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W.D. Brown

W.D. Brown

Confederate (CSA)

Captain

William Dawson Brown

(c. 1830 - 1863)

Home State: Maryland

Command Billet: Battery Commander

Branch of Service: Artillery

Unit: Chesapeake (MD) Artillery

Before Sharpsburg

From Baltimore, he helped organize the 4th Maryland Light Artillery Battery - the Chesapeake Battery - in January 1862 on the Northern Neck of Virginia. He was elected Captain on entry into Confederate service sometime before April 1862.

On the Campaign

His battery was at Harpers Ferry during the siege, and may have fired the round that mortally wounded garrison commander Colonel Miles on 16 September.

The rest of the War

By December 1862 he was acting Chief of Artillery of Ewell's Division. He was mortally wounded in action in command of his battery at Gettysburg on 2 July 1863: both legs fractured and one amputated, and was captured. He died and was buried at the Benner Farm field hospital there on the 11th. He was later removed by his family to Baltimore.

References & notes

Burial information from his grave site on Findagrave. Service and other details from Goldsborough1, Bill Torrens via Civil War Talk, and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. His picture here also from Findagrave - the original possibly in the collection of the Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond.

Birth

c. 1830 in MD

Death

07/11/1863; Gettysburg, PA; burial in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, MD

Notes

1   Goldsborough, William Worthington, The Maryland Line in the Confederate Army, 1861-1865, Baltimore: Press of Guggenheim, Weil & Co., 1900, pp. 319, 321, 324  [AotW citation 1158]

2   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 29853]