behind AotW

Here’s a photograph taken just after the war of Benjamin Crawford Brantley (left), late Private of Company B, 13th Georgia Infantry.

He went by Crawford or Croff and was not yet 17 years old when he enlisted in 1861. He was wounded at Sharpsburg in 1862, at Gettysburg (1863), at Spotsylvania (1864), and finally, and most seriously, at Winchester, VA in September 1864. He lost his left forearm to amputation at a Federal field hospital in Winchester and was in the prison hospital at Point Lookout, MD to February 1865.

Which gives me a good excuse to show you this lovely 1864 bird’s-eye view of Crawford’s temporary home at Point Lookout. Click or touch to see more detail.

__________________
The photograph at the top was shared online by by Ken Brantley on his Brantley Association of America website. The other man is not identified.

This copy of the Point Lookout print is online from the Library of Congress.

Private George Washington Reaves, 13th Georgia Infantry was about 30 years old when he was wounded in a most frightful way at Sharpsburg in September 1862. He later described it in his application for a Confederate veteran’s pension in 1896 (click to enlarge).

This helpful document is online from Georgia Archives Virtual Vault.

Wilbur Fiske Pope, a 20 year old private in Company A of the 13th Georgia Infantry was killed at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

In a 17 November 1862 letter to her niece Martha Parks, his stepmother Susan Atkinson Pope, who had raised him from an infant, wrote:

… since my dear Wilbur’s death everything looks sad and gloomy. how hard it is to give him up, such a lovely youth. he was everything that a Mother’s heart could wish or desire. none knew him but to love him.

Capt. Mitchell wrote such a pretty letter after his death. I read two letters from William Gwynn telling how he was killed; said Wilbur was on his left side just in the act of caping his gun when the fatal ball struck him through the centre of his forehead. he fell forward on his side. said he looked right straight in his face the most imploringly, in a few moments he ceased to breathe. Billy said he never should forget the look that Wilbur gave him. said there was no doubt about his being fully prepared to die, oh that he could have died in my arms. the last letter i received from him was the very day that he was killed …

[I’ve added punctuation to make it a little easier to read]

A full transcription of this letter was posted to Facebook by Michael Parks for the Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1441, Midland, TX. The location of the original letter was not given.

In March 1862 22 year old Private John Barnett Mathews of the 13th Georgia Infantry wrote the Confederate President Jefferson Davis asking for appointment to a more important position so he could better help support his newly widowed and “nearly destitute” mother and 7 younger siblings back home in Heard County, GA.

Private Mathews may have felt deserving of special treatment because he had attended medical school and was a school teacher before the war. He’d enlisted as a Private in June 1861 but, as he wrote the President,

My qualifications I think, sir, render me capable of filling a station that would better enable me to relieve myself of the embarrassment [the poverty of his family] of which I have spoken.

The letter was received in the office of the President on 25 March, and was apparently answered (those may be the President’s initials at top right), but the reply in not Mathews’ file. In any case, no new position was immediately forthcoming. Instead, he was elected by his Company to Junior 2nd Lieutenant in September 1862, and was their Captain by 1864.

If you are a student of US Naval Aviation, this 1911 photograph may be something like the holy grail.

Pictured is the Curtiss A-1 aircraft with Glenn H Curtiss at the wheel. Seated (L-R) are his students – young US Navy officers John Rodgers, John Henry Towers, and Theodore Ellyson – who qualified that summer as Naval Aviators #2, #3 and #1, respectively. The man standing at left is not identified, but is possibly Eugene Burton Ely (1879-1911), Curtiss’ pilot and a pioneer of Naval Aviation in his own right – the first man to take off from and land on a ship.

All of these men had tremendous flying stories and family histories – well worth a look when you have the time.

Rodgers (USNA 1903) and Ellyson (USNA 1905) were killed in plane crashes, in 1926 and 1928 respectively, but Towers (USNA 1906) had a 45-year Navy career culminating in 4-star Admiral’s rank (1945) and command of the US Pacific Fleet (1946).

Here’s Vice Admiral Towers (arrow) in a famous photograph of General Douglas McArthur signing surrender documents aboard USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.

Bringing this back home …

Towers’ grandfather, Colonel John Reed Towers, commanded the 8th Georgia Infantry from 2nd Manassas to Appomattox, including in action with G.T. Anderson’s Brigade in the West Woods and on Piper’s Farm at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

Here’s Colonel J.R. Towers, just after the Civil War.

Colonel Towers’ 2nd son and Admiral Towers’ father, William McGee Towers (1846-1912), was also a Confederate veteran. He served as an 18 year old cavalryman with General N.B. Forrest in 1864 and 1865. He lived to see his son fly.

