Robert A. Davidge

He left his native Kentucky and travelled to the gold mining town of Nevada City, CA in 1852, and was deputy County Clerk, Postmaster, and newspaper editor there until "disgusted with everything and everybody" he returned to Kentucky in 1855. He was a newspaper editor there until shortly before the war.

He was in Texas at the start of the war, and on 11 July 1861, then 29 years old, he enlisted at Camp Clark in Guadalupe County as a Private in Company B, 4th Texas Infantry.

He was absent from his Company at Fox's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September, but he was with them in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and was captured there.

He was paroled at Keedysville, MD on 20 September and in a Richmond hospital by 1 October. He was officially exchanged on 7 November 1862 and was assigned as a clerk to the Adjutant on 15 December 1862. He was captured again, near Chickamauga, GA on 19 September 1863 and was in the US prison at Louisville, KY on 1 October. He was captured again, in Dickson County, TN on 6 December 1863, and was admitted to US Army General Hospital #1 in Nashville on 1 March 1864. He died there of typhoid pneumonia on 6 March 1864. His body was delivered to his sister (Martha Davidge of Hopkinsville, KY) and she apparently had him buried in Nashville.

Service information from Davis1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 via fold3. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

Note that he was born in Hickman County, KY, which is the far south-western corner of the state, not far from Nashville, TN. Home territory for him.

See a fantastic narrative about him in a piece in the Marysville (CA) Daily Appeal of 9 June 1864, over on the blog. It was source for some details above.

c. 1832; Hickman County, KY

03/06/1864; Nashville, TN; burial in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Nashville, TN