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W. Colwell
(1827 - 1862)
Home State: Wisconsin
Education: Jerfferson (Pa) College
Command Billet: Company commander
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 2nd Wisconsin Infantry
Before Antietam
After attending college and working with his father in the iron business in Pennsylvania, he moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin in 1856. There he founded the Katanyan Bank and was a militia Captain. In April 1861, at the outbreak of war, he had just been elected mayor of La Crosse. He enrolled in Company B of the Second Infantry, and mustered as Captain on 16 April 1861.
On the Campaign
He was killed in action at Turner's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862.
References & notes
Photograph here from a CDV (Brady studio, Wash DC, c. 1861) offered for sale by Museum Quality Americana. Service dates from the Roster1. Additional biographical detail from an undated newspaper article posted online by the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Birth
04/13/1827; Kittanning, PA
Death
09/14/1862; Turner's Gap, MD
1 State of Wisconsin, Adjutant General's Office, and Chandler P. Chapman, Adj. Gen., Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers, War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865, 2 volumes, Madison: Democrat Printing Co., State Printers, 1886, Vol. 1, pg. 350 [AotW citation 1077]