behind AotW

Robert Weakley Brahan was born into a prominent Nashville, TN family in 1811, trained as a physician, married well, and had all the right friends, among them, apparently, President Andrew Jackson. After a decade in Panola County, MS, he took his family to Bexar County, TX in 1852 and established a large plantation and raised cattle there.

In July 1861 his oldest surviving son Haywood Weakley Brahan, 21, enlisted as First Sergeant of Company F, 4th Texas Infantry and started off for New Orleans to get a train to Virginia.

Shortly afterward, in August, Robert sent a letter to President Jefferson Davis requesting a commission for his son. He asked as a “personal favor” and cited Harwood’s excellent college record, “ability, and deportment,” as well as his own work as a Brigadier General of Texas Militia on the homefront. He added “I prefer that he go into the Army permanently = Lieutenant of Cavalry preferred as he is an excellent horseman.”

I expect the President got hundreds if not thousands of such letters. Like most of them, he probably ignored this one, as a commission was not immediately forthcoming.

Young Haywood was elected 2nd Lieutenant of his Company on his own merits (probably) in November 1862 and survived Sharpsburg and all the other actions of the regiment to Appomattox in April 1865.

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Notes

His brands above and much more about Robert W Brahan are from a fine post on Lost Texas Roads by Regina Tolley and Allen Kosub.

The letter pages here are from Haywood’s Compiled Service Records, US National Archives, via the fold3 subscription service.

Sharpsburg Veteran and former Texas Ranger Hiram B. Rogers was a farmer near Chalk Mountain, Texas by 1900 and was still farming there at age 80 in 1920. Chalk Mountain is on the somewhat flexible border between Erath and Somervell Counties, so Rogers appears in both counties in various Census records.

Chalk Mountain was always a tiny town, never exceeding 100 residents, and is now a “ghost town.” Here’s it is on a map in 1920 (from the Texas Land Office), online from Texas Escapes.

Here’s a strong looking Hiram at about age 85 at his home at Chalk Mountain, with grandson Alton McKnight Rogers (1921-1943, polio), who was born there. The photograph was contributed to his Find-a-grave memorial by Hiram’s great-great granddaughter Patricia S.

Private Thomas W Watson, Company D, 4th Texas Infantry survived combat on South Mountain and at Sharpsburg in Maryland in 1862, but was felled by typhoid bacilli in a hospital near Atlanta, GA in December 1863. His nurse Kate Cummings (1835-1909) noted his passing in her journal.

This is page 116 of A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee which she published in 1866. Thankfully, the complete volume is online from the US National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.

Here’s Nurse Cumming sometime after the war from the frontpiece of her memoir Gleanings from Southland (1885), also online, from the Internet Archives.

Corporal Secor of the 2nd Vermont Infantry was mortally wounded at Antietam on 17 September 1862 and died in a field hospital on the O.J. Smith farm the next day. This tintype, probably taken soon after he enlisted in May 1861, is in the collection of the Vermont Historical Society, and is online thanks to Tom Ledoux.

A lifelong farmer, William Henry McClaugherty was First Sergeant of Company D, 4th Texas Infantry and was in action with them in Maryland in September 1862. He survived a disabling leg wound in the Wilderness in May 1864, by then First Lieutenant, and went home to his farm in Seguin, TX in 1865.

In November 1874 he applied for a patent for Improvement in Cotton Scrapers and Choppers, which was granted in February 1875. This patent drawing and accompanying description are online thanks to the Portal to Texas History from the University of North Texas Libraries.

Maryland-born Captain Allen Howard Zacharias of the 7th Michigan Infantry was mortally wounded at Antietam on 17 September 1862 and died surrounded by family at Hagerstown in December. This pre-war photograph was contributed to his Find-a-grave memorial by user Marsteka. Many thanks to J.O. Smith for the pointer to that.

Zacharias had written his own obituary earlier in 1862, and he was carrying it when he was hit at Antietam. While lying on the field he also wrote a last letter home. These, and the circumstances of his death, are detailed below from The Red Book of Michigan: A Civil, Military and Biographical History (1872), which is online thanks to the University of Michigan.

Another Sharpsburg veteran who was a post-war Texas state legislator, this is William Henry Burges, Jr. in about 1880, in a photograph shared online in several places by family genealogists.

He’s in this composite photograph of the Texas State Senate of 1881-83 (17th Legislature) from the Texas State Preservation Board, Austin, which is online among other references to Burges’s legislative history thanks to the Texas Legislative Reference Library. Senator Burges is at the bottom left.

Here’s Walter Moses Burton (c. 1829-1913), the man missing from that group photograph.

Here’s the top of a card for William C. Steele from his United States Mexican War Service Records, US National Archives (poke it to see the whole thing). Steele had later service as a Sergeant in the 4th Texas Infantry and was at Sharpsburg in September 1862. He lost a leg at Chickamauga, GA a year later, but went home to a farm in Grimes County.

Here’s newly elected Texas State Representative Burlington Wesley Rimes in 1873. His picture, probably from a collective composite of all the members of that legislature, is in the Lawrence T. Jones III Collection, Southern Methodist University.

Rimes was a Private in Maryland in 1862, and was left behind, sick, in Frederick – captured there on 12 September.

Lieutenant Middleton L. Livingston was in action with Company C, 4th Texas Infantry in Maryland in 1862.

He had been a physician in Milam County before the war and was a farmer there for most of the rest of his life. He was elected Sheriff in 1876 and this photograph was probably taken about that time. It’s online from the Milam County Historical Commission.