behind AotW

Lieutenant Jacob Gilbert Beaver.

Commissioned 2nd Lieutenant, 51st Pennsylvania Infantry on 16 November 1861 and promoted to First Lieutenant on 6 June 1862.

He was killed in action at the Lower Bridge – later known as Burnside’s – at Antietam on 17 September 1862, age 22.

The photographs here, of Merry Bracy Harris and his wife Hettie, are from a collection of his papers in the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries Special Collections [finding aid] and were contributed to his Findagrave memorial by Eddie Harris.

Harris was Lieutenant Colonel of the 12th Mississippi Infantry when he was wounded at Sharpsburg in September 1862. He was wounded again, at Chancellorsville in May 1863 and promoted to Colonel, but was shot in the head near Petersburg, VA in June 1864, and furloughed. He died at his in-laws home in Columbus, KY in August 1865.

First Lieutenant George Trenchard Ingham commanded Company G of the 11th United States Infantry at Antietam in September 1862. He survived the war and was honored by brevets to Captain and Major, USA for his service.

He died at about 60 years of age after he fell down a flight of stairs while attending the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) national encampment in Philadelphia, PA in September 1899. I hope he got an automobile ride first.

John Coalter Bates began his Army career with a commission as First Lieutenant, 11th United States Infantry at the start of the war in May 1861. He commanded Company E of the 11th Infantry at Antietam, was promoted to Captain in May 1863, and spent the rest of the war on General George Meade’s staff.

After 45 years of Regular Army service – in the Civil War, the West, the Spanish-American War, and the Philippines – he was appointed Chief of Staff of the US Army and promoted to Lieutenant General, USA in 1906. His portrait here was painted by Cedric Baldwin Egeli in 1974 (from a photograph), and is in the Army Art Collection, probably exhibited in the Pentagon. Its online from the National Museum of the US Army.

This is a carte-de-visite of Henry Laurens Chipman sold by Cowan’s Auctions in 2014. Chipman was Captain of Company D, 11th United States Infantry at Antietam. By the end of the war he was Colonel commanding the 102nd US Colored Troops and was brevetted Brigadier General of Volunteers for his service. He retired from the US Army as Colonel, USA in 1887.

Lieutenant George Edward Head led the men of Company D, 11th United States Infantry as skirmishers in the action at Boteler’s Ford near Shepherdstown, VA on 20 September 1862. He was Captain by the end of the war and continued in Regular Army service, retiring as Lieutenant Colonel of the 3rd US Infantry in 1891.

The superb 1852 daguerreotype above of Head, Class of 1852, Medicine ’55, is in the Harvard University Archives. Below he’s seen in a photograph taken about 40 years later, from family genealogists on Geni.

Thomas M Allen is the model for the soldier atop the Confederate Dead Monument in Oakdale Cemetery, Washington, NC. He may have been chosen for his 6 foot 2 inch stature.

He was 2nd Lieutenant of Company E, 4th North Carolina Infantry when he was wounded and captured at Sharpsburg in September 1862. He was wounded again at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg in 1863. Made prisoner at Gettysburg, he was among the 600 Confederate officers on Morris Island, SC in the Summer of 1864.

The harsh and unusual conditions of their imprisonment inspired one of the captives, John O. Murray, to record his experiences in the 1905 book The Immortal Six-Hundred. The name he gave the group stuck, and today they are still referred to as the ‘Immortal 600.’

After the war he was a farmer in Beaufort County, NC. The picture above is from Douglas J. Butler’s North Carolina Civil War Monuments: An Illustrated History (2013).

Walter Clark edited the massive 5 volume Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861-1865 (1901). Included on its pages are hundreds of pictures of soldiers from those units, in most cases photos of their faces were apparently cut out and pasted on drawings of generic uniform jackets; officers with appropriate collar insignia. A unique presentation approach I’ve not seen anywhere else.

One of those soldiers, seen here from a page in Volume 4, is Private James B Stinson of Company A, 4th North Carolina Infantry. At Sharpsburg in September 1862

Private J. B. Stinson, of same [4th] regiment, acting as courier to General Anderson, was wounded in three places at Sharpsburg, and there, as on every other battle-field, behaved most nobly.

He returned to duty, served as courier to Generals Anderson, Ramseur, and Grimes through the war, was wounded again, at Spotsylvania Court House in 1864, and was surrendered at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865.

2nd Lieutenant of Captain Manley’s Battery A, North Carolina Light Artillery, Charles Christopher Wrenshall was a civil engineer before the war. He led a section of the battery in action near Burkittsville and at Crampton’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862. In his brief Report Captain Manly wrote:

I am indebted to Lieutenant Wrenshall for the fine management of his section during the entire fight.

He was in wounded in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September and resigned his commission on 11 October for disability. He was commissioned Captain in the CS Nitre and Mining Corps and by January 1863 was working in the Nitre Bureau at San Antonio, Texas. After the war he worked railroad bridge and line projects all over the country. The town of Wrenshall in east central Carlton County, MN was named for him by the Northern Pacific Railroad.

Illustrated here is his patent for a railroad water tank design (1887), from the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office.

Lieutenant William Baxter Stinson, 18th Mississippi Infantry was wounded at Sharpsburg and captured there. He was exchanged in October, afterward furloughed, then detailed to to the Medical Director’s Office, Richmond into Autumn 1863. He returned to his Company but retired for disability in May 1864.

After the war he married and had 9 children. His oldest, son Edward had 4 children (Eddie, Kate, Madge, and Jack), all of whom became pilots. Jack and Eddie founded the Stinson Aviation Company in Arkansas and Stinson Aeroplane Company in Ohio, respectively.

In 1912 Kate Stinson, pictured here, became the fourth woman in America to be licensed a pilot (her sister Madge was #9). She set several air records and became known as “The Flying Schoolgirl.” Her photograph is from the Library of Congress.