Category: quickPost/Pix
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A gambler’s wild career
(touch for full article) 23 year old Lieutenant Colonel William H Betts, a former farmer from Tuskegee, AL, led the 13th Alabama Infantry in combat at Sharpsburg, MD on 17 September 1862 and was wounded there. His brigade and division commanders, Col. A.H. Colquitt and Maj.Gen. D.H. Hill respectively, spoke highly of him and his…
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Melissa R, Eugene A, and DeWitt C Smith (1861)
Here are DeWitt Clinton Smith and his family in an ambrotype photograph probably taken as he prepared to leave his home in Minnesota for the war in the east. He’d married Melissa R. Shepard (1827-1905) in Michigan in 1847 – they were both from his hometown of Barre, NY – and their son Eugene Adelbert…
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Col William H Blair (c. 1863)
This serious face belongs to William H Blair, a lawyer from Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. He was Captain of Company G, 51st Pennsylvania Infantry and led them with “great gallantry in storming and taking Antietam Bridge 17 September 1862 under Maj. Gen. Burnside.” He was afterward Colonel of the 6-month 179th Pennsylvania Infantry regiment to mid-1863 and…
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Dr R.T. Royston (c. 1855)
It’s a shame about the condition of this daguerrotype – but at least we can get a hint about what Dr. Robert T Royston looked like before the war. A physician of some 10 years experience, he enlisted in the 8th Alabama Infantry as a Private in May 1861, but quickly became the regiment’s Surgeon.…
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Tom McBryde (c. 1930)
At 18 years old, in March 1862, Thomas Calvin McBryde left his parents’ small farm at Snow Hill in Wilcox County, AL to enlist in the Cedar Creek Guards, who soon after became Company C of the 44th Alabama Infantry. He survived a slight wound at Sharpsburg in September 1862 and a couple of serious…
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Walter and Steele Williams (c. 1861)
In October 1861 Walter S Smith (1845-1919), not quite 16, enlisted with his father, 40 year old Punxsutawney tinsmith Steele Semple Williams, in Company F of the 11th Pennsylvania Infantry; Walter as a Musician, Steele as a Sergeant. Walter survived the war, mustering out as a Sergeant in July 1865. His father, though, was seriously…
