behind AotW

Here’s 2nd Lieutenant Maximilian Wimpfheimer of Company G, 2nd Pennsylvania Reserves, who was killed at Antietam on 17 September 1862, just about 2 months after this picture was taken.

He was born in Germany and was about 21 years old at his death. His father David brought his family to America between 1852 and 1860, and was a vinegar manufacturer in Philadelphia before the war.

This photograph was contributed by Susan Johnson and hosted online by the Shapell Manuscript Foundation, part of an exhibit on Jewish soldiers killed in the Civil War – two of whom were identified as being buried in Antietam National Cemetery: Wimpfheimer and Adolph Brinkmann, a Private in the 2nd Delaware Infantry, also killed at Antietam.

Here’s Lawrence Houston Scruggs in a photograph taken in October 1862 after he’d been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel of his regiment, the 4th Alabama Infantry.

He enlisted as a Private in his hometown of Huntsville in May 1861, and was successively promoted to Sergeant, Lieutenant, and Captain by September of that year. He commanded the regiment in combat at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 as senior officer still standing until he was wounded there in the East Woods about 8 am.

Very shortly afterward, on 30 September, he was promoted to Major and just two days later, Lieutenant Colonel. He was afterward in command of the 4th Alabama to their surrender at Appomattox in April 1865.

His photograph is in the Alabama Archives.

This scrap of paper documents the issue of artillery ammunition on 15 September 1862 by Captain Edwin Taliaferro, Ordnance Officer on Major General Lafayette McLaws’ staff, to 2nd Lieutenant George J Newton of the Troup (GA) Artillery, also a subject of the previous post. Newton and his battery were among McLaws’ Division Artillery on the Maryland Campaign.

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This was obviously hastily written – both men were certainly very busy that day. It took me a minute to decipher that scrawl enough to tell what type of rounds they were: I think it reads “128 Rounds Parrot Ammunition.” The Troup artillery was equipped with 2 smooth-bore guns and 2 10-pounder Parrot rifles on the Maryland Campaign of 1862.

I found this document among Lieutenant Newton’s Consolidated Service Records (CSR) in the National Archives; my copy online via fold3.

By way of evidence that the handwriting above is Captain Taliaferro’s, here’s a requisition of his dated 18 September, the day after the great and terrible fight at Sharpsburg, requesting Parrott shell and 3-inch rifle shell rounds “immediately needed for the supply of this command (McLaws’ Division) as none remain on hand.” Desperate times.

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This paper is from Taliaferro’s CSR jacket, as are hundreds of similar documents and correspondence concerning issue of and accounting for ordnance stores during his service as an ordnance officer from 1862 into 1865.