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Confederate (CSV)

Major

William Walter Sillers

(1838 - 1863)

Home State: North Carolina

Education: University of North Carolina, Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School, Class of 1859

Command Billet: Regimental Officer

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 30th North Carolina Infantry

 

see his Battle Report

Before Sharpsburg

A lawyer and planter from Sampson County, North Carolina, he was commissioned 1st Lieutenant of Company A, 30th Regiment in September 1861, and elected Major in the reorganization of May 1862. He was wounded in the arm in action on 1 July 1862 at Malvern Hill on the Virginia Peninsula. He was treated at General Hospital #24 in Richmond and returned to the Regiment prior to the Maryland Campaign.

On the Campaign

He assumed command of the Regiment in the Sunken Road at Sharpsburg about 11:30am, when Colonel Francis Marion Parker left the field seriously wounded.

The rest of the War

He again assumed command of the Regiment from Colonel Parker when that officer was wounded in action at Gettysburg in July 1863. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 3 September 1863, but was mortally wounded, shot through the lungs in action near Kelly's Ford, VA on 7 November 1863 while in command of the regiment.

References & notes

Service information from Moore's Roster1, who lists him as William W. Sellers. Details also from Helen P. Trimpi's Crimson Confederates: Harvard Men who Fought for the South (2010). His gravesite is on Findagrave.

More on the Web

A collection of his wartime letters are in the Stillers-Holmes Family Correspondence at the University of Notre Dame [transcribed online], the source of some of the details above.

Birth

04/10/1838; Clinton, NC

Death

11/09/1863; Gordonsville, VA; burial in Springvale Cemetery, Clinton, NC

Notes

1   Moore, John Wheeler (compiler), and State of North Carolina, Roster of North Carolina Troops in the War Between the States, 4 volumes, Raleigh: Ashe & Gatling, State Printers and Publishers, 1882, Vol. 2, pp. 502-503  [AotW citation 1016]