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G.L. Robertson
(1843 - 1900)
Home State: Texas
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 4th Texas Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
The 18 year old son of physician and former Mayor of Austin Dr. Joseph W. Robertson (1809-1870), he enlisted at Camp Clark in Guadalupe County as a Private in Company B, 4th Texas Infantry on 11 July 1861 and was promoted to First Corporal on 24 July 1862.
On the Campaign
He was in action with his Company at Fox's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September was wounded by a gunshot to his neck and shoulder at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862, "left for dead" on the field, and captured.
The rest of the War
He was paroled on 27 September in Sharpsburg and briefly admitted to US Army General Hospital #5 in Frederick, MD from 15 to 16 October, then sent on to Ft. McHenry in Baltimore. He was transferred to Fortress Monroe, VA on 18 October for exchange. He was in hospitals in Richmond, VA and on furlough due to his wound to 3 May 1863, then listed as absent without leave in Texas on the rolls to August 1864. He was paroled at Austin on 27 July 1865.
After the War
In 1870 he was a store clerk in Austin living with his widowed mother and 8 of his younger siblings, but by 1876 he was developing plots of his family's land in Austin, and by 1880 headed his own household and was a retail drygoods dealer.
References & notes
Service information from Davis1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 via fold3. Frederick detail from the Patient List,3 as G.L. Robinson. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census for 1860-1880. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture here is from a photograph in the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas photography collection at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
He married Sarah Francis Shepard (1854-1927) in September 1877 and they had 4 children between 1883 and 1892.
More on the Web
See much more about the Robertson family's real estate dealings and their impact on the city of Austin in a historic district application for the Robertson/Stuart & Mair Historic District, [online in PDF] from the Austin city government. Note also the impact of Interstate I-35, which was built through Austin in the 1960s.
See more also about the family home from 1848-1949 - the former French Legation in Austin; a legacy of the Republic of Texas (1836-46).
Birth
06/07/1843; Austin, TX
Death
01/17/1900; Austin, TX; burial in Oakwood Cemetery, Austin, TX
1 Davis, Rev. Nicholas A., The Campaign from Texas to Maryland, Houston: Telegraph Book and Job Establishment, 1863, pp. 150 - 152 [AotW citation 1692]
2 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, Record Group No. 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927 [AotW citation 26610]
3 National Museum of Civil War Medicine, and Terry Reimer, Frederick Patient List, Published 2018, first accessed 17 September 2018, <http://www.civilwarmed.org/explore/primary-sources/databases/frederickpatient/>, Source page: patient #1.082 [AotW citation 26611]