behind AotW

James Wren led Company B of the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry on South Mountain and at Antietam in September 1862 and was promoted to Major of the regiment soon after. Here he is from Bosbyshell’s regimental history (1895):

Born into an iron working family in Scotland, he and his older brothers operated the Washington Iron Works in Pottsville, PA before the war. Here’s a page from Daddow and Bannan’s trade book Coal, Iron, and Oil (1866).

James was also pre-war Captain of a militia unit – the Washington Artillery – which was one of the First Defenders of Washington, DC in April 1861. Famously, his orderly, 65 year old former slave Nicholas Biddle (c. 1795-1876), was injured by a mob in Baltimore enroute to Washington on 18 April 1861, perhaps the first man wounded in the war.

Here’s Biddle in a photograph he sold in quantity to raise funds in 1864; this copy from the Library of Congress. See much more about him and that picture from Elizabeth Nosari, archivist at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.

Wren is probably best remembered by Civil War historians today for a diary he kept between February and December 1862. John Michael Priest and his South Hagerstown High School students published it as Captain James Wren’s Civil War Diary: From New Bern to Fredericksburg in 1990.

The beginning of a letter of 5 October 1862 to the editor of the Savannah Republican from Lieutenant Peter A. S. McGlashan of Company E detailing his experience with the 50th Georgia Infantry on South Mountain and at Sharpsburg in September 1862. It was printed in the 16 October edition on page 2, column 2. The complete article is clipped below (touch any section to enlarge).

Here’s McGlashan in about 1864, by then Colonel of the regiment, in a photograph from the Thomasville (GA) History Center.

The photograph and complete newspaper are online thanks to the Digital Library of Georgia.

Kendall’s Mills in Fairfield, Somerset County, Maine (touch to enlarge). Hometown of Lieutenant Augustus F. Emery of Companies E and D of the 7th Maine Infantry, 1861-1864.

Homes of others of the regiment are probably shown on the map. I found at least one: Seldon Connor, at Elm and Newhall Streets, was later Colonel of the Seventh (January 1864) and Governor of Maine (1876-79).

This lovely piece is but a small detail from a very large scale map of Somerset County in 1860 created by engineer J. Chase, Jr and printed by W.H. Rease in Philadelphia, PA, now at the Library of Congress.

I recommend it to my fellow students of the Regiment.