Thomas Jefferson Carver, Jr.

From Mobile, age 18, he enlisted as Private in the Gulf City Guards - Company B, 3rd Alabama Infantry - on 23 April 1861.

His Company was the first across the Potomac River on 4 September 1862. He later wrote home:

It was quite an amusing sight to see us crossing; a great many men in their shirts alone, tearing across with their rifles in hand, ready to fire at any one they could see on the other side . . . Our color-bearer rushed up the riverbank in his shirt alone, and stuck his colors firmly in the ground, amid loud cheers.

He was discharged to accept a commission in another unit; probably as 2nd Lieutenant of Company A of the First Alabama Infantry.

His service from the State of Alabama.1 His letter quoted above was published in the Mobile Register and Advertiser of 28 September 1862; thanks to Scott Hartwig in To Antietam Creek (2012) for the pointer to that reference. His wounding on South Mountain from a casualty list for Rodes' Brigade in the Montgomery Weekly Advertiser of 8 October 1862. His picture from a photograph on his father's Findagrave memorial.

In July 1865 a Thomas J. Carver of Mobile was appointed a special agent of the US Treasury tasked with seizing Confederate-produced cotton and delivering it to government. However, he was arrested in August and, in October, was convicted of fraud after he bought a large number of bales of the to-be-seized cotton for himself at well-below market value intending to sell at a profit. He paid a very large fine, and avoided jail time by cooperating with the military authorities. He actually received a small commission in 1866 for helping the government recover cotton from other fraudulent transactions.

This may have been our Thomas' father, or less likely, our man himself. The case is found in Cases Decided in the Court of Claims of the United States ... (1881) and in a number of newspapers of the period.

c. 1843