behind AotW

This excellent photograph of Nelson Amariah Bemis was passed down through his descendants and sent to me by his great-great-grandson Mike LaRoi.

Nelson was wounded at Antietam in September 1862 while serving as a Private in Company F of the 8th Connecticut Infantry, but survived his wounds and the war, and was a farmer in Illinois for many years afterward.

Lieutenant Mark Rambo Supplee, Company I, 51st Pennsylvania Infantry survived the successful assault across what later became known as Burnside’s Bridge at Antietam in September 1862.

In November 1863 he was posted to the Convalescent Camp at Camp Nelson, near Lexington, KY, disabled by a gunshot through his foot at Fredericksburg, VA in December 1862. As a family historian later put it:

[H]e found the place in great disarray. There was no semblance of orderliness; no roster of those assigned to the Camp; no record of who came and who went. Mark, being one of the few officers in the Camp, sought to improve upon matters. In order to make any progress in creating order out of confusion he needed some measure of authority. He determined that to gain this authority it would be necessary to approach the Adjutant [sic] General …

touch letter to see a full transcript

He was commissioned in the Invalid Corps, appointed Commandant of the Convalescent Camp, and got it under control. Family lore says that work helped lead to what much later became the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital system.

He mustered out with his regiment at the end of his 3 years’ service, in November 1864, and returned to farming in Montgomery County, PA.

Here he is a bit later in life:

The handwritten and typescript copies of his 1863 letter and the postwar photo above are all courtesy of great-grandson Willard Supplee Yeakel, Jr. A huge thank-you to him for those and for pointing me to his ancestor in the first place; I would otherwise have passed him over.

A Methodist Episcopal minister’s son, 18 year old Charles Frederick Weller mustered into the newly forming 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry at Carlisle on 22 August 1862, and was issued his horse and a carbine in the field on 16 September 1862 – the day before the battle of Antietam.

He wrote quite a bit about his experiences through the war, in a journal (1862-64) and in frequent letters to his sweetheart Katherine Ann McElwain back in Beaver, PA. Here’s his description of meeting a couple of Confederate soldiers while carrying messages for General McClellan on the Boonsboro Pike near Sharpsburg, MD on 18 September 1862:

On the way I had the honor of [confronting?] two rebels. I came upon them unawares while turning a bend in the road. I thought I would either take them or they me. So I presented my revolver and ordered them to throw down their arms. One of them immediately threw down a pistol and the other a musket – which was not loaded. These I found were all they had. I dismounted, took the musket and pistol, fastened them on my saddle, searched the men, and then marched them before me with a certain feeling quite proud of my conquest.

He married Katherine right after the war and had a long and successful career in the wholesale drug business in Illinois and Nebraska. Here he is in about 1904, then age 60.

His wartime photograph at the top is from a collection at the Onondaga County Public Library, which includes that war journal and 50 letters to his future wife Katherine. The whole collection is online from New York Heritage.

The later photograph is from “Nebraskans” 1854-1904, a book published by the Omaha Bee in 1904. It’s online from the Internet Archive. The photo is labeled 1887, but that’s the year Weller joined the new Omaha branch of the Richardson Drug Company as Vice President and Manager. The photograph was probably taken closer to the date of the publication, judging by his apparent age in it.

2 days after his 20th birthday, on 17 September 1862, Natick shoemaker Daniel Eldridge Reed was mortally wounded at Antietam. He died there the next day.

Here he is in a photograph probably taken soon after he enlisted in 1861, shared to the Historical Data Systems database by Raymond C. Peavey.

Near the end of his long life, Sharpsburg survivor William Samuel Agnew, late Lieutenant of the 19th Mississippi Infantry, attended the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) reunion at Jacksonville, FL in May 1914. Here he is – mostly beard and hat – on that occasion.

This picture was shared to the FamilySearch database by Jimmy Freeman in 2021. See more about the Jacksonville reunion, including film footage, from the Florida Historical Society.

This is John Kirkpatrick, who enlisted in the 45th Pennsylvania Infantry in October 1861, probably 16 or 17 years old, and was mortally wounded at Antietam not quite one year later. Thanks to descendant Barry van Brunt for sending me this superb photograph.

Lieutenant Ivory Quinn Perry of Company A, 19th Mississippi Infantry was wounded in the foot and captured at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and afterward disabled for active service. This photograph of him in uniform was kindly contributed to the FamilySearch database by Natalie Brannon in July 2022.

Captain Noah A Burly, a Captain in the 17th South Carolina Infantry sent the following to the Confederate authorities in Richmond, VA on behalf of his brother James Calvin Burly, late of the 12th Mississippi Infantry.

James was wounded at Sharpsburg in September 1862 and again, mortally, at Gettysburg in July 1863.

This document is among those in James’ Compiled Service Records, now in the National Archives, Washington, DC, and online thanks to fold3. It was particularly interesting to me because it has the brothers’ surname handwritten as Burly. Most family records and grave markers spell it Burley.

My transcription:

[reverse]
W.H. Taylor Esq
2d Auditor’s Office
Richmond, Va

Trenches near Petersburg Va
Oct 21st 1864

W.H. Taylor

Dear Sir, Enclosed you will find a Final Statement of my brother, J.C. Burly, Co. I, 12th Miss Regt. You will confer a great favor to me and my family by paying the dues called for to his Mother, Mrs Elizabeth Burly, Monticello P.O., Fairfield Dist, So. Car__ I am res your obt svt

N.A. Burly. Capt.
Co B 17 SC Vols

William George Stigler was 3rd Sergeant of Company I, 12th Mississippi Infantry when he was wounded at Sharpsburg in September 1862. He was captured in the Wilderness, VA in May 1864, by then reduced to Private, and was a prisoner at Point Lookout, MD to March 1865.

At the end of the War he was in Alabama and he was paroled by Federal authorities at Montgomery on 10 May 1865. Here’s his parole document from his Compiled Service Records, US National Archives, online from fold3.

He was then 22 years old, and unless the officer filling out the form made a mistake, was only 4 feet and 5 inches tall.

A fine post-war photograph of Theodore Barber Day, Antietam veteran and late Private, Company C, 2nd Wisconsin Infantry, thanks to descendant Sam Day.

Theodore’s great grandson Terence Lee Day and his son Daniel S Day researched and produced a Life History [PDF] of him in 2017. Daniel shared it on the FamilySearch database and invites feedback.