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Confederate (CSA)

Major

William Sydney Wilson

(1816 - 1862)

Home State: Mississippi

Command Billet: Commanding Battalion

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 2nd Mississippi Infantry Battalion

Before Sharpsburg

In 1860 he was a 46 year old lawyer of modest means in Port Gibson, Claiborne County, MS. He was in the Mississippi State Legislature 1858-59 and 1860-61, and very briefly a member of the Provisional Confederate Congress in early 1861. He then recruited the Claiborne Volunteers who became Company F, 2nd Battalion of Mississippi State Troops, and was elected their Captain on 13 August 1861. He was promoted to Major on 2 November 1861 and commanded the Battalion after Lieutenant Colonel John G. Taylor was killed at Frayser’s Farm, VA on 30 June 1862.

On the Campaign

He was in command of the Battalion in Maryland and was mortally wounded at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 16 October, but died of his wounds on 3 November 1862.

References & notes

His service from his Compiled Military Service Records,1 via fold3, filed under 48th Mississippi Infantry, also as William Sidney Wilson. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860, and a sketch in Warner and Yearns' Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress (1975). His gravesite is on Findagrave; he was buried next to his parents.

Birth

11/07/1816; Snow Hill, MD

Death

11/03/1862; Winchester, VA; burial in Makemie Memorial Cemetery, Snow Hill, MD

Notes

1   US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, Record Group No. 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927  [AotW citation 28971]