behind AotW

This engraving, from a photograph, is of Colonel William Findlay Rogers of the 21st New York Infantry from J.H. Mills’ Chronicles of the Twenty-first Regiment New York State Volunteers (1887).

Rogers was the original Colonel of the 21st, commanded them at Antietam in September 1862, and led them to the end of their term in May 1863. He was later honored by brevet to Brigadier General of Volunteers for his war service.

Private Thomas W Kemble of the 9th New York Militia was seriously wounded in the thigh in action at Antietam in September 1862, and was in hospitals for nearly a year before he was discharged for disability in August 1863. His photograph was kindly provided by Joseph Maghe from his collection.

This photograph of Private William Seward Stockwell, 57th New York Infantry was kindly provided by Joseph Maghe from his collection.

Stockwell was a Sergeant in Company B when he was wounded by a gunshot to his right leg in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862. He returned to duty but was wounded again, at Chancellorsville, VA on 4 May 1863 and his leg was amputated. He was discharged for disability in August 1863.

By 1872 he was a married attorney living in St. Louis, MO, and he lived to age 82.

John W. Carr, a Sergeant in Company B, 57th New York Infantry was slightly wounded at Antietam in September 1862, became First Sergeant in May 1864, and mustered out a the end of his enlistment in October 1864. His photograph was kindly provided by Joseph Maghe from his collection.

John Buttrick Noyes, Harvard ’58, was a Boston lawyer before the war and enlisted as a Private in the Massachusetts Rifles in May 1861. He entered Federal service with them as Company B, 13th Massachusetts Infantry in July. He was slightly wounded at 2nd Bull Run in August 1862 and, more seriously, in the leg at Antietam in September. By the end of the war he was a Captain in the 28th Massachusetts serving on the Brigade staff and he was honored by brevets to Major, Lieutenant Colonel, and Colonel of Volunteers in March 1865 for his service. After the war he was in the fish and salt and warehouse businesses in Brooklyn, NY.

The 1858 photograph of him above is in the Harvard Art Museum.

Thanks to Laura Elliott for finding an excellent newspaper narrative about George Burgwin Anderson – with especially good details about his travails after being wounded in the foot at Sharpsburg.

One detail being that the General’s brother R. Walker Anderson, also wounded, traveled with him to the end.

I hadn’t known about Walker, and while pulling his string found this fantastic tidbit, from a genealogy talking about his Florida cousin, also called Walker:

This genealogy page is from The Reads and their relatives; being an account of Colonel Clement and Madam Read of Bushy Forest, Lunenburg County, Virginia, their eight children, their descendants, and allied families by Alice Riddle Read Rouse (1930).

This cannon – one of six like it on the Antietam National Battlefield – commemorates Brigadier General George Burgwin Anderson, CSA, who was wounded in the ankle near this spot along the Sunken Road (“Bloody Lane”) at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862. It seemed a minor wound at first and he went home to North Carolina to recuperate. After about two weeks his leg was amputated due to infection and he died on 16 October 1862. He was 31 years old.

Here’s a name that students of the Maryland Campaign should know: John Richard Simpson.

He was Captain of Company B, the “Gulf City Guards” of the 3rd Alabama Infantry. He led 3 or 4 companies of his regiment as skirmishers in advance of Rodes’ Brigade, and they were the first troops of the Army ordered to cross the Potomac River on the afternoon of 4 September 1862.

Captain Simpson is credited with being the first Confederate soldier to set foot in Maryland on the campaign, having waded the river at Cheek’s Ford sometime after 4pm on that Thursday evening.

Not quite two weeks later, Simpson was seriously wounded at Sharpsburg. He retired from field service as a result, and worked in the Substitute Department (Richmond?) from 1864 to the end of the War.

This photograph is probably of him, from long afterward, from the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

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Thanks to Scott Hartwig for the pointer to the Captain in his lovely book To Antietam Creek (2012) .

In his first combat Lieutenant Frederick M. Yeager led part of Company K, 128th Pennsylvania Infantry in their advance through the East Woods and toward the Dunkard Church on 17 September 1862 at Antietam. He was Captain when he mustered out in May 1863.

He was a professional photographer in Reading, PA from 1864 to at least 1874, and later an “art publisher.” Above is a promotional piece from his studio, online from [Langdon & Langdon’s] Langdon’s List of 19th & Early 20th Century Photographers.

Captain William McIntosh Arnold led a small battalion of “sharpshooters or skirmishers … trained for that work” made up of his Company, “A” of the 6th Georgia Infantry, and the “A” Companies of the other regiments in the Brigade – the 23rd, 27th, and 23th Georgia and 13th Alabama – at Turner’s Gap on 14 September and in the East Woods at Sharpsburg, where Captain Arnold was wounded and captured on 17 September 1862.

He was Lieutenant Colonel by January 1864 but was killed at Petersburg in July 1864. His picture is from an eighth-plate tintype in the Joe Millazzo Collection published in Military Images (Summer 2019). The envelope, postmarked Sparta, GA is online from Confederate postal service expert Trish Kaufmann.