Year: 2020

  • Capt Hugh R Garden

    In the background above is the sleeve of Captain Hugh R. Garden‘s uniform coat, offered at auction by Poulin Antiques and Auctions. That’s some stunning braid against the red artillery cuffs. His photograph, of unknown provenance, is from his Findagrave memorial.

    Garden served as a Private soldier beginning in April 1861 and was a Corporal by February 1862. He then organized the Palmetto Artillery – “the guns being cast under his supervision from church bells at Columbia” – and he commanded the battery as their Captain through the war, including in Maryland in September 1862.

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    Update May 2024

    Here’s a very fine hand-colored photograph of Captain Garden, a piece LiveAuctions sold for $7,500 in September 2017. I’ve only just now found it.

    And to update his details, he was Color Bearer and Sergeant of Company D of the 2nd Infantry 1861-62, not Private or Corporal, at least according to his Compiled Service Records. I previously trusted someone else’s research, in error.

  • Lt Samuel M Pringle

    Lieutenant Samuel McBride Pringle of the Palmetto Artillery was mortally wounded at Sharpsburg – “a cannon ball taking off his leg midway between the knee and the foot” – and he died in Winchester, VA a week later.

    The letter pictured here is part of one one he wrote from the Richmond “Poor House” to his mother in May 1861. It’s online, along with others he wrote during the war, thanks to Furman University. His photograph was contributed to his Findagrave memorial by Ervin Shaw.

  • Charleston soul effigy headstone

    Lieutenant Edwin R. White took command of the 23rd South Carolina as the senior officer remaining on the field on South Mountain on 14 September 1862 and led them at Sharpsburg on the 17th. Edwin was in the 4th generation a family of stonecutters in Charleston, noted for their gravestones and funerary sculpture, and he returned to that craft after the war.

    The lovely headstone seen here is typical of the work of the Whites (and their Walker in-laws) and is among several of theirs in the First Scots Presbyterian Churchyard in Charleston, SC pictured online by Tracy Rylands on her Adventures in Cemetery Hopping.

  • Capt Henry H Salley

    Captain Henry H. Salley of the 22nd South Carolina Infantry was wounded in action at Turner’s Gap on South Mountain in September 1862. His photograph is of unknown provenance, posted to his memorial on Findagrave.

  • Francis and John Rowell (c. 1920)

    20 year old John E Rowell and his 40 year old father William enlisted together as Privates in Company E of the 22nd South Carolina Infantry in early 1862. Young John was wounded at Turner’s Gap in September 1862 but went home at the end of the war. William died of wounds in April 1865.

    This photograph of John and his wife Francis Isabella taken many years later was shared on Family Search [free membership required].