behind AotW

I came upon this photograph while looking into men of Colonel Evander McIver Law‘s brigade staff at Sharpsburg in September 1862: it’s in the collection of the Valentine Museum in Richmond, VA and originally titled Common Soldiers from Charles City, possibly a reference to where the photograph was taken in Charles City County, VA southeast of Richmond.

Perhaps obviously, that’s by-then Brigadier General Law in the front, center.

Thanks to Ron Coddington and others, I think we have the identities of the other men in the picture. Four of the five were at Sharpsburg.

First, standing at our left, is John Kolb Law, Evander’s younger brother. He was a Cadet in the Citadel when he joined his brother as a volunteer aide in the Summer of 1862. He was wounded in the ankle at Sharpsburg and, after graduation in 1863, was an Enrolling Officer to the end of the war.

Standing at the right is Mims Walker who was a Private in Company D, 4th Alabama – Colonel Law’s old unit – and was detailed as courier to Law at Gaines Mill in June 1862. He was on furlough in August and September 1862, so not at Sharpsburg, but returned afterward as a courier into 1864, when he was appointed Lieutenant and Aide-de-camp on the General’s staff.

Seated at the left is Leigh Richmond Terrell, 2nd Lieutenant of Company D, 4th Alabama Infantry, who was detailed to Colonel Law as Assistant Adjutant General in about August 1862 and was with him at Sharpsburg and afterward until 1864, when he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the 47th Alabama Infantry. He was mortally wounded at Petersburg in October 1864.

Sitting to our right is Surgeon Charles Thomas Taliaferro, of the 4th Alabama Infantry. He had enlisted as a Private and was 2nd Lieutenant of Company E of the 4th Alabama at Sharpsburg. He was appointed Assistant Surgeon of the regiment in February 1863 and Surgeon in February 1864. Although probably never on General Law’s staff, he certainly would have been well known to him.

Ron Coddington featured the photograph in his article The Little Gamecock: The Rise of Brig. Gen. Evander McIver Law, C.S.A. in the Summer 2024 issue of Military Images magazine, and shared that piece online.

The original glass-plate negative is at the Valentine Museum and they posted the print used here online.

Looking into Captain William F Dement, commander of the First Maryland Artillery on the campaign of September 1862, I came upon this scrap of paper – a receipt for ammunition issued to his battery at Leesburg, VA on 5 September 1862. He and his battery crossed the Potomac River into Maryland at White’s Ford that same day.

10 boxes = 80 rounds, 12 pdr. gun spher. [spherical] case.
Six (6) sponges; 300 friction primers

Food for his 4 Napoleons.

Dement joined the battery as First Lieutenant at it’s organization at Richmond, VA in July 1861, then a wealthy 35 year old planter from Charles County. Here he is at that rank:

He was promoted to Captain in July 1862, and led the battery to Appomattox in April 1865.

The receipt at the top is from Captain Dement’s Compiled Service Record jacket at the National Archives and online from fold3, a subscription service.

His photograph was contributed to his Findagrave memorial by Barbara Winston Spears.

Franklin Gaillard, standing between his wife Catherine Cordes “Tattie” Porcher (1832-1856; m. 1853) and niece Catherine Marianne Gaillard (1835-1869). Front row: Franklin’s sisters, Lydia Henrietta (1831-1913), Elizabeth Octavia “Betsy” (1825-1908) and Marianne Gendron “Nan” (1833-1912).

A newspaper editor in Columbia, SC before the war, Gaillard was Major of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry on the Maryland Campaign of 1862 and took command of the regiment at Sharpsburg after Colonel Kennedy was wounded in action near the Dunker Church on the morning of 17 September.

He saw further combat at Fredericksburg, where he was wounded, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg – by then Lieutenant Colonel and in command – through Chickamauga and Knoxville into the Fall of 1863. He was killed in battle in the Wilderness of Virginia on 6 May 1864. He was 35 years old.

The photograph above is from descendent and author Frye Gaillard published in Alabama Living Magazine, 2 July 2015. I’ve not yet found a wartime picture of Franklin Gaillard.