behind AotW

Private Samuel Houston McGee enlisted in Company C of the First Texas Infantry in April 1862, was wounded and captured at Sharpsburg in September and home on furlough by November. He returned to duty and was discharged in July 1864. He later moved to the Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma) where he operated a mill and gin and founded the town of McGee (1891; now Stratford, OK).

His heavily retouched photograph here was contributed to his Findagrave memorial by Stanley A. Hutson.

A “ramrod” of a man – 6 foot 3 inches tall and 150 pounds – was Captain George T Todd, First Texas Infantry. He was wounded “by shell or shrapnel crushing his foot” at Sharpsburg in September 1862 and “declined” to have his foot amputated. He recovered sufficiently to return to his Company in November 1862 but resigned his commission and requested duty west of the Mississippi in October 1863. He was Adjutant of W.P. Lane’s Texas Cavalry (first Partisan Rangers) from May 1864 to the end of the War.

This somewhat fuzzy copy of a post-war photograph of him is from Colonel Harold Brown Simpson’s Hood’s Texas Brigade: a Compendium (1977).

Anderson County, Texas newspaper editor and politician Matthew Dale was Major of the First Texas Infantry at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862:

…acting as lieutenant-colonel, had moved from the right, and was conferring with me [Colonel Work] as to the propriety of advancing or at once withdrawing, when he was killed …

His photograph as Texas State Representative (1860) is online from the Legislative Reference Library of Texas.

While looking for the grave of Private Thomas Crawford, 7th Maine, killed at Antietam, I came upon the Veterans Memorial in Oak Grove Cemetery in Bath, Maine. It was dedicated by the local Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Post on Decoration Day (now Memorial Day) 1896.

See if the sculpted soldier doesn’t look familiar …

Corporal John F. Bryant, Company I, 5th Maine Infantry was killed in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862. His carte-de-visite (CDV) is in the Bangor Public Library.

This hand-tinted, large format albumen print of four officers of the 2nd Massachusetts Artillery is thanks to owner Chris Carroll. Left-most in this picture is 42 year old First Lieutenant John Wesley Wolcott who transferred as Captain to the new Battery A, Maryland Light Artillery in December 1861. He led the battery in action on the Maryland Campaign in September 1862, but resigned in December 1862 and returned to his Roxbury, Massachusetts brokerage business.

This lovely piece is a decorative military record – “very tastefully printed in 10 colors” – for Private Samuel Wilson Evans of the 12th Pennsylvania Reserves. He served from 1861 to 1864 and saw action at South Mountain on 14 September and at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

This certificate was produced by the Army and Navy Record Company, which was started in about 1883 by Walter C. Strickler (c. 1837-after 1920) of Philadelphia – an outgrowth of his personal project to gather an exhaustive timeline for every Union military unit and action of the Civil War. Strickler’s son Theodore compiled some of that work in When and Where we Met Each Other on Shore and Afloat … (1899).

The colorful parts of this decorative record were printed, but Evans’ name and service details are hand-written. It was “presented” in his name to his wife Sarah Jane and daughters Margaret, Nellie May, and Mary Belle on 1 October 1905. The original is about 19×27 inches and it’s online thanks to the Maryland State Archives.

Below is an advertisement in the National Tribune of 5 October 1905. By that time the National Tribune had bought out Strickler, and was offering these certificates on their own. Strickler and the Tribune had been in a marketing relationship for some years before.

Colonel Samuel Henderson Allen led the First Maine Cavalry on the Maryland Campaign and was appointed Military Governor of Frederick, MD on 13 September 1862. He resigned for health reasons in January 1863. His picture is on a page in Edward Parsons Tobie’s History of the First Maine Cavalry, 1861-1865 (1887).

This photograph of Samuel McCutcheon and Shilo S. Walthour was kindly provided by Paul Blackham. Both men were in Company F of the 11th Pennsylvania Infantry and Samuel was a Corporal when he was wounded by a gunshot to the groin in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862. He eventually returned to duty and was Captain of the Company in June 1865.

Sergeant Walthour was wounded on 30 August 1862 at 2nd Bull Run and may not have been in Maryland, but he mustered out with Captain McCutcheon and the Company on 1 July 1865 in Harrisburg.

Baltimore shipbuilder and pre-war militia officer Benjamin Louis Simpson (left) was Lieutenant Colonel and led the Purnell Legion in Maryland in 1862, and he had later service as Colonel of the 6-month 9th Maryland Infantry to February 1864.

The photograph is at the Maryland Historical Society, and is seen here as it was published in Roger D. Hunt’s Colonels in Blue: the Mid-Atlantic States (2007). The other officer is not identified.