harpers Ferry, at Shepherdstown, and in all the skirmishes in between.

The initial list of 2012 contained a little over 2,700 names – less than 1/3 of those who died.  I’m adding names to my database all the time, though, so the list will grow and I will post new editions here periodically. As of March 2024 it contains 7,586 names.

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The Current Lists

[PDF 1.5M] Cover

  [PDF 52K] Introduction/Guide

Killed at Antietam/Sharpsburg on 16-18 September 1862

  [PDF 950 KB] Killed at Antietam (3934 names, sorted by State)  v3  10 March 2024

[PDF 963 KB] Killed at Antietam (3934 names, sorted by Rank)  v3  10 March 2024

[PDF 967 KB] Killed at Antietam (3934 names, sorted by Name)  v3  10 March 2024

Wounded at Antietam/Sharpsburg and died later

  [PDF 446 KB] Mortally Wounded at Antietam (1844 names, sorted by State)  v3  10 March 2024

  [PDF 451 KB] Mortally Wounded at Antietam (1844 names, sorted by Rank)  v3  10 March 2024

  [PDF 452 KB] Mortally Wounded at Antietam (1844 names, sorted by Name)  v3  10 March 2024

The Dead of the Campaign of September 1862

[PDF 2.1 MB] The Dead List (7586 names, sorted by State) v13  10 March 2024

[PDF 2.1 MB] The Dead List (7586 names, sorted by Name) v13  10 March 2024

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Notes

The iconic photograph here is by Alexander Gardner. He took it on September 19th or 20th, 1862 on the battlefield at Antietam, and titled it “A Lonely Grave“. Bill Frassanito did some masterful research for his book and identified the grave in question as that of Private John Marshall of the 28th Pennsylvania Infantry. I got my copy of the photograph from the Library of Congress.

The quote above from the Western Maryland Regional Library is on their fine WHILBR site in a page about Confederate burials on the campaign.

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For the lack of a better place, here’s a list of one. Killed on the campaign, but I don’t know who he is.

M. (probably Marcel) Diendonnie or Dieudonnie. A soldier who was mortally wounded by a gunshot to his hip, probably at Antietam on 17 September and died at a US Army hospital in Frederick, MD on 23 November. He’s buried in Antietam National Cemetery.  He’s only in the hospital and burial records, listed in Company E of either the First Rhode Island Infantry (not at Antietam) or the First New York Infantry. No one with a similar name is found in those or any other military roster. A mystery man.