behind AotW

This well-dressed young man is George Washington Cox who was mortally wounded at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 while a Private in the 23rd Georgia Infantry. He died in a US Army field hospital on the Line Farm near the battlefield before the end of September.

This photograph is courtesy of Roy Queen, from his collection.

Here’s 30 year old Haverford, Massachusetts shoemaker Andrew Jackson Gile just before the war. He was killed at Antietam on 17 September 1862 about a month after he enlisted as a Private in the 35th Massachusetts Infantry.

This photograph is from My Great-Grandmother Judith Sargent Gile 1804-1891 – a book in the family by Winifred Jewel Harley. Thanks to Kristin Laing for that!

David Brainard Murray enlisted in the 35th Massachusetts Infantry in August 1862 and was wounded at Antietam a month after he mustered into service. He was at hospitals until November 1862 then discharged … not for his wound, but for “incipient phthisis” – early-stage tuberculosis or similar progressive lung disease.

His Surgeon’s Certificate of Disability (thanks his Compiled Service Record file at the National Archives) contains a wealth of information about him, and is the source of the detail about his discharge – without it I would have assumed he was discharged due to wounds.

Murray enlisted again, briefly, in 1864 and survived to have a long life as a clergyman in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Thanks to descendant and author Bill Guerrant for pointing me to Hugh Lindsay Guerrant of the 13th North Carolina and providing this photograph of him in his First Lieutenant’s uniform, from his collection.

Lieutenant Guerrant was apparently close enough to Brigadier General Samuel Garland at Fox’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September to retrieve the pit from the peach the General was eating when he was shot there. And he later raised a tree from it back home. Some story!

Apparently a number of men of Company C of the 4th North Carolina had their portraits made by the same photographer on the same day. Here’s that of Private Nat Raymer. It is identical in pose and background to the one I found 3 days ago for Alfred Turner.

This photo, from his family, accompanied a collection of Raymer’s wartime letters to local newspapers collected in 2009 in Confederate Correspondent: The Civil War Reports of Jacob Nathaniel Raymer, Fourth North Carolina, edited by E.B. Munson.

A fine full-length photograph of Alfred Turner, 4th North Carolina Infantry as published by Greg Mast in his State Troops and Vounteers: A Photographic Record of North Carolina’s Civil War Soldiers.

Turner was captured at Boonsboro, MD on 15 September 1862, the day after the Regiment fought in the defense at Fox’s Gap on South Mountain. He was exchanged in November 1862, but never returned to his regiment.

This imposing item is a plaster bust of Leopold Blumenberg, brevet Brigadier General of Volunteers and late Major, 5th Maryland Infantry. Painted to look like marble, it’s in the collection of the Jewish Museum of Baltimore.

Blumenberg commanded the 5th Maryland at Antietam and was seriously wounded near the Sunken Road/Bloody lane there on 17 September 1862.

From his Compiled Service Record folder, here’s the casualty sheet for Private Ferdinand Abbis of Company C, 5th Maryland Infantry, wounded at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

This is Francis Alexander “Frank” Shuford, late of the 4th North Carolina Infantry, with his family almost 30 years after the Maryland Campaign of 1862, where he was made a prisoner of war. Left-to-right they are Alice Mabel, Frank, Carrie Lee, Laura Jones Harbin, and Fred Homer Shuford.

Daughter Mabel arranged for his government headstone in 1936 …

… but a War Department clerk inserted “44 Regt” on her application and someone in the Department got Frank’s year of death wrong, which is why his stone is not quite right.

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The family portrait above was contributed to his Find-a-grave memorial by user A touch of TLC in 2021. The photograph of his marker is by James Arthur, also on his memorial page. Mabel’s application for that stone is from Frank’s Compiled Service Record jacket, online from fold3.

Private Robert J.M. Barber of Company B, 4th North Carolina Infantry was twice captured during the war: at Frederick on the 1862 Maryland Campaign and in 1864 at Winchester, VA.

After his release in February 1865 he returned home to Rowan County, North Carolina, where, like so many former Confederate soldiers, he signed this document. This copy is from his Compiled Service Record file at the National Archives; I found it online thanks to fold3.