Benjamin Franklin Taylor

In 1860 he was a 19 year old farmer living with his wealthy parents in Baltimore. He enlisted as a Private in Company B, 2nd Maryland Infantry on 30 June 1861 and was appointed Sergeant Major of the Regiment on 8 October. He was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant of Company B on 23 April 1862.

He was with his Company in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

He was promoted to Captain on 23 September and was wounded by a piece of shell at Fredericksburg, VA on 13 December 1862. He was wounded again, by a gunshot to his left shoulder near Petersburg, VA on 25 June 1864 and was appointed Lieutenant Colonel on 6 October 1864. He was wounded for the third time, in the left ankle at Fort Mahone near Petersburg, on 2 April 1865. He was appointed Colonel of the regiment on 10 July (though not mustered at that rank) and mustered out with them a week later in Baltimore.

He was honored by brevet to Colonel of Volunteers for his war service.

By 1870 and to at least 1900 he was again a farmer, at Little Gunpowder near Baltimore, MD.

He was president of the Antietam Battlefield Commission of Maryland and presented the Maryland monument in a ceremony at Antietam on 30 May 1900.

He was once Assistant Superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery, VA and was Superintendent of the Loudon Park National Cemetery, Baltimore at his death at age 78 in 1919.

Service information from Wilmer1 and his Compiled Military Service Records,2 online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860-1900. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a c. 1865 photograph at the Maryland Historical Society, published in an exhibit panel [PDF] for "A College Divided: Maryland Agricultural College and the Civil War" (2011-12) at the University of Maryland.

He married Mary Jane Cator (1845-1926) in about 1867 and they had 8 children.

He drafted a history of the 2nd Maryland but never published. A typescript of his manuscript is in the H. Furlong Baldwin Library at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, Baltimore [finding aid].

There's an excellent bio sketch of Colonel Taylor from Timothy Orr on his Tales from the Army of the Potomac.

See an odd card I found in his CMSR jacket at the National Archives, and an 1865 group photograph with other officers of his regiment, both on behind AotW.

11/13/1840; Baltimore, MD

02/25/1919; Baltimore, MD; burial in Saint Johns Episcopal Church Cemetery, Kingsville, MD