Another Sharpsburg veteran who was a post-war Texas state legislator, this is William Henry Burges, Jr. in about 1880, in a photograph shared online in several places by family genealogists.

He’s in this composite photograph of the Texas State Senate of 1881-83 (17th Legislature) from the Texas State Preservation Board, Austin, which is online among other references to Burges’s legislative history thanks to the Texas Legislative Reference Library. Senator Burges is at the bottom left.

Here’s Walter Moses Burton (c. 1829-1913), the man missing from that group photograph.

Here’s the top of a card for William C. Steele from his United States Mexican War Service Records, US National Archives (poke it to see the whole thing). Steele had later service as a Sergeant in the 4th Texas Infantry and was at Sharpsburg in September 1862. He lost a leg at Chickamauga, GA a year later, but went home to a farm in Grimes County.

Here’s newly elected Texas State Representative Burlington Wesley Rimes in 1873. His picture, probably from a collective composite of all the members of that legislature, is in the Lawrence T. Jones III Collection, Southern Methodist University.

Rimes was a Private in Maryland in 1862, and was left behind, sick, in Frederick – captured there on 12 September.

Lieutenant Middleton L. Livingston was in action with Company C, 4th Texas Infantry in Maryland in 1862.

He had been a physician in Milam County before the war and was a farmer there for most of the rest of his life. He was elected Sheriff in 1876 and this photograph was probably taken about that time. It’s online from the Milam County Historical Commission.

Courtland Lynn, Private, Company C, 4th New Jersey Infantry was wounded at Antietam on 17 September 1862. He and the regiment had been engaged at Crampton’s Gap on South Mountain 3 days earlier, but he came safely out of that action. They were largely in reserve at Antietam, but that’s where Private Lynn was hit.

Just over 20 years later Lynn applied for a veteran’s pension – which is what triggered this correspondence from the War Department to the Commissioner of Pensions.

It’s an excellent summary of his service and helps nail down where he was wounded. It also hints at a casualty list for his Brigade: the First of the 1st Division, 6th Army Corps. Another project for me …

This letter and the initial pointer to Lynn are from his great grandson John Courtland Lynn. The very best kind of source.