Jefferson Jasper Wilson

In 1860 he was a 20 year old on his parents' farm in Copiah County, MS. He enlisted 25 April 1861 at Crystal Springs, MS and mustered as a Private in Company C, 16th Mississippi Infantry on 26 May 1861 in Corinth, MS.

He was with his Company on the Campaign; on Maryland Heights, VA near Harpers Ferry (13-16 September 1862) and at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862. On the 20th he wrote home:

There was fighting at Harpers Ferry and on the 15th the Yankees surrendered. . . . Then we marched into Maryland and had one of the hardest battles that has ever been fought since the war commenced. Our regiment suffered more than it ever did before. There was twenty-six killed, ninety-nine wounded, nineteen missing. We supposed that they are killed or wounded. We had to fall back, and some of our wounded fell into the hands of the enemy. The fight was near a little town in Maryland. We have fallen back this side of the river. We had seven killed in our company and two that we suppose is killed or badly wounded. . . . We were under the hottest fires that we ever was before. We went in with thirty-seven men [in our company] and twenty of them were killed and wounded. The Yankees had five men to our one ...

He was promoted to First Corporal on 15 April and slightly wounded by a gunshot to his scalp at Chancellorsville, VA on 3 May 1863. He was captured on 21 August 1864 on the Weldon Railroad near Petersburg, VA and was sent to Point Lookout, MD. He died there of acute diarrhea on 19 October 1864.

His service from his Compiled Military Service Records,1 online from fold3. The quote above from his 20 September 1862 letter to his father James, as published in Robert G. Evans' The Sixteenth Mississippi Infantry: Civil War Letters And Reminiscences (2002). Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860. His memorial is on Findagrave.

1839 in MS

10/19/1864; Point Lookout, MD; burial in Point Lookout Confederate Cemetery, Scotland, MD