behind AotW

In the 1840s and 1850s the Lawrences and the Pinckneys were farm neighbors in Grimes County, Texas.

Farmer and tanner Martin Byrd Lawrence’s (1794-1851) place was in the tiny community of Retreat – named for the nearby plantation of early Texas pioneer Jared Ellison Groce (1782–1839), called Groce’s Retreat. Martin had been a friend and admirer of Jared’s and got his start in Grimes County in about 1836 with a gift from Jared of 100 acres out of Groce’s Retreat.

Thomas Shubrick Pinckney (1815-1876), of the Charleston Pinckneys, had come to the County a couple of years after the Lawrences and had a cotton plantation at Fields Store, about 10 miles south.

Sometime before the war young Susanna Shubrick Hayne “Sue” Pinckney …

Here are a pair of pre-war photographs of Greer W Wood, later Private, Company F, 4th Texas Infantry and Sharpsburg veteran. The first as a very young man (c. 1855?) and the second at age 26 on the occasion of his marriage to Mary Elizabeth Harbour (December 1858).

Both photographs are online in the FamilySearch database [free membership required], thanks to family genealogists.

Late First Sergeant John D. Murray, Company F, 4th Texas Infantry – a Sharpsburg survivor. This photograph, considerably post war, is from J.B. Polley’s Hood’s Texas Brigade, Its Marches, Its Battles, Its Achievements (1910) [online from the Internet Archive].

Here’s his youngest brother, James C. Murray, also in Company F. He was unhurt at Sharpsburg, but killed by “friendly fire” at Little Round Top, Gettysburg, PA on 2 July 1863. His picture from Polley’s A Soldier’s Letters to Charming Nellie (opp. pg. 134, 1908).

The third Murray in Company F was Robert W. Murray. He was wounded at Sharpsburg in 1862 and again in the Wilderness in 1864 – losing his leg to amputation – but survived the war. He died in San Antonio in 1938 about two weeks after his 100th birthday. His post-war picture is also from Polley’s Letters.

Oldest of the 4 Murray boys, Asa W. Murray (1833-1917) had service in Company K, 8th Texas Infantry. He’s here with his family about 1883, from a family genealogist on RootsWeb.

31 year old Quin M. Menefee was a Methodist Episcopal preacher in Texas when he enlisted in the 4th Texas Infantry as a private soldier in March 1862. In September he was terribly wounded at Sharpsburg and his right leg was amputated. He returned home to farm and preach – at La Grange in Fayette County – but was struck down by yellow fever in September 1867, just 37 years old, leaving a widow and 4 children.

This photograph by Gregory Walker for the Historical Marker Database (HMDB).

I spent a good part of yesterday exploring the tree of the Kindred family – 5 of whom served in Company F the 4th Texas Infantry. I think I’ve got them sorted out now.

There were four brothers …

Joshua P Kindred (1830-1902) – stayed with the wounded at Sharpsburg, captured
John Stephen Kindred (1834-1862) – killed at Gaines’ Mill (Cold Harbor) 27 June 1862
Elisha Thomas Kindred (1839-1904) – elected Jr 2nd Lieutenant in July 1862; not in Maryland in 1862
James B Kindred (b. 1846) – wounded at Sharpsburg, recovered
(another brother, Joseph Colston Kindred (1841-1916) was a Sergeant, Company B, 5th Texas Infantry)

… and a cousin

Joseph Henry Kindred (1844-1862) – enlisted at age 17, mortally wounded at Sharpsburg, died 27 September

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The page images above are from 4th Texas Chaplain Nicholas A. Davis’ The Campaign from Texas to Maryland (1863) online from the Hathi Trust. Davis is as close to an immediate first-hand witness as it gets for figuring out who was at Sharpsburg. Not perfect, but a great starting point.

Here’s the first page of his roster for the 4th Texas, with the table key and headers to help make sense of the snippets above:

Private William Hollander, Company F, 4th Texas Infantry was severely wounded at Sharpsburg in September 1862 and discharged for wounds the following May. For 20 years afterward he was a farmer in Hays County, Texas, until, according to family information, he was killed on a cattle drive in April 1883.

He left a widow, Martha Ann (“M.A. Hollander”), and 6 children from 6 to 18 years old. He’d thought to buy life insurance, which must have helped …

This is clipped from the Fort Worth Daily Gazette of 21 July 1883, online from The Portal to Texas History.

The Crocketts in the 1890s in a photograph by Nathan Miles Wilcox (1845-1936), Georgetown, TX. Edward R. Crockett was captured in action at Sharpsburg in September 1862 while Corporal, Company F, 4th Texas Infantry.

That’s his wife Agnes Mercer (1841-1920) to his left and the youngest boys of their 13 children – Roy Hassell Crockett (1879-1950) and Cecil Leslie Crockett (1885-1964).

Here he is, a little closer:

The photograph is in the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs collection at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

This piece in the Waco Daily Examiner of 8 November 1887 [online from the Portal to Texas History] features an interview with Waco, TX merchant P.M. Ripley. Ripley was formerly First Sergeant of Company E of the 4th Texas Infantry and survived wounds at Second Manassas and Sharpsburg during the war.

His store in Waco can be seen (as #14) on an 1886 birds-eye-view map of the city [from the Library of Congress] seen in a previous post here on behind AotW.

[click to read the whole piece]

The greed alluded to was that of the Novelty Iron Works of Dubuque, IA. See more about them from the Encyclopedia Dubuque.

This lovely bird’s-eye-view map was produced by Beck & Pauli, lithographers in Milwaukee, WI, and is online from the Library of Congress. Use their excellent interface if you’d like to really zoom in. The original has yellowed quite a bit – I’ve adjusted the color.

On Eighth Street, labeled #21 (circled), is the Lehman House – a boarding house and hotel run by Sharpsburg survivor Joe Lehman. He also operated Joe Lehman’s Ice Cream Parlor & Restaurant on Fourth Street.

German-born Lehman was a baker in Waco before the war and was a Private in the 4th Texas when he was wounded at Sharpsburg in 1862. He afterward lost his left arm to amputation at the shoulder, and he finally returned home in June 1863.

Private Michael Sullivan was terribly wounded by 5 bullets at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862, and despite attentive care, suffered for about 7 months before he died of massive infection and other effects of his wounds.

This image is of page 185 in Volume 2, Part 3 of US Army Surgeon General J.K. Barnes’ Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (MSHWR, 1870-88). All 6 books of the MSHWR are online thanks to the National Library of Medicine at NIH in Bethesda, MD.