___________________

Notes

More details of Admiral Towers’ Navy career are in a bio sketch from the Naval History and Heritage Command.

They are also the source of the Curtiss photograph above.

The 1945 photograph on the USS Missouri is online from the US National Archives.

The portrait of Colonel John R Towers is thanks to family genealogists via RootsWeb.

Brothers Charles A. (left) and William Decatur Mangham enlisted together as 2nd and 3rd Corporal, respectively, in the “Confederate Guards” – Company A, 13th Georgia Infantry – in July 1861, and had their pictures taken in their new uniforms.

Will was badly wounded in the arm at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and served afterward as a Lieutenant in a Reserve Company assigned as guards at Andersonville, GA.

Charles’ photograph is from Oh, For a Touch of the Vanished Hand (2000) by Col. Dana Mangham, who says Charles was also wounded at Sharpsburg. I’ve not found other evidence of that. Will’s picture is from Rosalee Mangham King as published in Rachel McDaniel’s Pike County (2011).

In a related find, here’s a Sharpsburg casualty list for Companies A and I of the 13th Georgia clipped from page 4 of the Savannah Weekly Republican of 4 October 1862.

The complete edition of that paper is online from Georgia Historic Newspapers, and it also contains extensive descriptions of the action at Sharpsburg and has similar lists for the 12th, 50th, and 61st Georgia, and 5th Florida Infantry (along with lists for the 9th and 11th Georgia at Manassas).

This fierce-looking young man is William Pinkney Irvin of Pike County, GA, and he probably posed for this picture shortly after he enlisted in Company A of the 13th Georgia Infantry in July 1861 at about 18 years old.

Sadly, he only got another year older. He was killed at Sharpsburg, MD on 17 September 1862.

This photo was shared by Rachael Weitnauer of Atlanta to accompany Keith S. Bohannon’s essay in The Antietam Campaign (1999), edited by Gary W Gallagher.

A wealthy young planter from Macon, GA, John Hill Lamar began the war as a Private in the 2nd Georgia Battalion and was Major of the 7th Georgia Battalion Infantry by April 1862. At that time Confederate authorities were adding troops to the Battalion to bring it to Regimental strength, and its commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Charles A. L. Lamar – probably not a close relation – resigned, reportedly because he was not likely to retain his commission in the new Regiment.

In this unusual letter, Major Lamar asked Brigadier General Hugh Weeden Mercer (1808-1877), then commanding the Military District of Georgia, to obtain the commission of Lieutenant Colonel and commander of the Battalion on his behalf. He noted that there was some urgency, citing the likely resignation of senior Captain James Y. McDuffie if the post of Major did not open soon.

Here’s my transcription:

Camp at Bethesda [GA]
April 7th 1862

Brig Genl H.W. Mercer

Genl:

I received on yesterday the official notification of the acceptance of Col Lamar’s resignation. Will you do me the favor to make application for my commission as Lt Col, as I believe I rise to that position by promotion. Capt McDuffie is the senior Capt and has conceived an idea of resigning, and until he decides what he will do, it will be useful to take any steps as regards the Majority. I am this precipitate in asking you make application on my behalf, from the fact, of not having received my present commission until a few days ago, and without your action in the premisses [?], it is doubtful if I get the commission as Lt Col for months to come.

I am Genl
Very Respectfully
Your Obt Servant

JH Lamar
Maj Comdg 7th Ga Batt

Lamar did in fact quickly get the commission as Lieutenant Colonel of the Battalion and later as Colonel of the new 61st Georgia. He commanded the regiment, and at least briefly Lawton’s Brigade, at Sharpsburg in September 1862. He was killed at Monocacy, MD in 1864.

Captain McDuffie did not resign, and was soon after appointed Lieutenant Colonel. He was wounded at Sharpsburg and resigned due to his health that October. He died in 1863, cause unknown.

This letter is from J.H. Lamar’s Compiled Service Record file at the US National Archives, online from fold3.

This clip about Colonel Marcellus Douglass, late of the 13th Georgia Infantry, is from a lengthy Campaign narrative published on the front page of the Savannah Republican of 1 October 1862. The complete page is online courtesy of Georgia Historic Newspapers.

Thanks to Laura Elliot for the pointer to that piece. It was submitted from Shepherdstown, VA by correspondent “V.A.S.P.” – the initials of Virgil A.S. Parks, then First Lieutenant of Company D, 17th Georgia Infantry.

Thanks to Mike Brasher for finding and sharing this photograph of John Silas Mask of the 2nd Mississippi Infantry. It looks like it was taken just after he enlisted, probably in 1861.