John Franklin Breland

A 16 or 17 year old farm boy from Buford's Bridge in the Bamberg District, he enlisted as Private, Company G, 17th South Carolina Infantry on 2 January 1862.

He was in action at Turner's Gap on South Mountain, MD on 14 September and severely wounded at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He was discharged on 10 February 1863 at the end of his one year enlistment and for being too young to reenlist.

By 1880 and to near his death in 1920 he was farming his own place at Three Mile in Barnwell County, SC.

His service from his Compiled Service Records, with his presence at "Boonsboro" and wound at Sharpsburg from Colonel McMaster's list for the 17th South Carolina (Confederate States Army Casualty Lists and Narrative Reports, RG 109, NARA), as John Brilan/Brillian, online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists, at least one having his birth year as 1844 and place as Barnwell Island, and the US Census for 1860-1920. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Cornelia Zenobia Grimes (1844-1924) and they had 6 children.

The Bamberg Herald of 5 May 1921 said:

John F. Breland enlisted in the war as a boy, went through the entire four years, and was wounded five times, once desperately, the bullet passing through his body. But for the care of an old mountain woman he would have died of his wound.

10/20/1845; Barnwell District, SC

05/19/1920; Three Mile, Bamberg County, SC; burial in Divers Pond Cemetery, Ehrhardt, SC