James Alston Groves

Age 25, he enlisted on 27 May 1861 and mustered as a Private in Company K of the 16th Mississippi Infantry on 10 June 1861 in Corinth. He was detailed to assist the Surgeon on 20 June 1861 and appointed Assistant Surgeon the next day; his commission dated 12 October 1861.

Private William Henry Harrison "Harry" Lewis of Company K found his performance as a surgeon lacking, as he wrote home on 30 July 1862:

Our assistant surgeon Groves showed cowardice three times in the field of battle [at Cross Keys, VA in the Shenandoah Valley, 8 June 1862]. He could not be found till the battle was over and then away in the rear. He is irretrievably disgraced, not one of the regiment deign to notice him at all. He could have saved two poor fellows lives had he been at his post at Cross Keys ... One of these cases, a member of the Adams Light Guard from Natchez, had his leg torn off at the knee by a cannon ball, and if he had been properly tended doubtless would have recovered. As it was, however, he lay in the church for long hours until a Virginia surgeon dressed his wound in time to die. Another case of neglect was George Estes [Private, Company K] who died a few days since from the wound received at Cross Keys. A cannon ball took his leg off just above the ankle. A green physician amputated his leg, which George stood like a noble boy, as he was, but as the wound [was] healing ... it was found that the bone protruded, so our young surgeon cut it off a second time just below the knee and neglected to secure the arteries properly, and when the wound commenced healing the artery bursted and threatened to bleed George to death, so the wise doctor concluded to saw the poor boys leg off a third time above the knee which caused his death.

He treated wounded soldiers, like Lieutenant Hanlon of Company I, on the field at Sharpsburg during and after the battle of 17 September 1862.

He was left behind at Gettysburg, PA in July 1863 to tend the wounded, and died, cause not given, at the Pennsylvania College hospital in Gettysburg on 12 July 1863.

His service from his Compiled Military Service Records,1 online from fold3, also as J. Alston/Allston Groves. The Lewis letter quoted above found in Robert G. Evans' The Sixteenth Mississippi Infantry: Civil War Letters And Reminiscences (2002). Personal details from family genealogists, notably his older brother Joseph Asbury Groves in The Alstons and Allstons of North and South Carolina (1901).

1837 in GA

07/12/1863; Gettysburg, PA; burial in Baltimore, MD