behind AotW

Here’s Sergeant Lester Edwin Forrest Spofford after he lost his left arm to a wound and resulting amputation at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

You’d have thought that would have been enough of war for 18 year old Forrest, but it wasn’t. He was appointed Sergeant Major of the 8th Connecticut Infantry in January 1863 and he returned to serve with them to May of 1864, when he was wounded again. In the other arm.

After recovering from that wound he attempted to reenlist, but was turned away by a medical board and discharged at the end of his original term of enlistment on 20 September 1864.

This fine photograph is from the Buck Zaidel Collection, and was published in Military Images in Spring 2015 and featured in Longley & Zaidel’s Heroes for All Time: Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories (2015).

Fellow researcher Laura Elliott sent me a couple of lovely news clippings with further detail about the Troup Artillery on the Maryland Campaign of 1862. The first piece is from the the Athens, Georgia Southern Banner of 8 October 1862 reproducing a casualty list Captain Henry H. Carlton put in a letter to his parents:

The second is from the Banner of 1 October 1862 and has more details about some of the casualties; it was taken from a letter Corporal W A Hemphill wrote his father:

The Athens Guards, by the way, were Company K of the 3rd Georgia Infantry, also at Sharpsburg.

Thanks to Laura, I’ve had more names to look into this week.

While doing that I came upon this fine photograph of the surviving members of the Troup Artillery at their reunion in Athens on 20 July 1892 – 30 years after Sharpsburg.

(touch to enlarge)

That might be former Captain Carlton at the far right holding the sponge-rammer, and the man with the huge sideburns in the center of the picture beneath the battle flag is probably former Corporal Hemphill, then Mayor of Atlanta. The photograph was made by their own ex-Lieutenant C.W. Motes and was published in the Banner of 26 July 1892. This copy was posted online by the volunteers of RootsWeb.

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That first piece is a little hard to read, so Laura kindly transcribed the casualties for us:

September 14 at Cramptons Gap
Killed, private John J Kinney, Serg’t John O Waddell mortally wounded, shot through the head and left on the field. Private Robert S. Thomas seriously though not dangerously wounded – shot through both legs; E. A. Lee, slightly, flesh wound, through the thigh.

September 17 at Sharpsburg
Killed – Private B R Carlton. Wounded – Lieut. C. W. Motes in side and shoulder, though not dangerous; Serg’t J. H. L. Gerdine, in thigh, dangerously; Private George B. Atkisson, breast and thigh, dangerously; W. H. P. Jones, in thigh, slight; E. C. Kinnedrew, very slight, in face; R. W. Pitman, shot through leg, not dangerous; R. W. Saye struck with ball, not serious. Privates Robert Moon, J. F. Murray and Corp’l J. M. A. Johnson badly bruised but now on duty.

Here are the soldiers of the Athens Guard mentioned by Hemphill:

George Graham, killed;
James Dorsey, shot through leg;
Dick Baxter, shot through the hand;
George Palmer, wounded;
George Daniel, wounded;
Henry Morton, wounded;
Ab Edge, well;
O’Farrell, also well.

The Troup Artillery members present at that 1892 reunion were listed in the newspaper:

Capt. H. H. Carlton, Athens, Ga.
1st Lieut. C. W. Motes, Atlanta, Ga.
H Jennings “ “
1st Lieut. A F Pope, Crawford, Ga.
J O Waddell, Atlanta, Ga.
J F Dillard, Crawford, Ga.
Howell Cobb, Corporal.
R K Pridgeon, Sergt.
A B C Dorsey, Q M Sergt.
J J Jennings, Athens, Ga.
Jesse Williams, Jefferson, Ga.
R W Pittman, Athens.
Robert Dicken, McNutt, Oconee Co.
E L Edwards, Covington.
E C Kinnebrew, Athens.
J W Hale, Winterville.
J T Hale, “
G B Atkisson “
Lee M Lyle, Middleton,
Corporal B F Culp, Athens.
H T Boneshell, Maxeys, Ga.
W J Jennings, Bethlehem.
Jas. J Jennings, Watkinsville.
W S Barrett, Ila, Madison Co. Ga.
E A Robertton, Atlanta.
D J Matthews, Bascobel.
W A Hemphill, Atlanta.
R W Saye “
T F Hudson, Athens.
F M Doster, Bascobel.
J E Bradberry, Athens.
J W Bradberry, Watkinsville.
Jesse Gann, Athens.
T S Richards “
Corporal J D Thomas, Rome.
John Lilly, Athens.
Thomas Jones, Athens.
Geo W Moon, “
Isaac Vincent, “
Obadia Vincent, “
J R Hale, ________
J W Ledbetter, [Joseph William Ledbetter, Madison, Co., GA]
O J Oliver, Atlanta.
A W Reese, Macon.
E W Porter, Athens.
J M Barry, “
T S Richards, “
Bob Flournoy “
D D Blackman, Atlanta.
G W Simmons, McNutt, Oconee Co.
J E Pittman, Athens.

Antietam on the Web achieved a milestone today – we now can show you faces of 2,000 of the participants in the Battle of Antietam as they probably looked when they were there.

This is not far from 10% of the nearly 22,000 people in the AotW database and is amazing to me – I’ve been putting up pictures of them one at a time as I find them, for many years, not really keeping score.

A big thank you to all the descendants and collectors who have shared their treasured pictures with me, and to all the organizations large and small who have posted theirs online for me to find.

To mark the day, here’s one of my most recent finds and poignant faces – that of 17 year old William E Hacker of Worcester, Massachusetts. A recent graduate of a military prep school in Worcester, he was appointed 2nd Lieutenant of Company A, 3rd Maryland Infantry in March 1862, and fought with them at Antietam, where he was shot in the chest. He survived that and returned to duty in January 1863, soon after promoted to Captain, but died of typhoid fever in March 1863 at age 18.

His carte de visite (CDV) here is one of two of him in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs at the Library of Congress – a massive and growing resource for people like us.

If you have a wartime picture of someone who was at the battle, or know of one online I haven’t seen yet, please let me know. I have so much more to do.