Here are Captain Andrew H Ramsay and his wife Sally Azalea “Zaidee” Jarrett from pages in the Stephens County Heritage Book, from the Stephens County Historical Society.

Captain Ramsay commanded Company E of the First South Carolina (Orr’s) Rifles in Maryland in 1862 and had something of a checkered military career. After the war he was a founder of the town of Toccoa, GA.

James M Perrin is one of 5 men from the Abbeville District of South Carolina remembered on this roadside historical marker in Abbeville. His face is from a portrait published in the Colonial Dames of America’s South Carolina Portraits, A Collection of Portraits of South Carolinians (1996).

A veteran of the Mexican War and a pre-war South Carolina militia officer, Lieutenant Colonel Perrin led the First South Carolina Rifles at Harpers Ferry, Sharpsburg and Shepherdstown on the Maryland Campaign. Afterward he was promoted to Colonel but was mortally wounded at Chancellorsville, VA on 3 May 1863 and died later in the day.

In an 1899 letter to Ezra Carman of the Antietam Battlefield Board, Captain Gabriel Campbell formerly of the 17th Michigan Infantry, by then a Dartmouth professor, described the part he and his regiment played in the combat at Fox’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862. Toward the end of his narrative he gives us these nuggets:

… Just as we finished removing and caring for the wounded in the field, a few rebels without arms appeared coming into the field, ostensibly looking for their dead and helpless comrades. I quickly observed that they were pilfering from our dead as well as their own, and also gathering up arms, occasionally discharging a musket into the air. When I remonstrated with them for picking pockets and firing at random, they answered [illegible]. As I was now the only Union soldier in the field, I walked quietly towards the exit.

Just as I reached the doorway at the S.E. corner, I met General Willcox who asked with some indignation what that firing meant. I replied the men were rebels who were robbing the dead and picking up arms. I pointed to several who were just then climbing the fence, coming in from the woods, and added this was evidently the beginning of a volley. Gen. Willcox turned his horse, touching him with his spur, and rode back hastily.

Orlando B. Willcox

The twilight was growing dusky. Meditating on the stranger events of the day – a most suggestive Sunday eve – I was winding my way slowly back to the regiment when, about 50 yards from where I met Gen. Willcox, I encountered Gen. Reno and four or five members of his staff riding quietly to the front. Reno, who was about half the length of his steed in advance, was leaning forward peering steadily through his field glass, in order, evidently, to reconnoiter for himself.

Jesse L. Reno

I stood and watched. Just as I reached the end of the fence, there was a sudden fusillade – five or six shots in about a couple of seconds. There was at once commotion among the Reno horsemen, a dismounting and catching of someone. Evidently the rebels had begun to form behind the stone fence. Quickly an orderly comes back leading several horses. To my inquiring ‘what happened?’, he answered, ‘Reno’s shot.’ Immediately men bearing the General on a blanket follow. They pause as they meet me, and are glad of a little assistance in carrying the middle of the blanket on the right side, which duty fell to me. It was too dark to see Reno’s face at all closely. He seemed pale but perfectly composed. No one of us spoke. We bore our beloved commander silently, slowly, tenderly …

______

Thanks to Jim Smith for the poke to look into Captain Campbell.

The picture of General Jesse Reno is from a CDV sold by Heritage Auctions in September 2016. General Willcox’s is from the Library of Congress.

Major Edward McCrady, Jr. led his regiment, the First South Carolina Infantry, early on the Maryland Campaign and commanded its right wing in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

After the war he was a lawyer in Charleston, and, although not a trained historian, wrote a 4 volume history of South Carolina (1890-1902) and books of local history, was elected president of the South Carolina Historical Society in 1899, and was Vice President of the American Historical Association in 1902. This photograph of him from that post-war period was contributed to his Findagrave memorial by R.B. Rhett.

This framed photograph of Private Edward A Fulton, Company K, 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry was in the collection of Don Troiani, now in the museum of the U.S. Center of Military History at Fort Belvoir, Va.

Private Fulton was wounded 4 separate times at Antietam and was discharged for disability in May 1863. He was still suffering from his wounds at his death in 1880 at age 44.